Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Pete Rabjohns <info AT theprojekt.co.uk>]

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Hi Jim

I agree.

In my field, I'm working with kids - kids who are also musicians, 
composers, film-makers, artists, authors, computer game designers 
etc....Try involving  a teenager in the depth of the discussion you're 
currently having! But Creative Commons licensing is about them too - 
after all, Mozart was a child prodigy, and many of his major works were 
written before he was what we currently consider an adult to be. What if 
he was alive now, and publishing on the internet?

Plain English is one concern, but at what stage of development? What may 
be clear to young people at the age of 21, may still be unintelligible 
to a kick-ass musician of 16. (and I've got kick-ass musicians and 
film-makers of 14 in my world - they need the promotion and protection 
that Creative Commons licensing can give them.

I'm currently working on a presentation to some young people I'm about 
to work with about Creative Commons licensing because they don't 
understand it. Somehow or other they think it is removing their rights  
- and I now have to convince them that it is enhancing their (and their 
audience's) rights, and allowing viral promotion to an international 
audience, legally.

If the words or concepts were more obvious, maybe I wouldn't have to 
spend valuable time doing this?

Or is the root problem the English language itself? Take the US and the 
UK - "two nations divided by a common language" - few other languages 
are open to such (mis-)interpretation. Let's say what we mean as well as 
meaning what we say...

The hell with lawyers anyway - this is a people's movement - if it's 
important to me, then it's just as important to my little brother.



Regards

*Pete Rabjohns*
E-mail: info AT theprojekt.co.uk <mailto:info AT theprojekt.co.uk>

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Jim Sowers wrote:
> Hi Terry,
>
> You give good examples #1 and #2.  However, your examples involve 
> people in a particular discipline talking to each other, e.g. computer 
> scientists (of which I am also one), astronomers, etc.  Example #3 is 
> a straw man in my opinion--it is not a legal definition, just another 
> of the many definitions for that word, and you have demonstrated that 
> you don't need to be a lawyer to understand the concept.
>
> These Creative Commons licenses are going to be between, in most 
> situations, two non-lawyers.  This is a major difference from the 
> examples you give.  You could have a store owner entering a CC license 
> with a musician; a graphic artist entering a CC license with a car 
> dealer, etc.  The parties involved have "plain English" as their 
> lingua franca.
>
> This is the very point of the plain English movement in this country 
> and elsewhere in the legal context -- that most of the language in 
> contracts should be readable by non-lawyers; that words take on their 
> normal meaning, and if they don't, that can be explained clearly (just 
> as you did in explaining the special uses below). 
>
> The point is not that there are never special terms in the law, but 
> rather that contracts can be written with much less jargon than they 
> currently are.  A reasonably intelligent person should be able to read 
> well-written contract and be able to the bulk of it.  You could not 
> say the same about someone reading a treatise on astronomy, or a 
> medical procedure, or a sort routine for a doubly-linked list.
>
> Thus, most of the language in the promotional material for CC talks 
> about people being able to license things without needing a lawyer.
>
> Again, I'm not suggesting that everyone can will be able to read a CC 
> license and understand all of it.  But I am a big advocate of 
> openness: open source, no-DRM, and open access to legal contracts that 
> are becoming pervasive and non-optional for many.  Thus, making the 
> actual contract as "plain" and jargon-free should be a goal.  Unlike 
> science writers, who use an economy of words to be precise (I used to 
> work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory), lawyers use an excess of 
> words, many of which are superfluous.  This was the very reason that 
> Prof. Wydick was compelled to write his article/book.  
> http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/faculty/wydick.shtml
>
> CC takes the extraordinary step of writing a summary, for which I 
> commend it.  Remember, however, all the websites to which you are 
> bound by a Privacy Policy; or all the Terms of Service and User 
> Agreements that you have checked off without reading.  Do you think 
> you think those agreements are binding on you, even though you are not 
> a lawyer?  The answer is yes, so, I argue that it is in your best 
> interest to support the "plain English" effort so that these contracts 
> will be as readable/accessible as possible to the rare non-lawyer who 
> wants to read them.
>
> All the best,
>
> Jim
>
>
> On 11/22/06, *Terry Hancock* <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com 
> <mailto:hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>> wrote:
>
>     Jim Sowers wrote:
>     > 2. The "language lawyers write in" as you put it, is very often
>     > different because they choose to write that way, not because it
>     makes
>     > a legal difference. Most contracts are between non-lawyers -- thus,
>     > the language is expected to be plain and clear. Of course, certain
>     > things, like indemnification, will always be more legally technical.
>     > [... and similar ideas snipped...]
>
>     I disagree. I think jargon is inevitable whenever precision is
>     required.
>
>     Consider, for example, three different meanings of the word "object":
>
>     1) In *computer science* an "object" most likely refers to "an
>     aggregate
>     data type, representing both finer data elements and associated
>     code to
>     manipulate them"
>
>     2) In *astronomy* an "object" is "a physical entity, usually a
>     star or
>     planet that appears in a predictable place in the sky for
>     observation" /
>     "the thing you are trying to observe"
>
>     3) In *law* an "object" is probably "a goal or purpose of an
>     agreement"
>
>     4) In "plain English", the word "object" most likely means "a tangible
>     thing"
>
>     and so on.
>
>     And that's a simple, fairly loosely defined jargon word, which happens
>     to correspond to an even more general word in "plain English".
>
>     In the interest of "speaking in plain English", I once told a fellow
>     astronomer that a particular star in our observation list was "faster"
>     than another one.  I've since forgotten which particular meaning I
>     had
>     intended, but I realized after registering his confusion that it
>     could've been any one of the following:
>
>     1) "this star has a higher absolute radial velocity"
>     2) "this star has a higher rate of rotation"
>     3) "this star has a shorter period of radial velocity variability"
>     4) "this star has a higher amplitude of radial velocity variability"
>
>     and there are still more possibilities, had we not both known from
>     context that we were talking about absorption spectroscopy
>     measurements.  Clarity would've been much better served by me using
>     correct astronomical jargon, instead of "plain English".
>
>     Now, I am not a lawyer, but I feel pretty confident that the same
>     sort
>     of situation exists in legal terminology.
>
>     Surely it is impossible to be precise about what you mean in a legal
>     agreement without using legal jargon?
>
>     Sometimes, "plain English" isn't plain enough.  ;-)
>
>     OTOH, I agree that calling the "deed" the "human readable" version is
>     unnecessary and potentially insulting. The truth is that this term was
>     lifted from computer science, and refers to an analogy between
>     "source"
>     and "binary" (the source being "human readable", and the binary being
>     "machine readable").  Of course, the real "machine readable"
>     version of
>     the CC licenses is the RDF version.  However, while this makes
>     sense to
>     programmers, they aren't really the principle target audience of CC
>     licenses.
>
>     A better practice would probably be to call it a "summary" or a
>     "non-technical summary".
>
>     Cheers,
>     Terry
>
>     --
>     Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com
>     <mailto:hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com>)
>     Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
>
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