Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Saturday 30 September 2006 07:57 pm, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-30-09 at 20:59 +0100, Rob Myers wrote:
> > The second point is not a breach of the FSD, and is not a breach of Fair
> > Use IMHO (the use is not personal and is competitive). I also believe
> > that it is not a breach of the DFSG, but *even if it was* this would not
> > be a primary issue for a Free Culture license rather than a Free
> > Software one.
>
> So, this is probably an important line of discussion that needs to be
> kiboshed ASAP.
>
> For Debian, we are increasingly concerned with digital artifacts --
> sometimes called "software" -- that are not computer programs, namely
> music, video, text, databases, and images. These show up in games; in
> documentation; in Web applications; as elements of graphical user
> interfaces (GUIs); and in any number of fascinating extra ways.
>
> To run, the Debian system run requires all of these kinds of digital
> objects. Therefore, it's important to us that our users and downstream
> developers are able to exercise the exact same rights to these kinds of
> digital artifacts as they can for computer programs.

This is interesting. So, the reason Debian is interested is so that those 
"non-programs" that are a part of Debian can be treated like the programs 
that are a part of Debian. (Is that a correct restatement of the situation?)

If so, would an "in-program" and "in-docs" license work for Debian? (Not that 
I like the idea, just asking if it would work.)
>
> So: we are absolutely concerned about Free Culture items and licenses;
> we wouldn't have wasted 2 years on this process if we weren't.
>
> Finally, and importantly: there is nothing new under the sun. Music and
> video is not in any way different from computer programs because of the
> existence of various DRM technologies; in fact, quite the opposite. Copy
> protection schemes have been an important part of proprietary computer
> program distribution since at least the beginning of the personal
> computing era.
>
> Free software licenses have been almost universally silent on the issue
> of copy protection because those licenses that require derivative copies
> to be Free count on a form of parallel distribution (source
> availability), and those that don't require downstream copies to be free
> don't make any such demands.

Perhaps, but I think equally important in contributing to the silence up 
until 
now is that the platforms themselves happily run non-protected as well as 
protected programs. If the platforms had been trying to only run protected 
programs from way back when, we may have seen something different.
>
> ~Evan

all the best,

drew
-- 
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