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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Greg London" <greglondon.1 AT gmail.com>
  • To: "Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] CC homepage
  • Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:16:09 -0400



On 4/25/07, Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com> 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 )
 
Yes, if contributing to the confusion of the word Freedom is
the goal. then this would definitely be a good thing.
 
Alternatively, if the goal is to wrap CC up in even
more ambiguous language that has a higher priority
on feel good emotional tugs than on clarity, this is
still a good idea.
 
And, if CC really, truly, wants to turn the word
freedom into a completely arbitrary word that
really just boils down to "Use our license, not theirs",
then by all means, go through the entire CC website
and change every occurrence of "right" to "freedom".
 
While you're at it, change every occurrence
of the word "use" to "utilize" because that sounds
more impressive.
 
And then send it through a fax a couple of times
just to make it completely unreadable.
 
On the other hand, CC could stop farting around,
could stop encouraging this sort of irresponsible
behaviour, and could use the word "rights" when
talking about the various rights in copyright law,
and reserve the word "freedom" to licenses
that actually make a work free, such as CC-SA.
 
I think "freedom" has been eaten by a grue.
 
 
 
 

 



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