Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

drew Roberts wrote:
> On Monday 12 February 2007 11:45 am, Terry Hancock wrote:
>>ISTM you're missing a subtley in this particular thread. The idea is
>>that there is a third state, between "mere aggregation" and
>>"derivation", which involves "semantically linked" works.
> 
> Right.
> 
> Question: For each of these cases, let us know if you consider it a case of 
> mere aggregation or not.
> 
> 1. Popular Hits CD. This is just a random collection of hit songs. Original 
> artists and recordings.
> 2. Popular Hits of the 90s CD. This is a collection of random hits of the 
> 90s. 
> Original artists and recordings.
> 3. Popular Love Songs CD. This is a CD of hits specifically chosen and 
> ordered. Original artists and recordings.
> 4. Same as 1 but covered by one new artist.
> 5. Same as 2 but covered by one new artist.
> 6. Same as 3 but covered by one new artist.
> 
> In all cases, one variety has all songs under s free license but not 
> compatible ones. Another variety mixes songs with free and non-free 
> licenses.

Every one of these is "mere aggregation".

You don't get into combined works until you produce something like a
medley or a remix of the original work.

The individual "covers" you mention are probably "derivatives" of the
songs they cover (I'm not sure about this, though, because US copyright
law apparently covers "phonorecords" under a slightly different statute
than the songs they are based on -- or at least they used to).

However, though they may be bound by the copyleft of the songs they are
based on, the copyleft of other songs on the same CD has no impact on them.

Of course, this is once again one of those areas where a court might see
things differently.

>>IOW, you can imagine a variant of the LGPL which allows linking of
>>libraries to *ANY* free software license (say, "Any OSI Approved
>>License"), but NOT to proprietary licenses. This would be more
>>restrictive than the existing LGPL, but still not as restrictive as the
>>GPL.

> So, the benefit would be to allow linking of non-gpl compatible free code 
> with 
> gpl compatible code. ???

Precisely. The biggest examples would be Mozilla PL, IBM PL, etc. (IIRC
-- some license have explicit GPL conversion provisions).

However, it's fairly niche. Most people willing to do this would be
willing to just use the LGPL.

The important point is to illustrate the concept of a license that
creates this 3rd category of "linked" works.

>>I think automatic upgrade clauses are the real kicker. If a license
>>containing such a clause is declared "compatible", then the way is
>>opened for a bad license steward to essentially leak the whole commons
>>out of copyleft entirely. Which would be *BAD*.
> 
> This could indeed be bad. Could this be side stepped by having the 
> automatic 
> upgrade be conditional on converted works some how? A converted work can be 
> upgraded but only after approval of the new version? This might get hairy 
> really fast.

ISTM that it might be smarter to *eliminate* "automatic upgrade" terms
in all of these sorts of licenses. Then re-introduce the upgrade
licenses via the same compatibility license. That would (I think) permit
a review process to apply before determining if upgrades are possible.

Cheers,
Terry


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