Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <greglondon.1 AT gmail.com>]

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.