Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Philip Hands <phil AT hands.com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

drew Roberts wrote:
> On Monday 02 October 2006 06:31 am, Philip Hands wrote:
[...]
>>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?

How about if one needed to buy a license for the right to create the DRM
version?  Would that be OK if (to continue with the OSM example) the folks
from OSM decided to fork out $1000.00 between them in order to prepare maps
for some whizo new GPS unit -- should the license allow that?

Would it make a difference if the license cost $0.01?

How about if a license cost $10,000,000.00 ?

Obviously, the OSM folks might decide that they could not justify the price
(whatever it is) but a group of whizo-GPS users might club together to do
it -- should they be prevented from distributing their rendering of OSM's 
maps?

How about a manufacturer of a DRMed GPS who takes OSM, adds some extra
value to it, and then puts it on their device -- would the world be a
better place if they just were simply not allowed to do it, or if they were
allowed, but had to publish their enhanced version of the map data in a
format that could be put back into OSM?

On an opposite tack, a manufacturer of GPS units might instead convert it
into a format that is not DRM, but is either not very well documented, or
is on media that nobody else makes readers for, so the data is no longer
easily extractable -- would it not be better to insist that they publish
the pre-conversion version, including their added value?  (perhaps this is
already implied by the license as it stands, but didn't seem to be to me)

Cheers, Phil.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFIQ21YgOKS92bmRARAt3TAJ0Q/UCh71lan0C9dkrf/PIOYKUEZwCfSSvi
A8cXi9KMn7RIN57HVA78wPY=
=dr3s
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----