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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] choosing a new license at freesound, please help

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] choosing a new license at freesound, please help
  • Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 01:38:12 -0500

Bram @ Freesound wrote:
so, ok, I understand some of the (good) reasons to be against
Attribution, and even more reasons to be against
Attribution-NonCommercial. But, pandora's box is open, and the 822
people (and rising) who have submitted to freesound will want to
*choose* a new license for their currently Sampling+ released
content, and new people will need to be able to choose at least
between.

I would like to support PD, BY and BY-NC...

Quite frankly, Bram, you should use By-SA instead of By-NC.

By-SA acheives more precisely what you want, since it allows the works to be used in free works, but not in ones which are taken private. Your objection to this, IIRC, is that commercial users might want a monopoly on works made with the work. But the answer to this is the same as with NC: they can negotiate with the author to purchase additional rights.

The difference is that non-proprietary, "free" works can use the By-SA content, but not the By-NC, which is basically useless (presumeably people aren't uploading these samples simply for self-gratification, but would actually like to see them used?).

You rightly observe that By-SA eliminates some of the profit-motive for commercial users. This is a much better way to be "non-commercial", because it's much more precise about what it demands, and it leaves the work open to use in free-licensed works (to be precise, in By-SA licensed works).

I concede the "derivative"/"collective" issue. It seems like it's a much safer bet to assume that the samples render the work subject to the By-SA if the samples are so licensed (I think you should probably represent it this way to users of the site).

From a business-model perspective, though, I just can't see any motivation for the NC licensing. The samples you are collecting have very limited value as final works. Yes, I'm sure some are entertaining to listen to, but it's not music. People are going to download sounds primarily with the intent to re-use them. People are uploading primarily so their sounds will be re-used. Hence, there's no motivation for a "try before you buy" strategy.

Using SA ensures that whatever the downloader makes with the works will need to also be By-SA, thus re-contributing to the community. For those who are concerned about possible commercial uses -- well, you've already noted that By-SA makes "exploitation" of the works (through monopoly-based pricing) difficult.

And that basically accomplishes everything you're hoping that NC will do for you.

NC, on the other hand, won't really prevent exploitation very well, and it will block creative uses of the site that most users will probably find to be unintended consequences (e.g. the people that NC excludes are mainly individuals like the participants on the site, trying to create free content).

Cheers,
Terry

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





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