Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Kerrick Long <me AT kerricklong.com>]

I'm sorry to break it to you, but the only reason many people use CC-NC is because it is so conservative. In some people's ideal world, everybody would license using CC-BY-SA, but this is not an ideal world. Quite frankly, if the CC-NC was any more liberal in its allowed uses, I would simply discontinue use of Creative Commons. I use it so people can have the photos for their desktop background, or print it out and hang it on their wall at home, or share it on Facebook with their friends, or things like that.

I do not want a blog running advertisements to use it, nor do I want a non-profit organization with a budget for other things using it, nor do I want it to expire and automatically be transferred into a CC-BY-SA license—if money is being made by using my work, or a budget could be allocated to pay for its usage, I want to earn a living, and I don't want that to stop in a set number of years.

I joined this mailing list because I wanted to introduce what real-world content creators who make their living producing creative works think into this discussion. I can tell from what I've been receiving that very few of you put bread on the table and a roof over your head by creating content, because many of you seem to be completely opposed to enabling anybody to make money with works licensed under any CC license.

Also, let's be honest here: CC-NC is not a "gateway license" for any purpose. Those who are reserving commercial rights to their work are highly unlikely to open it up further in the future, they are simply using CC-NC because it's a widely-accepted, well-understood, generally-written license that allows people to personally enjoy and share their work, but still allows them to make money with it at every possible venture. If CC-NC gets more "liberal," if it allows broader usage, many people who currently use CC-NC will likely go back to writing their own custom license that is likely to be more restrictive than CC-NC, just to ensure they can still make a living with their work.

Thanks,

Kerrick Long

http://kerricklong.com/

On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 5:14 AM, Gregor Hagedorn <g.m.hagedorn AT gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree with Greg. Is it not better to have people use CC-NC (and a
> potential CC-NP) rather than keep a strict copyright and reserve all rights?
> The plain truth is that not everybody is willing to make creative work and
> give it away for commercial purposes, because they simply cannot afford to.
> The good news is many of those people want to be able to let others use
> their work for personal/private uses, so shouldn't CC try to enable them to
> share their work as much as they are willing? A conservative NC license
> would bring more content creators into the world of CC (possibly to give
> more rights later), and a liberal license would make those already in the
> world of CC happy. That's the main reason I propose having a conservative
> and a liberal non-commercial-type license.

I agree with others that there is little evidence that closed content
NC-licenses pave the way to open content CC BY/CC BY-SA licenses.
Personal experience rather tells me that people widely misunderstand
the NC license as something better, and certainly fit for non-profit
use. I think the ambiguity analyzed in the NC-perception study by CC
also shows this.

I cannot yet see a way for an operationally and internationally
working definition of a non-profit license. If someone can propose a
working definition, it may be a way to explore that as well. In the
absence of a non-profit-enabled license (or rather, as long as the CC
BY/CC BY-SA _are_ the non-profit licenses), my proposed solution for
CC 4.0 is:

a) make the definition of NC unambiguous. The only possible way to do
this is to make it more conservative (else licensors could claim the
did not intend the liberal rewording, and any licensee of this
"liberal-NC" would be faced with unmanagable legal risks)

b) change the name and code from NC to "CRR" = "Commercial rights
reserved" to avoid the "positive feeling" of the NC phrase. In my
experience many who have no commercial interest choose the NC license
because they believe it is the more valuable commons, the one that
they would like to see. They are not aware of the practical
differences between non-commercial and non-profit or charity work.

c) Perhaps, to in the end reduce license incompatibility
proliferation, make the CC-CRR 4.0 license time-limited, i.e. provide
it ONLY as a set of licenses where the CRR-term expires prior to
copyright expiration.

Thus, CC would no longer provide a direct successor for CC BY-NC or CC
BY-NC-SA, but the CC 4.0 license chooser set would include:

CC BY-SA-CRR(exp-2017)
CC BY-SA-CRR(exp-2022)
CC BY-SA-CRR(exp-2032)

(5, 10 and 20 years expiration, i.e. in 2018, 2023, or 2033 the works
become available under CC BY-SA)

The license chooser would be updated each year to reflect the 5, 10,
20 year terms. The license itself would contain a clause that allows a
maximum duration of such a license is 20 years, i.e. CC does not
support, in the year 2012, an exp-2042 term - but in 2022 it does. I
think this is doable, understandable, transparent, and operationally
workable for licensees. The latter point is not true for licenses that
state a duration, because typically it will be impossible to certainly
proof the creation time of a work, even photo metadata are not
reliable.

The time-limited licenses in general have been discussed in a separate
thread. For the purpose of CC 4.0 I propose to test them only for the
NC/CRR case, however, to keep things relatively simple.

Gregor

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