Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Dana Powers" <dana.powers AT gmail.com>]

> Image libraries seem to have no trouble defining the circumstances in
> which use
> of their copyrighted material requires payment, or the scope and nature of use
> that they will consider at all. They do not use an existing narrow right, they
> use an existing blanket right and give permission to exercise this right in
> narrow circumstances with carefully worded limits and requirements.
Except their method is "reproduction is ok if you pay me enough"  That
doesn't translate into the world of CC very well.  Moreover, image
libraries benefit from the flexibility of commercial negotiation.
CC's primary reason for creating standard open licenses is to define
clearly areas in which no commercial negotiation is required.  Because
rules for a given circumstance can be defined clearly in such a
negotiated contract does not mean that clarity can be abstracted
appropriately into a broad license which would be applied to every
possible situation.

> So real-world experience shows that the case of illustrations doesn't
> need a new
> narrow right, it doesn't need the meaning of any legal terms to be
> changed, and
> it doesn't need the scope of the license to be limited discretely by the
> terminology used by the law.
As explained above, I think this does not logically flow from the
existence of commercial contracts.

It may be useful to recall that synch rights are presumed to be
reserved by music publishers when a right of reproduction (i.e.,
mechanical rights) is granted.  My question was really whether such a
presumption existed in the photography community.  If not, then we'd
be inventing a new way to carve up rights.  Would the existing photo
industry (amateurs and pros alike) understand our new way of talking
about photo rights?  Maybe, maybe not.  It should be clear by now that
I believe this is a huge undertaking, and I'm skeptical that CC is in
a good position to do it well.

On the other hand, I'm quite willing to be persuaded otherwise.

Best,
Dana