Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Saturday 30 September 2006 11:16 pm, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-30-09 at 22:40 -0400, drew Roberts wrote:
> > You seem to have faith that we will never get to the point where only
> > Single Source DRM only players are available. I, on the other hand, am
> > not so sure.
>
> One more time: how does an anti-DRM clause help us when this happens?
> You seem fairly convinced of the imminence of this scenario, but it's
> not

No, I am not at all convinced that this is likely to happen soon, but I think 
things are trending in the direction I don't like. If copyright only lasted a 
generation, I doubt this would concern me as much. The fact is, copyrights on 
my works are going to last for my lifetime and a goodly number of years 
thereafter. I think there is a reasonable chance things might get bad before 
that time is up. If we can do something now, that, if it catches on, makes 
that outcome less likely, I think it should at least be worth considering.
>
> > OK, so why not talk of allowing it only where general users can apply the
> > DRM if they wish?
>
> Because it's really hard to guarantee environmental conditions for
> downstream users. Copyleft licenses usually stop at making sure that the
> work is available for modifying, distributing, etc. Putting demands on
> the distributor to ensure certain conditions of a work (for a computer
> program, say, requiring that no- or low-cost compilers for the target
> language are readily available, that testing versions of the platform
> can be obtained for little or no cost, dot dot dot) would make it
> impossible to distribute programs at all.

Well, up to now, to my limited knowledge, the platforms which Free Software 
has been concerned with running on, have not been designed to prevent Free 
Software from running on them or to only allow single source suppliers of a 
version of Free Software from running on them. Perhaps if we go down that 
road, we will see some efforts along those lines.

I do see your point about the demans on the one doing the distributin. Look, 
I 
am not right now advocating any particular way of adressing this problem, I 
am trying to explore various avenues. I also am pretty much only concerned 
with the "Free" versions of the CC licenses and particularly with the 
"copyleft" (almost?) version. I think that one of the key advantages we can 
achieve with a copyleft type license is the building up of a pool of valuable 
and desireable works that will possibly, int he long run, be able to 
influence actions so that legal access to those works will be possible. (I am 
hopeful of this, you seem to think it unlikely, if so, that is where I think 
we differ most in this area.)
>
> >  Or what about a non-distribute on DRM versions of CC files?
>
> That's the case right now, isn't it? Copyright licenses typically can't
> restrict what you do with a work if you don't distribute it.

I would love to have some well respect lawyers chime in here and assert that 
it is legal to make all the copies you want of a copyrighted work as long as 
you don't distribute them. Somehow, I don't think that is the case. In an 
informal discussion with one of my lawyers here in my country, I take it that 
you can get jail time for simply possessing a non-official CD or DVD even if 
you bought it thinking it was legit. Forgive me if I think these guys, as it 
stands now, will buy pretty much whatever laws they want and implement 
whatever technology they want to try and achieve their ends. (I should 
probably put nefarious before that last word there. ~;-)
>
> ~Evan

all the best,

drew

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