Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Greg London wrote:
>  So, what you have yet to make clear here, is if DRM Dave can use DRM
>  to become the sole source of a work that plays on some DRM platform.
>  If the solution is "parallel distribution", but the DMCA says only
>  Dave can circumvent his DRM, then does not that mean that Alice
>  cannot provide the exact same work in DRM-friendly format for the DRM
>  platform?

Okay, maybe I see what your point is, but I'm not sure. Why would you 
think that Alice would NOT be entitled to apply her own DRM to the 
work?  What's preventing her from doing that?  Certainly not the license.

Let's examine the assumptions ...

Dave is able to apply DRM because he has licensed a DRM key from the 
Platform Owner.

Alice, presumeably, can get the same license from the same Platform Owner.

If so, Dave has no "privileged" position relative to Alice, but both are 
deprived of freedoms we take for granted on free platforms: they both 
must pay for the right to distribute DRM'd files on a DRM-only platform.

Now, of course, it maybe that the Platform Owner is not fair in selling 
licenses, and discriminated unfairly against Alice (perhaps charging her 
extra, or not selling her a license at all).  The most important case of 
this would probably be if Dave is actually the DRM licensor (i.e. in 
real-life, if it is iTunes who distributes the iTunes-DRM'd version of a 
song).  Maybe this is the problem case.

Presumeably, Dave is contractually obligated not to share his key, so he 
can't legally give out the key along with the file in order to allow the 
DRM'd version to be updated.

Alice *does* have access to the clear version of the file, so if she 
does acquire a DRM key of her own, she can apply it to her version.

I think parallel distribution advocates are assuming that access to 
DRM-keys is not so onerous or unfair as that.  And I imagine that Evan 
has not been "evading" this question, so much as not understanding the 
point you're trying to make, Greg.

ISTM, this may be similar to the case of free software being ported to 
proprietary platforms, based on proprietary compilers (e.g. Visual C for 
Windows).

Okay, I don't have an answer to this as yet.

Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com