Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Mark Brown <broonie AT sirena.org.uk>]

On Sat, Sep 30, 2006 at 11:31:00PM -0400, Greg London wrote:
> > 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.

> I think this is an unfair telling of history.
> Free software licenses have been silent about
> copy protection for a long time because
> copy protection on PC's and the like
> was being abandoned by most distributers
> as ineffective and problematic.

In technical terms it's exactly the same thing.  See for example the
problems Microsoft is having with FairUse4WM[1].

> And then in 1998, the DMCA made it illegal to
> thwart copy protection, and I believe that's
> when Free software licenses started taking notice.

I can't think of a license that attempts to do much beyond parallel
distribution that has actually become popular.  Remember that free
software people are also often the sort of people who will do things
like encrypt the hard drives on their laptops for security purposes.

[1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/fairuse4wm_news.html

-- 
"You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever."