Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Henri Sivonen wrote:
>  On Oct 13, 2006, at 14:39, Clive Menzies wrote:
> > So is the Debian objection based on allowing DRM locally?

This definitely *was* an issue for some people, but it appears that it 
was always a misunderstanding: the earlier versions of CC licenses 
apparently allowed application of DRM by the end user (though possibly 
only because of the 'fair use' clause).  Anyway, the 3.0 language is 
quite a bit clearer on this point -- local DRM application is 
unquestionably allowed now.

IMHO, this is all that is necessary, because any "free DRM" (i.e. DRM 
with a publically available encryption key and encryption tool) presents 
no problem for the user, and "non-free DRM" (tool or key is not freely 
available) is a copyleft-breaker (whether or not parallel distribution 
of non-DRM form is provided).  What little hassle remains in supporting 
DRM platforms should be regarded as a property of those platforms, not 
the free-licensed content that insists on transparent distribution.

>  My understanding is that the remaining one issue that Debian has is
>  that Debian wants both CC-by 3.0 and CC-by-sa 3.0 to allow the
>  distribution of copies that have TPM applied to them if the
>  distributor also distributes a non-TPMed version for another
>  platform. (The non-TPMed version will in practice be for another
>  platform, because if the platform for which the TPMed version was
>  targeted didn't require TPM, there'd be no need to apply TPM.)
>
>  I disagree with Debian on this point. I very much appreciate Debian's
>  effort in getting the other issues Debian had addressed.

I guess you probably meant "Creative Commons' effort"? But anyway, kudos 
to both.

>  (Note that discriminating against platforms that are designed to
>  subvert the freedoms that a license provides is not discrimination
>  against particular people or fields of endeavor unless you count
>  license subversion as a field of endeavor or think that copyleft
>  licenses should not discriminate against people who have a moral
>  conviction against copyleft as an inherent trait of their persona.)

Thanks for an extremely concise and readable summary!

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com