Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Jonathon Blake" <jonathon.blake AT gmail.com>]

Drew wrote:

> Not in the US at least. I had heard that it was in England. Does anyone know
> of the status for their country?

I've forgotten the name of the position, but there is an individual
whose sole job function is track copyright and royalty payments on the
KJV throughout the British Commonwealth.
They work for Oxford University Press, which has a royal charter to
publish the KJV.

> As a practical matter, the crown does what with its copyright on this version?

Royalty payments.  I don't know how much they earn, but if it is at
all like the US publishers, it can be a significant amount.

> What ways do they seek royalties from it?

This is what publishers in the US collect royalty payments for.
* Electronic Distribution;
* Reading at Services
* Usage in a Bible Study group.
* Quoted in course outlines, lesson notes, etc;

> So, for instance with hymns, BY-SA would get them out of this pickle while
> BY-NC will not. I am not sure about these multi-media presentations you speak

BY-SA would work --- assuming that one can convince everybody from the
RIAA down to the local county judge that that licence does not require
royalty payments to be made.

Calling religious organizations "commercial enterprises" in the CC
Guidelines eliminates NC material for those churches.  [Wondering how
many religious organizations that use the NC licence realize that.]

> > organization from the RIAA down to your local superior court judge.) ]
> Yes. BY, BY-SA, perhaps BY-ND, I don't think BY-NC though. Plus, at least in
> the US, I think there is a distinction made between "worship services" and

Not for royalty payments.  :(

> One of the problems I find is that the copyright does not keep a simple list
> of works that have fallen into the public domain. This would greatly aid
> those looking to make use of public domain works for various reasons.

My understanding is that the Library of congress is working on such a
list --- in an attempt to identify "orphan works".  Sooner or later
congress is going to have pass an amendement to the copyright law, to
take care of the issues/problems/headaches that "orphan works" are
causing for everybody.  [This is probably the biggest unintended
consequence of the DMCA.]

> Ah, now I think I get more of what you are saying. Surely then, this is an
> issue of educating their donors. This too can take time. BY-SA does seem a

General education, more than time.

> natural fit for this area as it does for the area of PBS and NPR.
> (If there are no sneaky motives behind it all.)

> > [Their question after seeing "CC-BY-SA" is "Why donate to
> > this non-profit, if they are going to allow others to make a buck off
> One answer is because we are doing our best to make the world a better place
> and this choice of a license is a part of that. there are other answers.
> Would you care to brainstom\rm for some?

I"ll have to get back to you on this one.

> > * IRS rules on "profit" also come into play here.  [I'll let a CPA
> Wouldn't this exclude royalties in the first place?

Royalties are "transactions done at an arm's length".

I'm not a CPA.  I don't grok the difference.  A CPA can explain it.

> > school district can not use the material. The Red Cross can use it in
> > a course, but the Salvation Army can not use it, even if teaching the
> > same course, using the same instructor.]

> Now we are back to wanting to make money as income whereas before we were not
> wanting that but to receive donations.

Donations aren't the issue here.
[I was looking at who can _use_ NC material.  Not who releases NC material.]

Both the Red cross, and the Salvation Army are 501 (c) (3)
organizations.  However, The Salvation Army is a religious
organization. The CC Guidelines consider (in a footnote) religious
organizations to be commercial enterprises, and hence not eligble to
use NC material.

Your local school district is not a 501 (c) (3) organization, and thus
they are considered, under the CC guidelines, to be a commercial
enterprise.

The child being homeschooled is an indivdiual, and hence is eligible
to use the NC material.

> > b) With software, one can get sell a "maintainance contract".  I don't
> > see an analogy to that, for text.   I can teach a course once, and
> Sure there is: As I make improvements to the text, I will send them out to you
> post haste.

> > there is no ongoing contract that
> > generates $x per month, regardless of the number of times i am called.

> You can have a stipulation that it costs $x per call to call you. What would
> stop you from making contracts?

For software support, sure.
For a book / tape / video / CD what will the contract cover?

Updates, but only if there is history of updates being provided on a
timely basis.

> > everybody can go "yippee".  MIT gets a lot of good karma points. Only
> > when legalman walks in, and points out that the local school district
> > can't use the material, do people realize just how diabolical it is.

> Out of curiosity and ignorance, why do you think the local school district
> can't but another "official" university can?

The odds are the university can't use the material, either.

Typically, neither universities, nor school districts are 501 (c) (3)
organizations.
They are government agencies, which the CC guidelines define as being
"comemrcial enterprises".  that might not be what they meant, but that
is what happens when one uses  the definitions in those guidelines.

> > One of the downfalls of the NC licence --- the distributor has bear
<< text deleted >>
> > adds up fairly rapidly ( $0.10 per page, if you use your own desktop
> > printer. $0.02 per page if you ship it off to Lulu.com.)
> I don't think this is necessarily so. Couldn't the "end point" get an
> electronic copy and send it off to lulu themselves for printing?

If the electronic copy was in a format that Lulu accepts for
publication, then, in theory, it might work. [ Lulu rules on the
format of the text it accepts have gotten more stringent in the last
two or so years.]

> > I've half seriously thought about proposing both a  CC-EDU and CC-REL
> Before we go there, we really need to know why BY-SA will not work for them if
> "all the players" have a proper understanding.




> > everybody --- including yourself --- from recouping their costs?"
> > would the usage go up, or down?
> I have been thinking today of writing up something to propose that CC put on
> the site to encourage people to use BY-SA and BY licenses wherever possible
> as it is better for the creative commons. Any thoughts?

Have the document list the virtues, and vices of each of the dozen or
so licences that CC offers. [The  CC-Developing Nations Licence might
be a better transitional/testing licence than the CC-ND, or CC-ND
varients.]

xan

jonathon
--
Ethical conduct is a vice.
Corrupt conduct is a virtue.

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