Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Javier Candeira <javier AT candeira.com>]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2) If you do not care about the copyleft, 

I *do* care about copyleft. Please don't attribute me thoughts or positions
I don't hold, just because you disagree with me on the nuances of an issue.

I consider CC-by-sa a true copyleft license for non-programmatic works, and
I use it for my photos because I want them to be freely usable, and to stay
that way even after they have been used by others.

In the case that a newspaper printed my CC-by-sa photo, that photo would be
copiable by anyone, even from that newspaper. This would mean that,
according to the license, the paper would not be allowed to use DRM software
so the photo is uncopyable, or to prosecute anyone for commercial use of
that photo *as printed on the paper*.

It would also mean that any enhancement, cropping or other editing of the
photo would fall under the realm of "derivative works", and would have to be
licensed under cc-by-sa if they want my permission to distribute it. How
more copyleft can it get?

Also, under the CC-by-sa licensing terms, if someone used my photostream to
base a film on it, the film itself would have to be CC-by-sa, and that is my
intention. Copyleft is clearly what I want.

> why not simply use CC-BY?
> The work _itself_ will always have to be freely available, and the
> licensing notice also has to be kept intact.

I agree that is what I would use in the cases where copyleft was not
something I wanted for my work.

> The whole point of copyleft is to benefit from other people's uses.

The whole point of copyleft is to declare a work free so nobody can make it
unfree, not to force others to make their work free as well.

In the "a paper printing my photo" scenario, it is possible for them to do
it following the letter of the license, and allowing others to copy the
photo from the paper. That to me is copyleft. Saying that the photo's
copyright allows me to claim rights on the article copy is like saying that
any book on Emacs should be GPL if it is sold accompanied by a CD with the
GPLd code.

> When these uses are almost never directly derivative, but more of a
> combinatory nature, 

Or maybe "mere aggregation".

> and copyleft doesn't address it, it is quite
> clearly a broken and inadequate license.

Or maybe the license is all right, and what is broken is the notion that any
two creative works that touch each other somehow become intrinsecally bonded
and part of each other.

Copyright law used to rule only the literal copying of things, and a great
deal of the trouble we are in now comes from it's encroachment on other
types of uses. I am happy that the concept of a "derived work" does not
extend to the article that accompanies a photo, and I don't think Creative
Commons license should try to extend the notion of "derivative work" even
further.

Regards,

-- javier candeira

PS: IANAL and all that, so please enlighten me if I have the legal arguments
wrong.