Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Henri Sivonen <hsivonen AT iki.fi>]

On Oct 5, 2006, at 12:22, Terry Hancock wrote:

> >  Flickr

I don't see why Flickr is considered a stakeholder here. They allow  
All Rights Reserved photos and the photos there are TPMless JPEGs.  
Flickr isn't a licensor. Flickr's customers, such as me, are.

> Since TPM-only platforms are mostly still just dystopic science  
> fiction,
> there's probably a lot of people for whom the discussion is still just
> too academic.

I believe the best way to discourage vendors forcing TPM-only  
dystopia unto all of us is to create a large body of compelling  
content that comes with an anti-TPM license, so that any vendor  
trying to sell a TPM-only platform would be at a competitive  
disadvantage compared to vendors of platforms that don't *require* TPM.

> I find it downright bizarre that CC-By and CC-By-SA are not already  
> considered
> admissable to Debian main.
...
> IMHO, CC-By-SA is a superior license to the
> FSF's FDL, which I think is over-complicated, so I hate to see FDL  
> being
> accepted when CC-By-SA is not.
...
> To be honest, that's why I joined this discussion

Me too!

I joined this list and debian-legal, because the Mozilla folks asked  
me to license documentation under either CC-by or CC-by-sa and I had  
a bad feeling about using a license that wasn't approved by Debian.

After finding out what Debian's objections were and after pondering  
the issue, I have come to believe that CC should retain anti-TPM  
language and that Debian's parallel distribution proposal does not  
solve the problem, because downstream recipients could not exercise  
the freedom to replace works with modified versions on TPM-only  
platforms without the cooperation of the TPM platform vendor.

However, I do think that applying TPM in private should be allowed:  
People should be able to mash works however they like in private and  
private copies don't affect downstream freedom. Also, I think the  
anti-TPM provision is important enough that prospective licensees  
should be told about it in the "Commons Deed".

So I disagree with Debian and agree with the August 9 draft anti-TPM  
language.

P.S. Not having anti-TPM language in CC-by but having it in CC-by-sa  
would lead to an uncomfortable situation of Debian approving only CC- 
by, which would put pressure on documentation writers to give up  
ShareAlike.

--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen AT iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/