Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Wednesday 14 February 2007 11:57 am, tomislav medak wrote:
> hey terry, hey others,
>
> sorry, i can't keep up with the pace of the discussion here due to time
> constraints - and writing in english doesn't help time-effectiveness
> either.
>
> in my initial post i played the devil's advocate a little because wanted
> to stress that the concept of 'free' in the debate around CC will remain
> volatile for as long as we don't have an accepted definition of what it
> is. and i think we need to have that debate. so, while we have a
> relatively coherent set of norms (in GNU, DSFG, Wikipedia, freedom
> defined) defining 'free', on the other side of the free/non-free divide
> we draw there are users and advocates of CC who have substantial grounds
> to interpret that freedoms that come with NC and ND licenses are
> substantial enough to call those licenses free. and these users and
> advocates are many.

And, in my mind, they would be wrong insofar as free = libre. Now if CC had 
started first, before the FSF and their defining of Free in a similar 
context, perhaps. But they didn't The ball got rolling in the software world 
at least as far as the buzz element goes from what I can tell.

If people want to benefit from that buzz, honesty would suggest some 
recognition of that definition of libre. My small off the cuff remark. I may 
change after thinking about this further.
>
> i have no misconceptions about the net effect that CC's agnosticism and
> case-insensitive statements about free culture produce, but there's also
> a large community of users and advocates who are not CC themselves and
> who might think different than people who come from the free software. i
> think that engaging the other side in a debate on 'the standard of
> freedom' would be useful. we can't force issues - for instance, the
> unrelenting attitude of debian on DRM provisions in CC licenses caused
> some grievance with the community. CC as entity should not be the only
> addressee of the request not to dilute the meaning of 'free' as in 'free
> software'. there are others who are implicated and who are part of the
> issue.
>
> i agree that NC was a bad idea, because it gives false assurance that
> the model of analog economy can be maintained, but it can't if you cross
> into the digital. lots of the misgiving creators might have with
> allowing commercial use (free riding, people making money from their
> work...) can be dispelled by arguing the positive limitation of giving
> back that SA creates. NC-SA is a real paradox from that perspective -
> getting less from the traditional model and preventing oneself from
> getting more from the new economic model.

Could it be that what people who use NC-SA really want is share-alike but no 
selling / earning direct profits?  
>
> so, i need to run, but let me reiterate once again - while we might want
> to differentiate BY and BY-SA from other CC licenses, doing that through
> terms 'free' and 'non-free' won't fly without a debate. CC-world simply
> was not initially constituted on the norms of free software...

Well,would someone connected with CC who is in the know explain this quote 
from their web site:

"We're a nonprofit organization. Everything we do — including the software we 
create — is free."

Do they mean libre or gratis. Or both.

And also once again from their history page:

http://creativecommons.org/about/history

"Creative Commons' first project, in December 2002, was the release of a set 
of copyright licenses free for public use. Taking inspiration in part from 
the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL),"

So, they may not have been initially constituted on the norms of free 
software, but they were at least in part inspired by the Free Software 
Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) by their own admission.

Thus, copyleft was one of the initial inspirations for CC. It is not too much 
to think that the existing definition of Free (libre) should be respected. Am 
I crazy here?
>
> ciao,
>
> tom
>
> PS. while it might be true that CC logo means nothing, individual
> license buttons with metadata are very precise.

all the best,

drew
>
> Terry Hancock wrote:
> > tomislav medak wrote:
> >> it seems to me that we would get again a confusion if we would create a
> >> free and non-free category, which would produce a somewhat similar,
> >> though ideologically quite different effect we had when all licenses
> >> were under one brand - CC license. for two reasons:
> >>
> >> first reason would be: how do you define 'free'?
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >> second reason would be: 'free' is a lot less precise in practical terms
> >> than BY and BY-SA, and 'non-free' is yet again a lot more less precise
> >> than BY-NC, BY-NC-SA, etc. this would be a step back from what we have
> >> gained with new buttons.
> >
> > No one is advocating removing the branding distinction between By and
> > By-SA, or indeed, eliminating any of this information.
> >
> > We are asking for a prominant sign that says "HERE YOU STEP OFF OF THE
> > FREE BANDWAGON".
> >
> > CC makes that awkward by having "not quite free" licenses that cause
> > confusion and dilute the "free" brand.
> >
> > This confusion is orders of magnitude greater than any caused by
> > OSI/FSF/Debian/Wikipedia/FreedomDefined differences.
> >
> > The difference between NC and Free licenses also represents a
> > fundamental economic model break-point (Greg London loves to talk about
> > this -- ask him ;-) ): that is, the distinction between a "fringe
> > hanger-on to the traditional copyright monopoly-based marketplace"
> > (CC-By-NC-*) and a "embracing a new free-license-based model of content
> > creation" (CC-By, CC-By-SA).
> >
> > IOW, this is a natural point of economic regime/paradigm change.
> >
> > CC straddles this breakpoint, which creates enormous confusion for:
> >
> > 1) Users of the license (i.e. licensors)
> > 2) Users of the works (i.e. licensees)
> > 3) Analysts who wish to track and understand the dynamics of "free
> > culture"
> >
> > Understand me carefully: NC usage is an interesting phenomenon in
> > itself. However, it is a DISTINCT phenomenon from "Free Culture" and
> > should not be labeled as a member of that set.
> >
> > Doing so requires me to make endless digressions on why CC doesn't
> > really follow the trends of other "free" phenomena and why it does not
> > provide the same enablement of individual commons-based production, and
> > so on...
> >
> >
> > What is needed is a *distinct brand image* for "free" and "non-free"
> > licenses. Color coding would be one way to attempt that, but it might
> > well be inadequate. Within each brand image, it's perfectly reasonable
> > to maintain distinct variants.
> >
> >> i really understand the problem with the example you give, but someone
> >> creating FLOSS should really know better than confuse ND with free
> >> software.
> >
> > The real problem, however, is for users. If I want to create free
> > cultural content, I must do so either independently (in which case, I'm
> > no better off with CC than without it) or by using exclusively *free* CC
> > licensed material. Non-free CC licenses are just noise in the searches
> > when I'm looking for content to build on, and the longer it takes to
> > distinguish them from valid source material, the harder it is to create.
> >
> > Thus, non-free CC licenses, without distinct brand imaging, retard my
> > own efforts to produce free cultural materials.
> >
> > Furthermore, they confuse some artists who imagine that they are
> > participating in free culture when they are not.  This can result in:
> >
> > 1) Disillusionment (why don't I get the common magic?)
> > 2) Misunderstanding of what can and cannot be done with the work
> > 3) Opting to use NC by people who would otherwise try a free license
> >
> > This retards the introduction of seed material into the free commons.
> >
> > These are the reasons free culture proponents don't like CC-NC and why
> > there is so much bad feeling about CC for creating this situation.
> >
> > In short, NC was a bad, bad, BAD idea.
> >
> > What doesn't help is CC constantly patting itself on the back saying "NC
> >  is our most popular license" and "look at all the pretty license
> > adoption charts" when in fact these facts are meaningless.
> >
> > Of COURSE NC is the most popular CC license -- it is the most like ARR.
> > If CC included ARR in its figures, *that* would be the most popular
> > license (dwarfing all others). Would that justify promoting ARR as
> > "pro-free-culture"?
> >
> > Likewise, the license adoption figures mean nothing about free culture
> > unless the NC numbers are weeded out.
> >
> > Sure, the file-sharing culture likes NC work better than ARR. But this
> > is a different phenomenon than "free culture". That's just "handout
> > culture".
> >
> > All of this would be solved if you can just draw a line that says "this
> > side is free / this side is not".  You can do that by having two
> > different brand images: two different logos, two different names or
> > imprints of CC, and two different sets of licenses on two different
> > license documentation pages. People must KNOW when they are stepping
> > across that boundary.  Because it is a REAL boundary, with real-world
> > consequences for crossing it.
> >
> > It's not just "a line on a map" -- it's a natural boundary, like a
> > mountain range or a river. It *means* something to be on one side or the
> > other of it.
> >
> > But right now, the CC logo means *nothing*.
> >
> > That's the essence of RMS's criticism of it. And I agree.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Terry
>
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-- 
(da idea man)