Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

> So, the obvious question is : Does anyone know if
> the two "recordings"....1x Alice 1x Bob are treated
> as unique (in terms of their licenses)?

Alice owns the original work.
Bob's work is a derivative of Alice's.
If anyone likes Bob's and wants to do a cover of it,
they end up paying Alice.

> via the compulsory license.
> Ooo fragmentation, it's so purdy! :)

I'm not sure what is "fragmenting" here.
Compulsory licenses were put into copyright law
because the idea of a cover song was decided
to NOT be a total monopoly of the original author.

> *flash* Alice needs to be registered
> with ASCAP (or similar) to ensure she
> gets her dues.

Something. I'm not sure how the money
actually changes hands. I don't think
the law stipulates a particular organization,
but I'm not certain of that.


> If the two "recordings" somehow get
> entangled legally, then we have a big
> big mess.

Again, I'm not sure what is getting "entangled" here.
Alice owns the original song.
Bob's version is a derivative.
anyone else who does a cover would
go back to Alice.


> So, it's a good thing for Alice that she
> registered with ASCAP, and that she didn't
> choose SA or her CC license would have waivered
> those fees, no new car :/  ....just because
> she chose the SA license and not the NC license

> I still can't get my head around SA having
> waivered fees whilst NC does not.

NonCommercial and NoDerivatives are Market Economy
licenses. You use them because you want to make
money directly off the work being licensed.
i.e. You want to sell the work, and you believe
the license will help you do that.

ShareAlike and other licenses are Gift Economy
licenses or Community Licenses or whatever you
want to call it.  You use a Gift Economy license
if you want to take some work and make it Free
for the community to use and build upon as they
see fit. You wouldn't use ShareAlike if you wanted
to directly sell the work. (unless you ShareAlike
an old version and keep the latest version ARR,
or something)

One way to look at the difference can sometimes
boil down to how you build a barn. Say you want
to build a barn. There are at least two approaches
including (1) hiring a barn building company to come
in a build the barn for you and (2) having the
community come in and help you raise a barn together
for free.

The thing about Copyleft licenses is that it is
a way for you to say "I want to build a barn that
the whole world can use, and here's my contribution
to do that." If enough people in the community decides
to chip in their time and energy, they can take your
work, add new works to it, and end up with something
that is Free that would have taken years and cost
thousands of lives using any other approach.

And because the original work you contributed was
copylefted under GNU-GPL or ShareAlike, the final
work will also be under that same Free license.

So, if you're in it for the money, use NC and maybe
throw in ND too.

If you're looking to contribute your work to some
project that is too big for you to do alone, then
use a copyleft license and see if you can get a
community effort behind the work to complete it.