Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Henri Sivonen <hsivonen AT iki.fi>]

On Oct 26, 2006, at 00:43, freesound AT iua.upf.edu wrote:

> It looks like the "authors" in freesound mostly want to use the nc  
> license
> because they want to be able to decide who uses their samples in which
> commercial contest.

Is that a good idea? If you were a user of samples, would you like to  
give providers of samples control over your work? Would you want to  
give font vendors veto over your writing?

> People (even here I see!) always seem to forget that even though you
> release something under by-nc you can still give permission to  
> anyone to
> use the sample in a commercial work (in obviously a less "legally  
> defined"
> way, but *I* don't care about that).

Which means that the situation has degenerated into listen-before-you- 
license ARR, but naïve people are more likely to incorporate the  
samples in their works before they realize what they have gotten  
themselves into. When they realize that their works have been  
encumbered by NC, they have sunk cost (at least the opportunity cost  
of creating the works using the samples) and would incur a cost if  
they had to remove the samples from their works in case the copyright  
holder of the samples turns out to be uncooperative.

I think Public Domain is the most sensible choice for samples.

However, if you want a CC license, ND is obviously unsuitable.  
Sampling and Sampling+ are unsuitable, because they are for larger  
works that can be sampled--not for samples. NC encumbers works that  
use the samples is a way that is so unreasonable that I have a hard  
time seeing why anyone would want to use samples under NC after  
realizing the consequences of using NC. It has been pointed out in  
this thread that it is not at all clear what SA means when applied to  
samples. Using unclear licenses is a bad idea. That leaves CC-by, but  
attributing each sample author may be impractical (hence the PD  
suggestion).

IANAL. I am not CC.

--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen AT iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/