Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Javier Candeira <javier AT candeira.com>]

Terry Hancock wrote:
> In fact, I think it'd be an intriguing idea to reword the licenses (or
> their names, anyway) in terms of freedoms granted rather than rights
> retained. This is especially sensible if you intend to change the
> presentation to use the word "freedom", e.g.:
> 
> 1) The Freedom to share copies of the work  (all the main CC licenses)
> 2) The Freedom to modify the work (all non-ND, now "D" for "derivative")
> 3) The Freedom to use the work commercially (all non-NC, now "C" for
> "commercializable")
> 4) The Freedom to reduce the freedom of the work (all non-SA, now "H"
> for "hijackable" :-) )
> 5) The Freedom not to credit the author of the work (no v2.0+ CC
> licenses? now "P" for "plagiarizable" :-P )

Awesome. Me too: I almost top-posted.

You really should publish this somewhere prominent.

> So, now my favorite licenses are the "Derivable-Commercializable" or
> "CC-DC" and the "Derivable-Commercializable-Hijackable" "CC-DCH".

I think the issue here is one of framing. As mainstream copyright practice
frames all discourse in terms of "you may not do this or that", Creative
Commons used that frame and labeled their licenses in terms of the copyright
restrictions preserved.

Yours advances the argument better, but would have been more difficult to
explain. Now, with the inertia in the mindshare, it might be dificult to
change, but I really love your proposal.

> I remember wondering about this when I first encountered CC a few years
> ago. I found it confusing, because, given that All Rights Reserved is
> the baseline for copyright rights retained in the absence of a license
> text, it seemed very confusing to read licenses worded in terms of what
> they forbid.

On the other side, we all know the difference between a liberal state and an
absolutist one:
liberal:     all is allowed that is not explicitly forbidden.
absolutist:  all is forbidden that is not explicitly allowed.

The CC licenses are worded in a liberal manner: we forbid you *only* this.
(All these worlds are yours, but do not land on Europa, whatever).

The FSD and your proposal assume (again, not unreasonably) that copyright is
an absolutist state of things, so the freedoms we are carving out have to be
spelled one by one.

> It isn't even strictly true that the licenses are described from the
> Public Domain baseline, because, for example, none of them mention the
> restriction against TPM distribution. Instead, they are described by how
> they miss some ill-defined meta-license that isn't actually offered or
> described by CC.
>
> Of course, that would mean changing a lot more of the website!
> 
>> The word also has many emotional resonances, in part because of its many
>> other meanings.
> 
> It is very important to realize that the "many" meanings of "freedom"
> are actually pretty closely related. It always means "lacking some
> restrictions". Used without a qualifier, it means "lacking any
> significant restrictions", where "significant" is clearly in the
> judgement of the speaker.
> 
> Even the FSF habit of dissing the "zero cost" meaning of "free" is
> pretty disingenuous, since it does indeed refer to "freedom". For anyone
> who's ever been poor, it should be personally obvious that "cost" is
> indeed a significant restriction, and I feel pretty defensive every time
> someone makes that snarky comment about "talking about freedom, not
> cost". Zero per-copy cost IS a significant freedom, whether it's the
> most important or not.
> 
> Much as I dislike the billing of NC and ND licenses as "free", they do
> at least share this particular "freedom", and it is not insignificant.

And freedom to redistribute publicly. As I have mentioned before, Spanish
law allows private copying, but not redistribution.

> When a speaker knowingly violates the assumptions of his listeners,
> however, he intends to deceive, whether or not he is technically lying.
> 
> So who are the listeners and what are their assumptions?
> 
> However, there is absolutely no question that the usage on the CC page
> definitely is worded oppositely from the way the actual license
> selection process is designed, and that is at least confusing.

Thanks for this message, Terry. It is the best list email I have read in
ages. In any list.

Javier