Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Sunday 25 February 2007 10:23 pm, James Grimmelmann wrote:
> Dana Powers wrote:
> > <snip/>
> >
> >> 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.
> >
> > Yes, CC Licenses are basically contracts used to exchange certain
> > copyright entitlements for various promises to attribute, notify, use
> > and/or re-license in particular ways.
> >
> > I am very skeptical, however, that tests like "distributed with" or
> > "semantically related" are legally feasible.  Movie soundtracks are a
> > bit easier because (among other things) the law already understands
> > what the movie industry calls "sync rights," and they are pretty easy
> > to define narrowly.  But is there an equivalent narrow legal right for
> > photos used in print?
> >
> >> Nor is this behavior especially novel, the FSF has decades of
> >> experience getting compliance with the same behavioral aspects of the
> >> GPL.
> >
> > Although the GPL still allows you to distribute on the same CD with
> > non-GPL code.  How would you distinguish the two?  If you say
> > "semantically related" I'll respectfully ask you to please define it
> > in a way that would be useful to a lawyer or judge.
>
> Moreover, "semantically related" is likewise probably significantly
> broader than the GPL's test for "modified work."  

Sure, but unless someone can point it out, I see no reason why BY-SA must 
duplicate the GPL, in fact, doing so makes it considerably weaker in some 
domains than the GPL is in its intended domain. I think that is what got the 
ball rolling this time around. No?

> I can imagine two 
> programs that are "semantically related" even though they are
> "independent and separate works."  Perhaps this is not quite what fans
> of "semantically related" mean by the term, but that just brings us back
> to Dana's point: that the term is unclear.

Yes, well, getting domain independent language clearer and effective may 
indeed be difficult. By example, what some mean is using BY-SA animal photos 
in an ARR book about animals. Clearly, this use is more than mere aggregation 
of some unrelated photos and some unrelated texts on a CD. 
>
> James

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)