Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>]

drew Roberts wrote:
> I guess the question might be is, does the law, as it now exists, presume 
> that 
> the last person has already negotiated the needed rights? Perhaps that is 
> not 
> the right question, I am not sure.

I don't think it presumes it, no.

> I think I have read some funny info on co-authors and copyright royalies. 
> My 
> memory is fuzzy on that now.

There are two popular solutions for this problem with software:

1) Rights assignment (what GNU requires). Contributing authors assign
all rights to an organization, which (presumably) they trust. That
organization can then change the license at will. They also have the
mandate to pursue copyright infringement claims (this is the reason the
FSF gives for this practice).

2) Partial rights assignment. This is what OpenOffice.org does. The
original author and the collective organization split the rights. Unlike
an outright rights assignment, you do not lose the right to relicense
your own work. The organization, however, gains the right to do so.

Should they sell more permissive licenses, they would owe you a share of
the royalties according to whatever terms you made the assignment under
(which is possibly nothing in the case of OO.o, I'm not sure -- but it
certainly could be a percentage of some kind).

I think there may be a number of other organizations that use this
model, but OO.o is the only one I know off hand. The outright rights
assignment (#1) is rare, because it requires a very high level of trust
in the organization being granted the rights. Some people do trust the
FSF that much, though.

Of course, the nature of the license is such that a 3rd party could
reuse the same work under the free-license and not be subject to any
such deals. If their version were to be re-licensed, permission would
have to be negotiated with the organization (easier) or with all authors
(hard).

Clearly either of these models could be used by an organization which
hoped to profit from extended licensing sales of By-SA works. ISTM it
could be a good model, I'm giving it some thought for a project of my own.

Note, for example, that as long as the Anti-TPM language remains in
effect in CC licenses, that console game packagers of By-SA games would
need such an extended license (unless they open their console up to
non-DRM games -- either way it's a win for the game developers).

Cheers,
Terry

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