Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Javier Candeira <javier AT candeira.com>]

Björn Terelius wrote:
> On 4/26/07, Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
>>
>> Björn Terelius wrote:
>> > Freedoms and rights are the same thing.
>>
>> No. In the context of IP law they are exact opposites, since the
>> "rights" in question are specifically the rights to limit other people's
>> freedoms.
> 
> But they also refer to the users *rights* to use the work, and in that
> sense
> they are equal.

Terry is right, and you are wrong, at least in copyright.

In the case of free software, there is a rightsholder (the licenser) that
gives the receiver of a copy of their software (the licensee) a *license* or
permission to use, copy, modify and distribute verbatim and modified copies.

So we have not only rights and freedoms, but also licenses.

* Copyrights are created by dint of fixing a work on a physical medium, and
these are the rights. In the case of copyrights, they not only mean freedom
to you, but restrictions to others.

* Freedoms are what you have on a Public Domain work, or on non-restricted
act (like looking at a building in the street). Freedoms don't entail any
restriction to others.

* Licenses give permissions (or, in the Spanish LPI wording, authorisations
("autorizaciones"). They are granted by rightsholders. Not by
freedomholders, or by licensees except if the rightsholder also gave them
explicit permission to sublicense.

The FSF uses the word "freedom" because, quite rightly, they consider free
software licensees are restoring the freedom that copyright law takes away.
Thus, copyright and copyfreedom are complementary, and growing one carves a
hole in the other.

If you want to use the word "right" in a more lax sense, you can. All three
are a "right", as nobody can tell you not to do what you have legal right,
have the freedom or have been granted a license to do. You "have the right"
to do it.

But using words as laxly as we want robs them of their usefulness to mark
distinctions.

Javier

(IANAL, not in Spain nor anywhere else).