Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

> 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.

Mia has pointed out that anti-TPM does not apply to the
right to Copy the work. If you want to encrypt your local
harddrive, go for it. If Dave gives you tools to DRM some
content for his DRM-only player, the license allows you
to DRM-enable the content and put it on your player.

What anti-TPM does not allow is Distribution in DRM format.

Which, now that I write that, flags this as the dumbest argument
I've been involved in in a while.

For all those platforms that are DRM-only, but allow you to
DRM-enable content, you can get the content openly, and
apply DRM yourself and watch it on the hardware platform
of your choice.

If Dave ever rescinds the right for you to apply DRM to
content for play on his platform, anti-TPM will prevent
him from distributing DRM-enabled versions of the Free
content, prevent him from monopolizing his position as
sole source provider, and the community is protected.

As long as Dave grants permission to DRM content,
as long as he plays nice, Alice and Bob can play
content on the platform without violating anti-TPM.

If Dave tries to rescind permission, then anti-TPM
prevents him from setting up a monopoly website selling
open content for a buck a pop.

So, in the scenario that seems to be the basis for
your argument, anti-TPM doesn't inhibit Alice and
Bob. CC-SA content is moved around in open format,
Alice and Bob get tools from Dave to DRM their content,
and play it on Dave's DRM-only hardware, and everyone's
happy.

Right?

The only people who are NOT happy are people who
want to sell DRM-only versions of CC-SA over the web,
or over some physical medium that uses DRM.

And as far as I can see, screw them.
That isn't the point of a Gift Community.
And to have a monopoly position on some
hardware platform or hardware medium is
proprietary and competes against the
Gift Economy.

You can apply DRM on your local, open format version,
and transfer it to your player. Anti-TPM prevents
someone from turning their platform monopoly
into a monopoly distribution channel.

-- 
Wikipedia and the Great Sneetches War
http://www.somerightsreserved.org

What happens when one editor prefers
Sneetches with stars on their bellies,
and another editor prefers no stars on thars.