Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Henri wrote:

> I had thought that WIPO requires members to grant the same level of  
> copyright monopoly to foreign copyright holders as they grant to  

It does.

> country has a life plus 70 rule, it has to apply at least life plus  
> 70 to the KJV (but life plus 70 puts the KJV in the Public Domain).

The issue is that when the Crown Copyright was granted, teh term was not 
life plus 70 years, but rather "until the end of eternity".

There is a legal principle that prevents the duration of the copyright 
from being reduced from "until the end of eternity" to something 
somewhat shorter.

> In knee-jerk perception, yes. However, people who understand the  
> domain through experience with Free Software tend to view CC-by-nc-sa  
> as scarier than CC-by-sa.

The percentage of people who have experience with Free Software is 
minute.  For those who haven't had such, the perception will be that 
CC-BY-NC-SA is less scarier than CC-BY-SA. There is very little to guide 
them, other than a history of PD.

One thing to bear in mind is that when an organization considers 
something other than ARR or YRR, they are stepping in "strange" 
territory for them.

> we might not get out of the learning phase unless CC has the guts to  
> say to its NC "institutional partners" that NC was a mistake and  
> needs to be deprecated and rebranded so that it doesn't enjoy the  
> same brand image as the licenses without NC.

+1

Rename the licences to:

gratis-BY-SA
gratis-BY-ND
gratis-BY
gratis

Then include a clause to the effect of "This material may not be sold, 
transmitted, replicated, duplicated, or otherwise distributed in a 
manner which cause a charge, whether direct, indirect, or associated 
with the material, to the recipient of the material.  All expenses in 
distribution have to be born by the distributor, who may not receive any 
compensation for the distribution."

> Moral Rights is never a proper argument in favor of NC. (It is an  
> argument in favor of ND, though.) In jurisdictions that recognize  

True.

> With NC, there's a greater risk to the reputation of the original author

The NC part requires somebody to use resources for which they can not 
receive financial compensation. IOW, it drains resources, not increases 
them.  With ND, the required resources can be equalized, if not increased.

> relatively simple and if you look at the GSFDL draft for the measures  ... 
> choreography is rather detailed. 

For the CC to switch to similar protections, would require the CC 
licences to use equally complex language.

xan

jonathon