Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Lawrence Lessig <lessig AT pobox.com>]

Today we are retiring two of the Creative Commons licenses -- the  
stand alone Developing Nations license, as well as one of the three  
Sampling licenses we offer. The reasons for these retirements are  
both practical and principled.

The practical reason is simple lack of interest: From the start,  
Creative Commons has promised to keep our family of licenses as  
simple as possible. Actual demand has been one of the key indicators  
of how simple things can be. We estimate just 0.01% of our existing  
licenses are Developing Nations licenses, and 0.01% are the version  
of the Sampling license that we are retiring. Those numbers say that  
these licenses are not in demand.

The principled reasons are different with each license. The  
Developing Nations license is in conflict with the growing "Open  
Access Publishing" movement. While the license frees creative work in  
the developing nations, it does not free work in any way elsewhere.  
This means these licenses do not meet the minimum standards of the  
Open Access Movement. Because this movement is so important to the  
spread of science and knowledge, we no longer believe it correct to  
promote a stand alone version of this license. Later this month, we  
will begin a discussion about adding the terms of the Developing  
Nations license to 5 of the other CC licenses, and giving users the  
option to include those terms in their license. (So, for example, you  
could select a BY-NC license for the developed world, but offer a BY  
license for creators within Developing Nations.) Because such an  
option would be attached to a standard CC license, it would not  
conflict with the principle we are announcing here. Based upon the  
feedback we get to that idea, we will decide whether to implement it.

The Sampling License presents a similar concern. Until today, we have  
offered three versions of the Sampling license. Two of those versions  
permit noncommercial sharing of the licensed work (SamplingPlus, and  
Noncommercial SamplingPlus). One (the Sampling License) only permits  
the remix of the licensed work, not the freedom to share it. There is  
a strong movement to convince Creative Commons that our core licenses  
at least permit the freedom to share a work noncommercially.

Creative Commons supports that movement. We will not adopt as a  
Creative Commons license any license that does not assure at least  
this minimal freedom -- at least not without substantial public  
discussion. We are grateful for the feedback, and for the  
understanding of those who helped us craft the sampling licenses,  
both of which got us here.

This change does not affect any existing licensed work. The links to  
these licenses, and every Creative Commons license, will always  
remain valid. The only change we're making today is that we will no  
longer offer these licenses on our licensing page.

To read more about these retirements, please visit our retired  
licenses page at
http://creativecommons.org/retiredlicenses


Lawrence Lessig
CEO
Creative Commons
171 Second Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94105
http://creativecommons.org