Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Parallel Distribution and Non-Copyleft Licenses

cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Parallel Distribution and Non-Copyleft Licenses
  • Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2006 10:32:42 -0500

Greg London wrote:
Without any DRM clause of any kind, ShareAlike has a loophole
that allows DRM Dave to use the work without sharing the work
on his platform. Only he can distribute works on his platform.
Only he can create derivatives on his platform.

This is true. But the same is true if DRM Dave makes snow globes that play a CC-licensed song. Nobody else can put derivatives (or anything at all) on this sort of snow globe--simply because Dave is the one with the manufacturing plant. Why is this not a platform monopoly of this troubling sort?

The problem is not that the content is not available in a
non-DRM version. CC-SA versions of the works are available
already from ShareAlike-Sam.

The problem is that a DRM-Only platform can take CC-SA works
and treat them as proprietary forks on that platform.
The works are no longer treated as copyleft works.

The works are copyleft to the extent anyone is free to take them, copy them, modify them, and distribute them by starting from the parallel version. The only thing they are not able to do in practice is to place their own copies or derivative works back onto the particular DRMed platform. Or is there something else you think they are not free to do?

Now, we can argue whether parallel distribution adds rights
that weren't there before or not. But it's irrelevant.
It adds a minor right, but doesn't solve the problem of
a DRM=only hardware platform using the works as if they
were no longer ShareAlike on that hardware platform.

I do not think that your "ShareAlike on that hardware platform" is a meaningful concept. You seem to be taking the word "alike" too literally, to assume that everyone who encounters a work must have the exact same abilities in practice. That is not how the ShareAlike license works, and it is not, as I take it, the point of having a ShareAlike term. The point of such a term is to ensure that anyone who encounters the work or derivatives made from it (or from derivatives, and so on) continues to have essential freedoms to use, modify, and redistribute the work.

James




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page