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  • From: drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Regarding SA and "strong copyleft" question
  • Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 08:23:46 -0500

On Wednesday 28 February 2007 12:36 am, teun spaans wrote:
> Cite:Interesting to see however how you 'know' in your head what they or we
> are thinking...
>
> There is no kindreading needed when, as happened, people actually complain
> about commercial reuse, as the name of the license suggested to them.

I am not so sure in context it is commercial reuse that is the problem, it is
commercial reuse outside of the ShareAlike deal that was expected. Non-Free
or Non-Copyleft reuse.

This is a guess. But it seems reasonable to me. There is a lot of confusion
with respect to terminology in this area and it is easy to slip and use the
wrong term.
>
> i wish you health and happiness
> teun spaans

all the best,

drew
>
> On 2/28/07, wolfgang wander <wwc AT lns.mit.edu> wrote:
> > Now now Terry,
> >
> > > Also, I expect to create By-SA content commercially as much as I can
> > > get away with, and I have serious doubts about someone with the sorts
> > > of motivations you envision being happy with that. The fact that I'm
> > > making money, partly enabled by their content is going to piss them
> > > off, if they really have this "I'm giving to charity" and "I don't want
> > > to undercut commercial competition" idea in their heads. If that's what
> > > they are thinking, then they are really thinking in terms of NC, not SA
> > > licensing.
> >
> > I suppose this is meant to hit close to home. And I'm sorry if that sets
> > the tone of my reply...
> >
> > Let me just state this:
> >
> > People chose SA over NC and this should be the only measure you
> > should apply as to what they have in their heads.
> >
> > While Creative Commons avoids explaining the issues concerning mixing
> > images and text, they are very clear about the fact that CC-by-SA
> > allows commercial re-use. So People choosing SA know full well that
> > their content can be used commercially. Commercial use is fine - as long
> > as Share-Alike and BY rules are followed.
> >
> > Interesting to see however how you 'know' in your head what they or we
> > are thinking...
> >
> > It's easy to insinuate sinister motives to discredit other arguments,
> > easy but maybe not effective...
> >
> > Its as easy to point out the hypocrisy for melodramatically
> > threatening to abandon CC if they ever consider to publish any license
> >
> > other than 'CC-BY':
> > > A creator is always, in a game theoretic sense going to
> > > be motivated to seek more and more control. But that's not what we're
> > > supposed to be about here (or if it is, then I have to abandon CC
> >
> > entirely).
> >
> > and moments later that same person explains to us that he needs non-Free
> >
> > all-about-control 'Verbatim-Only' licenses:
> > > The articles are usually By-SA, but I occasionally use a
> > > "Verbatim Only" license. The latter is useful if the article is very
> > > precisely stating an opinion which may be controversial and which I
> > > don't want misrepresented.
> >
> > Yet again a few sentences later he claims that not being able to
> > combine any given text with any given image is 'muzzling free
> > speech!'.
> >
> > Wait!?! A 'Verbatim Only' license does NOT do this? What if my free
> > speech evolves about making my points using your words out of context?
> >
> > > But uh-oh, according to your plan, I'm in a deadlock. I have By-SA and
> > > ARR photos in one article. Can't publish. You've muzzled my free speech
> > > rights! And remember, my article text is normally under By-SA anyway.
> >
> > Sorry - couldn't resist...
> >
> > But lets not go there any further, instead lets try to clarify some of
> > your other
> >
> > arguments:
> > > If we were to apply the suggested rule, then we would have the shocking
> > > case where I can use copylefted material under "fair use" in an ARR
> > > work, but I *can't* use ARR work under fair use in a copylefted work!
> >
> > Sorry - I'm not following you here. Can't you already now use
> > copy-lefted material in an ARR work? Wasn't the whole discussion about
> > an ARR text using copy-lefted images and declaring the whole product to
> > be ARR?
> >
> > ... or for that matter taking any by-SA text (your blog for example) and
> > combining it with an ARR image to make the complete aggregation ARR?
> >
> > > Remember when the CSS folks were suing people for merely *linking* to
> > > pages describing or providing DeCSS? That's almost certainly a
> > > "semantic link" (and from a software perspective, it is nearly
> > > identical to the way an image is identified from HTML code -- the text
> > > and picture do not actually come together except within the user's
> > > browser. No "copy" of the combined work is ever actually made!
> >
> > A little far fetched - to stay with your evil-doer analogy, one
> > would have to inline (maybe per HTML-frame or such) the DeCSS code
> > into the text describing it, pretty much like adding an image via <img
> > src> to existing text.
> >
> > Or to transform the analogy to the other side, nobody I know has any
> > problems linking (<a href>here</a>, rather than <img src>) cc-by-sa
> > images from ARR text.
> >
> > > Then there's the question of transformative use. If you take a really
> > > nice picture of a fork, it may be a wonderful work in its own right,
> > > but if I make a clever pun in my article about "forking" a project, and
> > > use the fork picture as the punchline, do you really feel that my work
> > > is sufficiently dependent on your authorship that you should have the
> > > right to tell me how to license my work?
> >
> > Absolutely! By using it *you* make it dependent. You, not the
> > photographer creates the dependence. It should be easy enough for you
> > to find another fork picture to make the same clever pun.
> >
> > Likewise, when I want to use your by-SA article and have my own ARR
> > picture of an even nicer fork, should I or shouldn't I be able to take
> > your article, semantically link it with my fork image to create ARR
> > content?
> >
> > > You all are right of course, that there is a negative consequence to be
> > > found here in that people may suddenly decide to retract commercial
> > > quality By-SA work. But you know what? In my experiences on Flickr, I
> > > find that much of the *best* photography is actually under the "By"
> > > license. So I don't think it's as big of a threat as you make it out to
> >
> > be.
> >
> > As I've said before: Many Flickr users and most photographers I've
> > talked to who published under CC-by-SA have been 'tricked' (to use
> > your words) by the Share Alike term in the license. Just search
> > Flickr's forums for people's interpretation of this license. Of all
> > the feedback I had regarding this issue - once people understand the
> > limited Share-Alike-ness - very few seem willing to license further
> > content under this CC-by-Like license.
> >
> > > And as for your wanting to trick or pressure people into making their
> > > content free-licensed, I think that is seriously wrong-headed. There
> > > are enough good reasons to create free-licensed content, and enough of
> > > us doing it everyday anyway, that it's not going to go away. Free
> > > licensed images help to enable that content by providing freely
> > > distributable images to go along with freely distributable articles.
> >
> > And this is exactly what cc-by-sa publishing photographers intended, It's
> > the non-free ARR articles and by no means your CC-by-SA blog we are
> > worried about.
> >
> > > The fact that
> > > there are also some edge case free-rider situations is really a pretty
> > > minor problem, in my opinion, and it simply isn't worth all of the
> > > problems it would create.
> >
> > It is a growing problem though. So far Share Alike was interpreted by
> > most as referring to the editorial content that goes with the images
> > as well. And so far - when I gave ARR content providers *my*
> > interpretation of the Share Alike clause they removed these images or
> > negotiated other license terms. But after getting to know Creative
> > Commons interpretation of Share Alike this will no longer be possible.
> >
> > Coming back to the original question:
> >
> > Some photographers want a means to contribute to Free projects like
> > Wikipedia without ARR projects taking their content and using it in a
> > very Share-Un-Alike manner.
> >
> > Given the current state of the license this is not possible.
> >
> > The question really boils down to:
> >
> > a) do you want to alienate these photographers who want to contribute
> > to Free projects while keeping the ARR content providers happy,
> > i.e. leave everything it is now.
> >
> > b) or do you want to level the playing field, invite more Free
> > thinking people to the table and ask ARR providers to either
> > join the game or find other sources of content?
> >
> > I'm very well aware of the fact that going from a) to b) will take
> > some effort and there are many hurdles to overcome which you list
> > carefully (and I even more carefully tend to ignore ;-) but unless the
> > consensus is here that a) is the better solution Creative Commons
> > should IMHO try see if there is such a path...
> >
> > Wolfgang
> > _______________________________________________
> > cc-licenses mailing list
> > cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses

--
(da idea man)




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