Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Friday 29 September 2006 01:43 am, Terry Hancock wrote:
> drew Roberts wrote:
> >  OK, so what equivalent to having to allow people to circumvent the
> >  DRM and to allow them to sign their own binaries for the system. can
> >  we come up wiith in the case of CC works? I have not yet figured out
> >  how to word a "source code" clause into the CC licenses myself. As
> >  much as I would like to.
>
> Greg London's point up thread is that *by design* and therefore, in a
> legally enforceable way, DRM providers may design their system such that
> developers cannot legally give away the necessary key to sign "binaries"
> (i.e. DRM'd content) for their platform.  If the song were licensed
> under GPLv3, the "Corresponding Source" as defined in GPLv3 would be
> illegal to distribute (because it includes that key), and thus, it would
> be illegal to distribute the song in DRM'd form (meaning they'd be
> barred from that platform).
>
> I think the fact that GPLv3 would be as prohibitive as the proposed
> CC-By-SA-3 language is interesting, and pretty important from Debian's PoV.

I had an interesting thought overnight connecting up these two threads in my 
mind.

A. What if nvidia were to release the source to their drivers under the GPL 
in 
future but put DRM on the graphics card such that only their signed version 
would run. (Not sure this is actually possible to do with the fact that the 
drivers run on the cpu and no the gpu (or is that so) but it may be. If so, 
would the kernel load such drivers up as tainted or non-tainted?

B. Suppose MS were to build an MS PC and include TPM such that only their 
signed binaries would run. They could then take whatever GPL code they wanted 
and sign and run it on their PCs and for those with those machines, they 
would not have the freedoms on their machines.
>
> I don't if it's been mentioned here, but of course, Debian has also
> expressed doubts about the GPLv3 being compatible with the DFSG.  OTOH,
> we know from a political perspective that if the FSF adopts GPLv3, then
> Debian is going to bend or change the rules to admit it, no matter
> whether it meets the existing DFSG.  CC may need to insist on the same
> respect, or not play.
>
> Another interesting point is that people fighting the anti-DRM clause
> (including specifically Linus Torvalds) in GPLv3 have said that the GPL
> is the wrong place to fight DRM, preferring to apply anti-DRM clauses to
> artistic works (as the CC licenses do), while recently we've seen
> arguments here that the CC licenses for artistic works are the wrong
> place (and presumeably that it's better to do it in the licenses for the
> software?).
>
> Clearly we all need to decide who does need to do the fighting and how,
> or we'll wind up with no one doing it, which would be the worst
> outcome.  As things sit, I find I'm agreeing with doing it in the CC
> licenses.

Personally, until convinced otherwise, I think those who value freedom ought 
to be fighting it together where ever they can and in as many ways as they 
can. The alternative is not pretty.
>
> Cheers,
> Terry

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/145261
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