Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>]

On 12/01/12 17:11, Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:07:00 -0800 Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> 
> [...]
>> (1) DRM prohibition=non-free is an old argument, didn't seem the
>> majority opinion last times discussed. Personally, I see it as similar
>> to copyleft or source requirements -- perceived as onerous by some,
>> but a strategic option (ie sometimes will be effective and appropriate
>> measure, other times not) for protecting freedom.
> 
> Exactly, an anti-DRM clause is similar to a strong copyleft mechanism
> (with source availability requirement), in some respects.
> And, like a copyleft mechanism, it *should* allow parallel distribution.

Copyleft does not allow proprietary distribution of work *received under
copyleft*.

It's true that the original author can distribute the work in parallel,
but that is outside the scope of the license.

It is important not to confuse these scenarios.

> After all, a copyleft clause would be non-free, if it prohibited *any*
> distribution of compiled (non-source) forms of the work.

Why? It's the freedom to use the software that must be protected.
Receiving the source is a better guarantor of the freedom to do so than
receiving a binary due to bitrot, and Gentoo-style systems automate
compilation where that is needed.

> Widely used strong copyleft licenses *do* allow distribution of
> non-source forms, as long as the source is made available in parallel. 

And yet they do not allow proprietary software to be created through the
use of copyright law. So if we are comparing copyleft's handling of
copyright to how DRM should be handled, DRM should clearly also be
disallowed.

If we are comparing DRM to copyright, DRM is proprietization, not
compilation.

- Rob.