Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Tuesday 10 October 2006 02:16 pm, Jonathon Blake wrote:
> Drew wrote:
> > pointed out that the judge may apply the thinking of the licensor as to
> > what is non-commercial and that it doesn't matter what CC thinks as they
> > are not a party to the matter.
>
> By defining the terms in the licence, the judge is much more limited
> in what is meant, than by not defining the terms.  If CC uses a
> whacked out definition in the licence, then the judge might ignore it.
>  If CC uses a reasonable ( in legal terms ) definition, then the Judge
> will probably go along with it.  I'll grant that finding a definition
> fo "NonCommercial" that is valid for all 250 odd countries in the
> world is going to be hard work.  [For that matter, finding something
> that will fly in both the UK, and USA will be hard enough.]
>
> > Inconsistent. here, revenue seems unimportant.
>
> it is, and it isn't.
> Revenue generation from royalties is not important.
> OTOH, protecting revenue sources is important.

You will need to explain this further for my mind to understand it in the 
simple state it is in today.
>
> With a BY-SA licence, the non-profit is "obviously" disregarding their
> revenue sources.  

This I do not agree with. I have ideas as to how to generate income from my 
BY-SA licensed work.

> With an NC licence, they are "obviously" protecting 
> their revenue sources.
> That might not be the reality, but it is the perception.

Perception, I can see that.
>
> > > [This gets back to the dual licence: "All Rights
> > > Reserved" for the hard copy, and "NC" for the e-text.]
> >
> > Which isn't gonna work in CC land it seems.
>
> For NC that _might_ be the case.

Not if the work gets the license and not the form. People could take the 
electronic copy down to the copy shop and have it printed. Perhaps even lulu 
could do it for them with the right parameters.
>
> > And how is a more restrictive license supposed to help spread this
> > insight?
>
> People do not pay attention to the licence, when they look at
> material.  It is only when they want to use it elsewhere, that the
> licence becomes important, and even then, only if what they want to
> use, would be more than "fair use doctrine" allows.

Too general a statement, I am a "people" and I pay attention to the licenses 
that works come with.
>
> Go back to the phrase "Better Copyright Options".
>
> A formal licence for artistic work that roughly parallels the various
> open source licences for software has been in existence for roughly
> seven years.  People, and organizations are still learning what it
> means, much less how it works.

I can buy that the learning is not finished. No problem.
>
> Back in 2000 I gave a talk trying to persuade an organization to
> release its code of ethics, rules of conduct, and "best practices
> documents" under the then GNU-FDL.  It was unanimously rejected,
> because the organization members thought that the copyright owner
> could hijack the material, preventing further distribution. That
> organization is still convinced that the GNU-FDL, CC licences, and
> similar licences allow the copyright owner to hijack the material,
> preventing them from distributing it.

When you say copyright owner here, your usage is not clear. From the context 
I 
would guess you mean the entity that owns the copyright on the license itself 
and not the entity that owns the copyright on the work which is released 
under the said license.
>
> For an organization to use, or even consider using an NC licence,
> means that they are looking at options to the standard  ARR, or more
> restrictive EULA.  If the experience is positive, then they might risk
> a little more, and use an ND licence, or even BY-SA.

My suggestion is to at least release a small work under each and watch what 
happens.
>
> In the meantime, they have a long history of PD on the one hand, ARR
> on the other hand, and a home crafted licence that is somewhere
> between the two, and nobody other than them understands.  PD means no
> revenue,

Even PD doesn not mean no revenue. You can go down to the bookstore and buy 
books written thousands of years ago. Public domain books. There is still 
revenue in public domain works.

> unrestricted ARR requires non-productive research into 
> alleged copyright violations. The home crafted licence works, but
> would a different licence help/hurt/have no effect on things.
>
> > Is it important for these NC users to insure their revenue stream? Or is
> > it more important to get their message out? I think you are inconsistent
> > on this in your different points.
>
> It is inconsistent becaues organizations are inconsistent. Revenue
> generation, message distribution, and revenue protection are equally
> important. They get emphasized differently, at different times during
> the process of deciding which licence to use.

Sure, but we don't have to give in to that inconsistency without at least a 
verbal challenge to clearer thinking if we feel like making one.
>
> > Do people re-use text, or don't they? Some places you say they don't,
> > other places it seems you indicate that it will be a problem that they
> > can.
>
> I'm not sure what I wrote, that made you think that it is a problem if
> people reuse text.  I don't think that text reuse is an issue one way
> or the other.

NC or ND indicates that there is a problem for people to re-use the covered 
text.
>
> Look at what sort of derivatives are possible:
> * Translation;
> * Copy editing;
>
> * Lesson outlines;
> * Lesson plans;
>
> * Abridgements;
> * Incorporation into an anthology;
>
> * Reformulated as a play;
> * Reformulated as a video;
> * Reformualted as a movie;
> * Reformulated as a musical;
> * Reformulated as a song;
> * Reformualted as a TV mini-series/series;
> * Reformulated as a documentary;
> * Reformulated as an infomercial;
> * Reformulated as a video game;
> * Reformualted as a trading card game;
> * Reformulated as a table top game;
>
> * Reformulated as a presentation;
> * Reformulated as a monologue;
>
> * Reformulated as poetry;
> * Reformulated as prose;
>
> Then look at what sort of text reuse is done:
>
> * Copy editing;
> * Translation;
>
> * Lesson outlines;
> * Lesson plans;

There aren't enough works out there in the pool (in the wild) for us to know 
what will happen yet. I personally have stuff in my files which is not likely 
to see the light of day as it is based on ARR stuff (before I learned of Free 
Software and so on and written for my own amusement at the time) who knows 
what I would do with them if they had been based on copyleft stuff. This is 
one reason where I only want to read / listen to /watch / etc. Free Works 
where possible. I want to be able to give as free a reigh as possible to my 
creative impulses.

There is fanfic and filking, which I am not into, but these are further 
re-uses of text and music.
>
> Wikipedia --- which is argueably the most successful work done under a
> CC-style licence --- has produced nothing more than copyedits, and
> some translations, as derivatives.  And copied en masse on other
> sites, with nothing to indicate any "give back", by those sites.

I don't follow this, it has also produced "Wikipedia" itself.
>
> With an ARR the reformulations are the things that every author dreams
> of, but are so rare as to be insignificant. Is there any data to
> suggest that those reformulations are more likely to occur under any
> CC licence?

Can you restate this? I don't get what you are trying to say.
>
> xan
>
> jonathon

all the best,

drew
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