Development of Creative Commons licenses

[rob AT robmyers.org]

Quoting Francesco Poli <frx AT firenze.linux.it>:

> I understand this, but, as I said, I think that clarity on which parts
> are NC-specific, SA-specific, and/or nonND-specific is unsatisfactory.

I always assume that anything that refers to not being allowed to sell 
or modify
the work is NC or ND. ;-)

> > I disagree that removing a credit at all interferes with the freedom
> > to modify.
>
> It forbids me to state a true fact in a modified version of the work,
> namely that the modified version is based on the original work by the
> original author.

Moral rights will allow this to be stripped anyway I think. Placing this fact
into the license saves time, money and trouble. I think the original user's
name will appear in the copyright list, though.

> What do you mean by "associated with"?
> Do you mean that the original author is held responsible for the content
> of the modified work?  That his/her reputation can be hurt by the
> content of the modified work?
> I'm not at all convinced that this is the case

Moral Rights law does hold that misattribution of work or mistreatment of work
is harmful for the author's reputation.

> And I think that "This Adaptation is based on the Work _foo_ by James O.
> Hacker" clearly explains that James O. Hacker just created the Work
> _foo_, while the Adaptation was created by someone else.

This depends on the strength of the Moral Rights laws in various countries.

> For instance,
> many parodies clearly show which original work they are based on: AFAIK,
> many copyright laws grant the right to parody even for works where all
> rights are reserved (but please remember that IANAL, hence any
> corrections from real lawyers, and people with more expertise than me,
> are welcome).

The right to parody is not enshrined in law in the UK for example (unless the
government follows the Gowers Report, which would be nice). Where it is 
part of
Fair Use the CC licenses acknowledge Fair Use and assuming that the
identification is a necessary part of the parody that would presumably be
unaffected by the license. IANAL, TINLA.

> As I stated, I think that this is a significant restriction on the
> freedom to modify the work.

I would disagree with this. The DFSG explicitly allow the requirement that
modified works be marked as such, moral rights ensure that authors cannot be
associated with works they have not written, and the FDL and GPL allow
non-endorsement. So there are many examples of this kind of requirement, some
of which cannot be overridden by alternative licensing. Where attribution is
with satiric intent, this may be covered by Fair Use.

> All this means that I, as an author, would be licensing my work under
> *totally unknown* terms, should I decide to license it under
> CC-by-sa-v3.0!
> I should trust *every and each* local Creative Commons committee, for
> the present *and* the future, to always correctly preserve the copyleft
> mechanism...
> Some CC-by-sa licenses could be too restrictive for my tastes: my
> copyleft would be destroyed, without any possibility for me of knowing
> it.  Some other CC-by-sa licenses could be too permissive for my tastes:
> my copyleft could again be destroyed (with one further licensing step),
> without any possibility for me of knowing it.

During the first debate about FDL compatibility I was quite alarmed at the
prospect of BY-SA work being incorporated into FDL works with invariant
sections included. I was working to get a broadcaster using BY-SA for a big
project at the time and invariant sections on their content would have rilly
broken their business model, so this created some uncertainty and 
resistence to
adoption.

On the other hand I grind my teeth every time I find some BY-SA 1.0 art 
that I'd
like to remix but whose artist doesn't return emails.

> > > Credit must be "at least as prominent as the credits for the other
> > > contributing authors".  Even if the licensor's contribution is not
> > > comparable to others?
> > > I think that this restriction is excessive and fails to meet the
> > > DFSG.
> > >
> > > I mean: Walter Writer incorporates a short poem by Paul Poet into a
> > > novel that includes 21 chapters written by Cindy Coauthor and 25
> > > chapters written by Walter himself.  Walter wants to put a "credit
> > > for all contributing authors" and lists his name (that is, Walter
> > > Writer) and Cindy Coauthor in 12 pt fonts, followed by credit for
> > > Paul Poet in 11 pt fonts.
> > > It seems reasonable to me, but, nonetheless, credit for Paul would
> > > not be "at least as prominent as the credits for the other authors":
> > >
> > > that is
> > > to say, the license wouldn't allow Walter to do so.
> >
> > Under this factual scenario, I think it's arguably that Paul Poet
> > isn't an author of the book and only Walter and Cindy are.
>
> OK, let's say that the contribution of Paul is big enough to grant him
> the author status, but still smaller than Walter's and Cindy's ones
> in a non negligible manner.  One chapter?  Two chapters?  Something like
> that.  At that point Paul is an author and must be credited: is it
> fair to require that his credit be "at least as prominent as the credits
> for the other authors"?

Fair, no. Practical, yes. Impracticality can impact on freedom.

> Even if copyright law treats authors in an "all or nothing" manner, is
> it fair to require equivalent credit for all authors (and nothing for
> non-author contributors)?

Any media used in the work will be credited, and the authors are 
welcome to give
credits or shout-outs for intangible contributions in the introduction.

> I think that human judgement is needed even for checking whether two
> credits are equally prominent, hence the current situation is no simpler
> than the one I imagined.

The current situation is equivalent to adding one's name to a changelog or
AUTHORS file. What it lacks in subtlety or fairness it makes up for in ease of
compliance.

- Rob.