Development of Creative Commons licenses

[MJ Ray <mjr AT phonecoop.coop>]

Greg London wrote:
> I still do not understand why debian opposes anti-TPM.

I am a debian developer, but note I do not speak for the project.

I oppose anti-TPM for broadly similar reasons as why I oppose 
anti-mixed-licence-media-distribution (where works must be copied to 
media containing only works under the same licence) or even 
anti-nuclear-site clauses.  Such clauses are largely irrelevant to the 
freedoms to use, study, copy and improve, can never be comprehensive and 
cause practical problems.  They are themselves unacceptable restrictions 
on free redistribution, fragmenting what can be copied how and to where.

I feel it would be better to require that licensees do not use TPM or 
similar to restrict recipients of copies that they distribute, rather 
than demand that no TPM-restricted copies are ever made.

That may seem a small difference, but it could be done in more simple 
language than the proposed 3.0 anti-TPM wording (see CC-Scotland) and 
has benefits for widening CC use on all sorts of devices, without 
letting work be enclosed against its licensors' wishes.  This would be 
similar to the GPL's source requirements, or maybe simpler.

Also, a blanket anti-TPM clause has a chilling effect.  There are a lot 
of unanswered questions about TPM - it's a young law and there doesn't 
seem to have been many cases yet.  If I unwittingly apply TPM to a work 
in a way that doesn't restrict anyone (say I don't realise that it is a 
TPM at the time of use), would I really have gone against anyone's 
wishes in a way that merits a copyright infringement prosecution?

Hope that explains it clearly,
-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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