Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Andres Guadamuz" <a.guadamuz AT ed.ac.uk>]

I agree thoroughly with James. The FSF does not have a trade mark over the
usage of the word "freedom", and I don't think that the way it's utilised in
the CC website is either confusing or problematic. 

There is a small minority of people familiar with the terminology, and who
have a very good n idea of the various movements, ideologies, licensing
methods and licence elements involved. 

Having presented on FLOSS and CC to a variety of audiences, I can convey
(anecdotally at least) that your average punter doesn't care whatsoever
about the many competing definitions, and finds them confusing. I cannot see
how the use of the word "rights" instead of "freedoms" will alleviate
whatever perceived public's misconceptions. No amount of website space will
do that job.   

Regards,

Andres

-----------------
Andres Guadamuz
AHRC Research Centre for Studies in
Intellectual Property and Technology Law
Old College, South Bridge
Edinburgh EH8 9YL 

Tel: 44 (0)131 6509699
Fax: 44 (0)131 6506317
a.guadamuz AT ed.ac.uk
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/

IP/IT/Medical Law LLM by Distance Learning
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/distancelearning/



-----Original Message-----
From: cc-licenses-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:cc-licenses-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of James
Grimmelmann
Sent: 25 April 2007 14:56
To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts
Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] CC homepage

Greg London wrote:
> As was just pointed out in the GPL discussion, the CC front page at 
> http://creativecommons.org/  says:
> 
>> Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, 
>> artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the
>>
>> freedoms
>>
>> they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms 
>> from "All Rights Reserved"
>> to "Some Rights Reserved."
> 
> And as was demonstrated in the current discussion, people new to the 
> world of FLOSS have taken this to imply that all CC licenses have 
> something to do with Freedoms.
> 
> Can someone please change "freedoms" to "rights"
> in the above text?
> 
> NC and ND manage rights to the work, but there is no Freedom to a work 
> under NC-ND. I get how everyone, including CC, likes to jump on the 
> Freedom bandwagon, but Freedom with respect to copyright has an 
> already-established meaning, and the above text is not respecting that 
> context.

"Freedom" has many meanings.

There are the freedom from want, the freedom from fear, the freedom of
speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of religion, the freedom of
conscience, the freedom to copy, the freedom to adapt, the freedom to
redistribute, the freedom to travel, the freedom to marry, degrees of
freedom, sexual freedom, and many more.  Not every use of "freedom" must
comply with the way that term is used in free software.

Moreover, the Free Software Definition talks about "free" (adjective)
software having four "freedoms" (noun, plural).  Something under NC or ND
offers freedoms 0 and 2.  The Definition of Free Cultural Works similarly
discusses four distinct "freedoms" (noun, plural).  An NC or ND work offers
three out of four.  It's thus still accurate to talk about marking something
with some "freedoms" and not with others.  The result will fall short of
being genuinely "free," but this is not an abuse of the word "freedom."

James
_______________________________________________
cc-licenses mailing list
cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses