Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Greg London wrote:
> I was a bit concerned about some content I was using,
> sent a lawyer friend a URL and had him write up
> an affidavit (I think that was the term) that he
> got the content (pasted in the document) from the
> URL (also pasted) on such and such date. Signed and
> dated it. Filed away for reference.
> 
> Rather clumsy approach if you're doing this on a regular
> basis, though. If the content is popular, then other people
> would have used it, and would be willing to testify they
> also got it under a CC license as well. If the content only
> got picked up by one person, it might be a bit more tough.
> But then, maybe it isn't popular enough to be a big deal?

Note that this approach could be automated. Someone (a notary perhaps)
could list a standard price for checking licensing information on a URI.

With CC tools, certain compliant sites could probably be scraped
automatically, providing greater convenience for the notary (and
hopefully lower costs to users). Obviously any given item would only
have to be registered once. Two possible funding strategies come
immediately to mind:

1) Make known licensed material available in a free registry. Charge new
registrations the full cost of compliance. (I.e. first-comer pays full
price on each new item, but large body of pre-checked material).

2) Charge a very small fee for every access to the registry, distribute
the costs of each new request internally.

This could be quite practical (either way) for commercial users, who
have the greatest chance of being sued.

The advantages of strategy 1 include:

1) Encourages the notary to support new registrations
2) Makes a lot of free, registered material available to non-commercial
users (who might otherwise be stopped by the fee)
3) It advertises the service

Strategy 2 has other advantages:

1) It is profitable for the provider (at least once a substantial
database has been built up). It allows investment in future registrations.
2) It reduces cost risks since every action is directly paid for

ISTM that it is logical that users of CC material would pay for this
kind of service rather than trying to charge creators. In fact, a
particularly involved registrar might offer small incentives to creators
who provide direct registration with them, in order to reduce search and
verification costs (as well as drumming up future business).

It's interesting to me that this is another possible business model for
supporting CC material, even if it doesn't sound like a particularly
lucrative one for creators. :-)

Cheers,
Terry


-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com