Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Lots of cutting and some responses below.

On Tuesday 03 October 2006 06:07 pm, Terry Hancock wrote:
> Greg London wrote:
> >  On 10/3/06, MJ Ray <mjr AT phonecoop.coop> wrote:

> Other than the fact that "transparent TPM" would seem to be an oxymoron,
> I think this is correct (I presume that by "transparent TPM" you mean
> "encryption which would be called 'TPM' if it were used to protect a
> monopoly on a work, but which isn't because no such intent has been
> expressed").

Let me use the term DRM instead of TPM for a second and use the implementers 
preferred meaning for a second. (Digital Rights Management and not the other 
one even if I might prefer it.)

Now, int the envisioned Digital Rights Management world being promoted these 
days, supposedly it is creator's Rights that are supposeldy to be managed. Is 
it too much as creators to request that these systems manage our rights as we 
wish? Why can these systems only properly manage the rights of creators who 
want all rights reserved but not those who want to offer more generous terms. 
Seem to me like these are fairly broken systems even if you cede the 
arguments which I don't.
>
> > > Further, using it to argue that even the CC-By licence should
> > > contain anti-TPM would mean that CC-By would prevent such lock-in
> > > while not doing anything to stop other copyright-based lock-ins.
> > > That would be bizarre.
>
> It's quite possibly true that CC-By should not worry about this kind of
> restriction. I've probably contributed to confusing this issue, so I
> should try to clarify. I disagree politically with the idea that Debian
> should take a position of allowing CC-By (but not CC-By-SA) on the basis
> of such anti-TPM language. That's a little off-topic on this list,
> because my reason for my wanting that is that I'm a Debian user, and I
> (now) think the position is inconsistent with the DFSG.

I keep pointing out the incorrectness of this point although, as I too have 
indicated, if that is what is wanted, I do not have the same interest with 
respect to what is in the BY license as I do with the BY-SA license.

> Yes, of course this just underscores the stupidity of the DMCA, but we
> have to remember that much of the point of the existence of CC licenses
> (and all free licenses) at all is to correct what we see as stupid laws
> (for example, inadequate scope of fair use and too long a duration of
> copyright terms).

Bingo.
>
> If we had the power to just rewrite the copyright laws to suit us, we
> wouldn't need all this legal jiu jitsu in the first place. ;-)

Double Bingo!

> In fairness, I should suggest this point: if there's room to budge on
> this issue, it might be that we could somehow require the TPM-keeper to
> provide fair conversion service (in a way that is similar in spirit to
> parallel distribution or source distribution requirements). This would
> be pretty unattractive from the TPM-keeper's point of view (committing
> to a free service), but not entirely unfeasible, if the keeper were to
> provide a TPM-conversion web application, for example, that would
> convert any content into the TPM'd format.
>
> However, our hypothetical 'benevolent community-based' TPM-keeper
> probably can't do this within the terms of his contract to acquire the
> key, and the more probable 'evil corporate stooge' TPM-keeper has a
> strong profit motive not to provide this service (easier to open his
> platform up to play un-TPM'd material). So I can't see that it would
> help in any practical way.

Here is where it could help in a practical way:

DRM-Dave could provide the service of applying DRM at not cost to FREE works 
while charging to do so for non-FREE works. This would allow Dave to sell 
FREE works for his DRM only platform while conducting business as usual with 
respect to non-Free works.
>

> As I told Greg, I'm all ears. Convince me. :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Terry

all the best,

drew
-- 
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