Development of Creative Commons licenses

[James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>]

Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-02-14 at 17:49 -0500, James Grimmelmann wrote:
> > I would like to see a greater emphasis by CC in encouraging licensors to 
> > be fully descriptive about which license they are using.
>
> Default button and text generated by http://creativecommons.org/license/
> describe the exact license used -- almost anyway -- the buttons leave
> out version and jurisdiction.  (I agree the previous generic-looking and
> -reading defaults were suboptimal.)
>
> How can we further encourage licensors to be specific?  Suggestions
> welcome, but be patient -- it always takes awhile to get buy in from CC,
> CC affiliates and the greater CC community, which includes a whole lot
> more than just frequent posters to the cc-licenses list (not that we
> don't love you all).

A "tell us which license you chose and why" campaign would be a good 
meme to spread.  The new beta license-elements picker is a great idea, 
and with some interface tinkering, it ought to be the standard way of 
picking elements.  People should be thinking of the licenses as built up 
from standard elements and reflecting on which freedoms they wish to 
give to licensees.  The traditional multiple-choice interface is 
reasonable, but not as transparent as it could be.

I also wish that the license naming scheme were standardized on 
"Creative Commons" + Element 1 + Element 2 + . . . where each element is 
a restriction on use and no restrictions means public domain.  The 
practice of coining new names for old licenses -- "Wiki," "Music 
Sharing" -- is particularly pernicious and I wish it would stop.  A 
Great Renaming would be disruptive, I know, but it would be worth 
thinking seriously about what it would take to get there at some point 
in the future.

Someday I will help this cause, as well, with a "NonCommercial 
ShareAlike Considered Harmful" essay, but that will have to wait for 
more time on my plate.

In general, the goal is to encourage mindfulness about license elements. 
 They are important properties that people should think about, not 
details to be hidden.

James