Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

>> Telling your readers that you are licensing
>> the work NOW to be CC-NC-something, but also
>> committing to them NOW that you will release
>> the work to CC-BY after X years have passed,
>> is a committment that will get some readers
>> attentions.
>
> And doing the exact same thing with CC-BY-SA in
> place of the example's CC-BY would not get the
> attention of those same readers for some reason?

Sure,it gets readers attention, but then it completely
destroys the *foremost* reason I would support this
license: It is a way to put pressure on copyright
term laws.

If an author says "I only need the term on my work
to be 40 years,then I will put this work in the
public domain (or CC-BY)", then it makes it hard
for term-extenders to argue that authors need
MORE time, when these authors are already doing it
for LESS time.

If you change the license sothat when the time
ends, the work gets relicensed under CC-SA or
pretty much ANYTHING that isn't close to public
domain of CC-BY, then term-extender people can
ignore these examples because people using that
kind of license aren't demonstrating
the need for a shorter term beforethe work enters
the public domain.

The underlying purpose is to put pressure on
copyright terms. The license provides some incentive
to do this by letting authors associate their work
with CC and getting the good karma sales by
committing to a shorter term.

If you change the license so that the license
converts to anything other than CC-BY or public domain,
then you kill the underlying purpose of the license
of putting pressure on copyright terms.

Greg