Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell AT gmail.com>]

On 2/25/07, Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> drew Roberts wrote:
> > To me the question is why copyleft cannot work this way? Is it impossible or
> > just the result of a choice on the part of CC? For instance, couldn't mere
> > aggregation be off limits for BY-SA works? (Not should it or shouldn't it,
> > could it or couldn't it?)
>
> 1) It's decision by the framers of the copyright law, because it's a
> fair use issue.

If someone can make a fair use claim for a copylefted work in a
proprietary work, more power to them.. but thats an entirely separate
matter.

> 2) UNLESS you count *contracts* in which you can legally give up rights
> you would ordinarily have. This is a very ethically suspect idea, but I
> understand that courts have supported the Big Money on this point, so it
> is possible.

You don't ordinarily have the right to distribute my work. It's the
license which gives you the right to do so. The stipulation that the
result of combining my work with another work may only be distributed
if distributed under an equally free license no more creates a
covenant to limit the licensee's natural rights than the stipulation
that attribution must be provided, the technological measures can't be
used, that the license must be identified, etc.

Nor is this behavior especially novel, the FSF has decades of
experience getting compliance with the same behavioral aspects of the
GPL.