Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>]

Terry wrote:

> Personally, I think that By-SA is a better way to avoid exploitation, 
> but I don't think it's as obvious as it should be that it
> is a good choice for that.

I'll address the NC issue this way:

There are a number of religious organizations that create material that 
is designed to be shared with other people. [Religious instruction, 
Tracts, Translations of Sacred Texts, etc.]

What they want, is for people to be able to use/reproduce their material 
for specific situations, giving them (the original organization) credit 
for the material that is used.  What they don't want is 
people/organizations selling/charging a reproduction fee for the 
material, unless a royalty is paid to them. [Typically, these 
organizations survive because of the royalty payments they receive.]

Obviously each organization can (and traditionally) has crafted their 
own "terms of use".  There is no uniformity in those "terms of use". 
For the religious (or educational) body that is using the material, 
trying to decipher the ins and outs of each of those "terms of use" 
addendum to the "all rights reserved" status is a time consuming process 
-- that can be difficult to implement.  [More than one church has gone 
"Oops, we can't use that translation in this document, because we quote 
101 verses, and their licence only permits us to copy 100 verses."]
For an organization, dealing with "small users" can cost more than the 
income from the royalty brings in.  [These are typically scaled 
according to number of copies created, and amount of text that is used. 
 some organizations simply set a base amount, and then add the per 
copy/per word charge to royalty fee.]

The issue with the By-SA licence in this situation, is that the 
organization is literally cutting off their oxygen supply.  If they 
wanted to do that, they would simply use the Public Domain Licence.

To simplify matters for both sides, the use of a standard licence 
significantly lowers operating costs. The CC-NC licence _appears_ to fit 
that bill. [I'm not sure it does, because of some of the implications in 
the current CC Guidelines about what it means.(I've written elsewhere 
about my issues with the CC take on what "NC" permits, and what it denies.)]

Drew wrote:

> And if "Creative Commons" was instead called "Better Copyright
Options"

I think people are treating it as "Better Copyright Options", purely 
because CC has provided several options to the standard "All Rights 
Reserved".  Instead of having to write a licence for their work, the 
creator simply grabs a licence that they think does what they want. [ 
I've seen several instances where an organization has chosen a CC 
Licence, and explained why they chose it --- and the reasons for 
choosing it are totally out of phase with what the licence accomplishes.]

Whilst CC would like material to be in an electronic commons, about the 
only group that thinks that way are people who sample music, or video 
--- and maybe a few gamers.

xan

jonathon