Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Gregor Hagedorn <g.m.hagedorn AT gmail.com>]

Greg, you quote me below what you write, but I tried to say the opposite you imply. I may not have written clear enough. I propose a license where the NC or ND condition expires after a duraction or in a given year, not that the license expires (which then reverts to standard copyright). My argument is that this needs to be intuitive (expery of condition, not entire license), thus the proposed formatting proposals.  Adding just an EXP clause to the end of a CC license code could lead to the assumption of exactly what you describe as insane. -- Gregor

On 23 December 2011 18:38, Greg London <email AT greglondon.com> wrote:

Wait.

A work that is licensed CC-NC-ND-BY for the
first year it is available, and then it
returns to All Rights Reserved?

Really?

CC-NC-ND-BY is basically a "tape swapping"
license when music was still played on tapes.
It is barely less restrictive than
using "Fair Use" under All Rights Reserved.

But folks want to have that expire and the work
return to All Rights Reserved after a year?
Seriously???? CC-NC-ND-BY isn't restrictive
enough already? We want to make it last only
one year and then go back to ARR?

That's the most insane thing I've ever heard of.

The only people who would use such a license would
be people who either falsely think they're doing
"good" through a misunderstanding of copyright law,
or they simply want "CC" on their work to try
and get some traffic for CC based searches, and
then be able to revoke the license after they've
got some hits.

This is like the coal company going to the EPA
and asking them to lower the Green standards so they
can dump mercury into the water table, and still
advertise their stuff as "green".

At some point "green" becomes a meaningless label.

If CC does this, then "CC" becomes a meaningless label.


Greg

>> There are many cases (I'm thinking websites in particular) where an
>> author
>> lists their CC license in a single location, such as the side panel of a
>> blog using a CMS.  In these cases it may be difficult to implement this
>> the
>> way you suggest.  NC2013 would appear to be applicable for all content,
>> from the earliest post from, say, eight years ago to one made yesterday.
>>
>
> I agree, but I think this is not principal problem. The author would be
> free to update the license every year (she or he holding copyright, being
> able to re-license). The fact that parts expire at an earlier date can be
> discovered only through web archiving mechanisms (e.g. webcitation could
> automatically display all NC-expired works). The problem of copyright
> holders changing licenses is not unique to this, it is a major problem
> with
> using CC-licensed Flickr images.
>
>
> An alternative is to declare the length of time rather than the year the
>> clause would end.  So, NC7 would mean all my work is under an NC license
>> until seven years after it's original publication.  This, of course,
>> will
>> need to be used in tandem with clearly stated dates of publication,
>> which I
>> believe is so in many cases, anyway.  And this is probably an easier
>> practice than to state individual licenses for every work.
>>
>
> I think the opposite. Discovering the relevant licensing date (which may
> be
> different from the date of publication) will be very difficult in most
> cases. With a "last year" of NC-condition statement being part of the
> license URL I can go into any form of webarchiving with machine-driven
> discovery. With an NC7-url only humans can facilitate re-use, with deep
> research and in most cases significant uncertainties (translating into
> risk
> of copyright violations). I may overlook something... Are the webserver
> "last modified" dates still reliable on archived copies?
>
> I think the utility and reliability of automated and legally save
> discovery
> should decide this. In principle I would be happy with either version
> (expiration-year-dated or duration-dated).
>
>
>
> I also feel the meaning of NC2013 is a little ambiguous.  Does it mean
> it's
>> no longer NC as of January 1 2013, or January 1 2014?  If I'm confused,
>> there are probably others out there who would be, too =)
>>
>
> I agree. I think there could be value in  NCexp2013. It just looks more
> complicated. It should be visually intuitive. Some further tests, what do
> you think of:
>
> CC BY-NC- exp2013-SA
>   : I think this is confusing, because the link of expire to condition is
> not unambigous
> CC BY-NCexp2013-SA
> CC BY-NC/exp2013-SA
> CC BY-NC(exp2013)-SA
>
> Any other ideas?
>
> ----
>
> Of course, the model of having the license change to an arbitrary other
> license is possible. But at least I would initially think if someone say
> "the license _expires_" that it simply expires, not that it is replaced by
> another license. I find "license expires" confusing (when it really means:
> "is replaced by another license", whereas I find "non-commercial condition
> expires 2013" intuitive, i.e. the remaining CC conditions continue to be
> applicable.
>
> Gregor