Development of Creative Commons licenses

[James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>]

Greg London wrote:
> 
> 
> On 4/25/07, *Elad Wieder* <ewieder AT creativecommons.org.il
> <mailto:ewieder AT creativecommons.org.il>> wrote:
> 
>     As being such a freedom fighter, can't you give CC people the
>     freedom to interpret the word "freedom"? 
> 
>  
> No. I do not subscribe to the humpty-dumpty mentality that a word
> means whatever someone wants it to mean.
>  
> And I'm having issue with the first line of the first page of the
> Creative Commons website trying to shoehorn itself into being
> something that it isn't, or try to shoehorn its licenses into doing
> something they don't.
>  
> You cannot simply swap "rights" assigned through copyright
> with the word "Freedom". There is no reason to do so other
> than to (1) shoehorn into the FSF defintion of Freedom or
> (2) bootstrap into the emotive meaning of Freedom.
> In either case, neither is accurate.

The word "freedom," allowing for changing spelling, is over a thousand
years old.  The meaning of having a "freedom" to do something is a
little more recent; it goes back to the early fifteenth century or so.
This is what most people reading the CC homepage would understand
"freedoms" to mean in the sentence you quoted: the ability to act in
specific ways without restraint.

The word also has many emotional resonances, in part because of its many
other meanings.  The FSF and other free software advocates have adopted
the word "freedom" because it is both accurate according to this very
old meaning and has positive (and appropriate) emotional associations.
CC has adopted the word "freedom" because it is both accurate according
to this very old meaning and has positive (and appropriate) emotional
associations.  The way in which CC is using the word is not identical to
the precise ways in which FSF uses it.  That difference does not
necessarily mean that anyone is being dishonest, or confusing, or
manipulative.

James