Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

> On 12/5/06, Greg London <email AT greglondon.com> wrote:
>> copyleft isn't simply about the content.
>>
>> Ned creates some content.
>> He licenses it CC-SA-NC.
>>
>> You will get a copy of all the content.
>> But only Ned can sell it.
>
> Only Ned can sell it _on that platform_.

On Dave's platform, the work is effectively CC-NC-ND

No one can modify the work on the platform without Dave's permission.
No one can sell the work on the platform without Dave's permission.

You want to give those rights to Dave, do it with your own works,
not everyone in the community.

> I'm prepared to vote with my feet (wallet)

And you're prepared with other people's contributions to CC-SA
projects.

Let's ignore DRM for a second.
Pretend it doesn't exist.
Say you've got some content.
Any content. Pick something.

Say it's licensed CC-SA

Say its something that thousands of
people have contributed to over the
course of years to get it to the
point where it's soemthing really great.

Say, George Lucas comes along and discovers
this content. He wants to put it in a movie.
A major block buster movie.

But he can't do CC-SA because he can't figure
how to make the numbers work so that it will
be a profitable block buster movie.

So he comes to the community and makes an offer:

"Look, I like your stuff, and I'd really like
to put your stuff in my movie. But I can't
afford CC-SA. But I'll tell you what.
If you let me use your stuff in my movie
and let me make the movie All Rights Reserved,
I'll give you any of the modifications I make
to your stuff. You won't get my whole movie,
but you'll get any modifications I make to your
content. Deal?"

And you are so damn eager to see your content
in a block buster movie that you're willing
to toss Copyleft to the ditch.

No one in the CC-SA community can afford to
turn their stuff into a major block buster
movie released in teh theaters because the
distributers have a stranglehold on what
goes into their pipe. Major theater owners
get to pick from what their distributer
offers them. And distributers only offer
movies that will make them money.

There is no way a CC-SA movie will ever be
released in the current environment of the
movie industry.

But you're willing to ditch copyleft and let
Lucas have full copyright on his derivative
work because you want to see your work on
the big screen.

That ain't how it works, pigeon.

You don't get to sacrifice copyleft to get into a theater.
You don't get to sacrifice copyleft to get onto the
community's content on DRM-only hardware.
You don't get to sacrifice the community just because
you want to see your content up on the big screen.

You don't get to sacrifice the community.

You want your stuff in Lucas's movie,
then you can dual license it.
Put your stuff under CC-SA and give it to
the community.
and simultaneously give Lucas a license to
use your work in his film under CC-BY or whatever.

There is no difference between the Lucas scenario
above and DRM-Dave's hardware, other than semantics.

You are advocating escape clauses to copyleft
simply to get the community's content into
proprietary channels, whether its a DRM-only
player or a movie theater chain.

You want to vote that with your wallet, go for it.
Put a dual license on your content.

There are people who write applications and release
it under GNU-GPL and also sell the rights to put
the code in a proprietary program.

You want to do that, go for it.

Just keep your hands the COMMUNITY's wallet
while you're doing it.


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