Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Monday 02 October 2006 06:31 am, Philip Hands wrote:
> The discussion of DRM issues seems to have been focused on largely
> hypothetical future scenarios, so perhaps I should mention one where a
> current user of CC-sa is being pointlessly restricted by the lack of a
> permission for parallel distribution (or would be if they were bothering to
> take any notice of that bit of the license, which they're not).
>
> openstreetmap.org (OSM) is a project that is assembling a wiki style map of
> the world from various free sources, largely individual GPS traces.  The
> resulting geo-data is licensed under CC-sa 2.0.
>
> One of the project members has described a way of converting OSM data into
> a format that can be loaded onto Garmin GPS units:
>
>   http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OSM_Map_On_Garmin
>
> This allows people to then go out mapping and instantly see places that are
> missing from the OSM data, thus massively improving the efficiency of
> adding to the OSM geo-data.
>
> Unfortunately, this relies on a program, cgpsmapper, that has license terms
> that insist that the output be for non-commercial use only:
>
>   http://www.cgpsmapper.com/download/licence.txt
>
> Given that that imposes extra conditions not already in CC-sa, I assume
> that this renders the resulting data undistributable due to violation of
> the CC-sa license terms.
>
> Despite that, you can see that the middle of the first page linked to above
> contains a reference to such copyright violating material
> (http://brainoff.com/osm/garmin/osm2.mp) so one assumes that OSM is
> perfectly happy with this situation.
>
> To me, it would be pretty much insane for them not to be, because the data
> is available in parallel, and the output format from cgpsmapper is pretty
> useless for doing subsequent derivation, so it's not as though it matters
> that it's now under a more restrictive license.
>
> This strikes me as a very similar scenario to that which would occur if
> cgpsmapper were a DRM generation program, and Garmin GPS units would only
> accept DRMed map data.
>
> It also strikes me as rather similar to doing some sort of lossy
> compression on a music track to put it on one's phone -- the lossy version
> is not the one you want to work with if you wanted to sample it for some
> other work, it's the pre-lossy-compression version that you'll be after, in
> which case a clause that allowed for parallel distribution would actually
> be more helpful that one that kept the music off of DRMed phones.
>
> In fact, the combination of anti-DRM clause and parallel distribution
> almost means that it would be better if the lossy version _was_ DRM
> encumbered, because that would then force publication of the original.
>
> The lack of a parallel distribution permission seems to fly in the face of
> common sense (which I presume is why the OSM folks appear not to have
> noticed this problem -- I'll mention it to them).
>
> Perhaps if you're going to insist on keeping it that way, you should have a
> prominent health warning saying that these CC licenses should not be used
> by anyone that thinks that their works should be allowed to be used in a
> "write-only" scenario (be it rendering into a DRM format, writing it to a
> Garmin only format under a dodgy license, or even loading it onto a music
> player that doesn't allow it to be read back out again -- I presume that
> also counts as a technological measure to prevent copying), despite the
> presence of a readable copy (possibly in a much more usable format than was
> going onto the device).

I don't yet get why the parallel distribution promoters are so gung ho on 
allowing it where ony the platform maker can apply the DRM. Why can't the 
anti-trp be in there with an exception allowing parallel distribution in 
cases where anyone can apply the DRM but not in cases where this is not so?
>
> Cheers, Phil.
>
> P.S. I'm fairly new to the examination of CC licenses, so it's entirely
> possible that I've misunderstood their implications correctly -- feel free
> to set me right in that case.

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/145261
Record a song and you might win $1,000.00
http://www.ourmedia.org/user/17145