Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

This will hopefully be my one post for the day.
It summarizes the current problems as I see it,
and is fairly self contained. If you want to learn
my reasons for anti-tpm, you should be able to
skip all previous posts and read just this:


The problem as I see it is that ParDist allows
DRM-Dave to have a platform monopoly, allowing
him to monopolize the (1) content and monopolizing
the (2) commercial rights to the work on that platform.

No one can access the content but by Dave's permission.
No one can distribute/sell on the platform but by Dave's
permission.

Parallel-Distribution addresses the first piece but not
the second. Alice can get a copy of ShareAlike-Sam's work
that plays on her DRM-only player, and Dave is required
to also give her a copy that is DRM-Free. But this
does not address the commercial rights that have been
monopolized on that platform.

While ParDist proponents like to compare ParDist to the
Source Code requirement of GNU-GPL, in GNU-GPL, if someone
releases a binary, they are required to distribute the
source code for that binary, and anyone may commercially
compete on the exact same platform as everyone else.

Now, here's the thing. ParDist proponents figure that
the only way to get Dave to approve content for his
DRM-only platform is to give him some incentive.
And ParDist proponents have decided that they'll
ALLOW DAVE A COMMERCIAL MONOPOLY ON HIS PLATFORM
because they figure it will be an incentive for Dave
to put CC-SA works on his platform.

Since Dave has to give permission to apply his DRM
to CC-SA works, ParDist folks figure they'll BUY Dave's
permission. ParDist proponents then downplay the fact
that they've surrendered the community's rights to
commercial distribution on Dave's platform by saying
"the damage to the community by surrendering this is much
smaller than the ADvantage to the users who want CC-SA
content on their hardware"

No other copyleft license has EVER done this that I know of.

On the other hand, Anti-TPM-plus-Local-DRM addresses BOTH
problems. Dave cannot distribute DRM-only versions of CC-SA
works. Alice can get CC-SA content from ShareAlike Sam,
and apply DRM to the content locally on her PC and then
download it to whatever DRM-only player she happens to use.

Alice always has a copy of the original content, so the
issue with a Parallel Distribution is automatically solved.
She must start with an open copy and apply DRM locally.
There is no need to define what is the "parallel copy" format,
because she must start with an open format to begin with.

Allowing local DRM is similar to allowing local compiles
of GNU-GPL works. The difference is that Dave could sell
a DRM-applicator tool that charges per-file to apply DRM.
If Dave is able to maintain this monopoly, then he might
still maintain a commercial monopoly on his platform.

For this reason, the Local-DRM piece may need some tweeking
to close this loophole. I'm not sure how best to do it,
but perhaps if Alice buys the DRM-application tool from Dave,
she must be allowed to give that same tool for that same
piece of content to Bob. This prevents the DRM-applicator
from being commercially monopolized by keeping it outside CC-SA.

The caveat to this last bit is that local compiles in GNU-GPL
works COULD be abused by the likes of Microsoft and what not.
The fact that they haven't been abused seems to point to the
idea that the DRM-Dave's of teh world might not abuse this
position either. The reason that might explain this is because
it become fairly clear to the customer that what they're paying
for, a large chunk of it is free, and that the company selling
this local compile or local drm isn't actually adding very
much value of their own.

Again, if the DRM-applicator must meet some requirements that
if Alice can apply DRM, then everyone can, then that would
remove any possibility of commercial exploitation of commercial
rights on a DRM-only platform. But if the language for that is
too complex, then anti-tpm-plus-local-drm should at least
minimize the abuse by DRM-Dave.

Par-Dist actually encourages the abuse, the commercial monopolization,
even offers a monopoly of commercial rights to Dave as some sort
of INCENTIVE to get Dave to put CC-SA on his DRM-only platform.

To me, that thinking is the complete antithesis of Copyleft.

Greg