Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Rob Myers wrote:
>  I believe that Debian are objecting to two related issues:
>  - DRM cannot be added to CC licensed work for private use.
> - CC licensed work cannot be distributed with DRM added.
>  The first point is a breach of both the DFSG and the FSD. More
>  importantly it is a breach of Fair Use. It is therefore unacceptable
>  both for Free Software and more importantly for Free Culture.
>
>  The CC-NC-SA v3 draft (like its predecessors) has a Fair Use
>  statement but its DRM restrictions appear to clash with this for
>  personal use, so the license should be regularised.

IMHO, the fair use clause has to be considered to trump any other 
restrictions that the license might seem to impose, but yes, I agree 
that clearer is better.

> Looking at clause
>  4a I think that if CC change "impose any technological measures on
>  the work" to "distribute the work with any technological measures
>  imposed" then we have a clear equivalent to the GPL.

I have no problem with that idea at all.  We should note specifically, 
that this is equivalent to *GPLv3*, not GPLv2 (which doesn't restrict 
against DRM distribution, at least not clearly).  Since GPLv3 is also 
controversial, that doesn't necessarily get us out of the woods, but 
it'd be an important piece of solidarity if the CC and FSF can agree on 
something! :-)

While the parallel distribution idea was a good one if it did not permit 
any violations of the basic freedoms, which the binary/source vs 
TPM/non-TPM metaphor makes it seem like it doesn't, I believe that Greg 
London has effectively demonstrated that the metaphor is false. There 
really is a difference, and the consequence is a real restriction of the 
"freedom to modify".  Hence I now find that Debian is wrong in its analysis.

I think "DRM Dave" needs to join the "Desert Island" and "Dissident" 
examples among the DFSG lore, and Debian needs to rethink this point.

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com