Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Thursday 08 March 2007 05:51 am, Terry Hancock wrote:
> Luis Villa wrote:
> > On 3/7/07, Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> > To get actual evidence, you're going to have to define your terms much
> > more precisely than you have; your current definitions are very vague.
>
> Yeah, exactly. That's one reason I asked for help.
>
> > You could perhaps measure re-use of
> > samples in ccmixter for a similar study?
>
> That's the sort of thing I'm looking for. Yes, ccMixter identifies
> sources, doesn't it? I could select samples of works at random, and then
> track their reuse forward in time. It'll be tricky, because NC works
> will logically be over-available simply because there are many more of
> them ("network effect" -- the same thing you mention below for GPL).

I would say that ccMixter would not be a good place to gather evidence 
exactly. They have pre-conditions that will skew your results. These days, 
(last I checked) all works there muct be "compatible" and so they do not 
allow SA works.

So, with BY and BY-NC works, my take is that after a few generations, lots of 
works are going to end up BY-NC except where people using the site are 
against NC.

BY-SA people who don't like NC are not going to want to take part as they 
leaves them the use of BY for their works, but that is not what they want.
>
> I'm afraid this may not be a great example from the PoV of supporting an
> anti-NC thesis, though. Because of network effects and relatively low
> utility, it may well be that ccMixter is one of the few places where an
> "NC commons" may actually "succeed".

Well, one thought is, do good works of art get produced starting with NC 
pieces or components?

Another would be, (I don't think this one is of much interest to people who 
like Free) does NC help an artist do better financially than ARR for works 
the artist releases under NC. (At least as well as might be more fair then 
better...)
>
> Though now I'm going to have to think about what "succeed" means in this
> context. To simply be reused at ccMixter is one thing -- but to have any
> relevance beyond it is another.
>
> > The obvious examples, if you're OK with evidence-by-anecdote are all
>
> I'd prefer to avoid it, but I'll use it if it's all I can get. ;-)
>
> > around- open source projects with commercial involvement are the norm
> > because they work. There are some variants of open source software
> > licenses with NC terms, but they aren't popular.
>
> Yep. NC for software was pretty common in the 1980s and early 1990s. Now
> it is officially a dead parrot. ;-)

I don't recall NC for software. I do recall shareware from back in the day, 
but shareware is far from NC.
>
> I *know* this is true, but I'm going to have to dig for specific
> examples (I've forgotten about those packages precisely because they
> were NC and are therefore of little use!).

I would be interested in that history from a trivia point of view.
>
> > Some of that has to
> > do with GPL network effects, of course,
>
> Hmm. Network effects. By which you mean that "GPL Compatibility" rather
> than "Copylefted" is the relevant force at work.

Perhaps, but that is one of the points of copyleft in the GPL.
>
> > but that isn't the whole story.
>
> I concur.
>
> Cheers,
> Terry

all the best,

drew
-- 
(da idea man)