Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

Well, first of all, I think Greg replied publically to a private email,
so this may not have been intended to be on list, but ...

>>The idea of granting "rights" is likely very confusing for authors and
>>artists who are used to the world of traditional media licensing.
>>Rights are what the copyright holder "owns."  Giving rights away is
>>not what artists who choose NC, for example, intend.

I see the confusion here. When you "sell" a work commercially, you
usually either "sell" rights or "license" rights. "Selling" is
invariably a bad deal for the author, and licensing is what you want.

On the other hand, the common parlance is to describe the transaction as
a "sale" either way, as in:

"We buy first serial rights and perpetual non-exclusive electronic and
reprint rights"

(note that 'first serial rights' always means 'exclusive first serial
rights' -- otherwise it wouldn't necessarily be 'first')

versus

"We buy all rights."

or

"We buy works outright."

(The latter two mean the same thing, AFAIK).

You'll find this kind of description in writer's submission guidelines,
for example.

The key concept is "exclusivity". If you are really intending to
communicate with serious artists and writers, they should be quite
familiar with this kind of language, so there should be no need to
pussyfoot around the issue. How about...

"CC licenses grant a range of non-exclusive rights to the public at
large, in a modular way, ranging from near total control (By-NC-ND) to
near total freedom (By)."

That is both precise, and in a terminology well understandable to
creative professionals. Hmm. It also manages to sneak in a freedom, but
used appropriately (I think we all agree that "By" is "Free"). So that
oughta please everybody! :-D

> What are you talking about? Of course a CC license transfers
> some rights. Just not the rights that someone like
> ASCAP would purchase.

No, he's right there -- transferring rights means losing your own rights
in the work. It's a bad deal, but there are industries in which it is
done. Licensing rights is always the better deal, and that's what CC
licenses do -- you license other people to share your rights in the
work, but not to give them away to someone else to control.

However, I disagree that this is so confusing. I think any creative
professional is going to already be aware of this distinction, and any
amateur who wants to become a professional needs to learn it.

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com