Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>]

On 13/01/12 18:40, Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:06:02 +0000 Rob Myers wrote:
> 
>> On 11/01/12 22:52, Francesco Poli wrote:
>>> The big question is: does the clause allow a licensee to distribute a
>>> TPM-encumbered form of the work, as long as he/she also make a clean
>>> (unencumbered) form available in parallel? If this parallel
>>
>> It does not and should not. DRM is unacceptable for software and it is
>> unacceptable for cultural works.
> 
> That fact that DRM is unacceptable should encourage to introduce
> non-free restrictions to fight against it.

We haven't established that prohibiting DRM is nonfree.

However Debian appear to have established that it is free. BY-SA 3.0 was
declared DFSG-compatible.

>>> distribution scenario is indeed allowed, then I've seen no one
>>> objecting to the freeness of the anti-TPM clause: everyone says that
>>> the clause meets the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). If instead
>>> the clause forbids parallel distribution, many people (including me)
>>> think it fails to meet the DFSG.
>>
>> On what basis? The DFSG clearly need revising to remove the possibility
>> of this confusion.
> 
> There have been countless discussions (on cc-licenses and on
> debian-legal, and maybe elsewhere) which elaborate on the reasons why
> forbidding all DRM (independently from the availability of unencumbered
> copies in parallel) obstructs free redistribution

Distributing DRM-encumbered work is not free. It is hopeless to argue
that we must allow it in the name of "freeedom".

> and discriminates against the users of some platforms.

The users of non-free platforms? They are being discriminated against by
the vendors of their platforms, not those of us who refuse to further
support the removal of their freedom.

> I won't list all the possible mailing list messages or threads.
> One example of explanation could be this one:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/10/msg00065.html

That seems to be arguing that allowing parallel distribution doesn't
break the DFSG and that we have to support DRM vendors attack on freedom
because of the hostages they hold otherwise we are not supporting freedom.

The former is specific to a scenario we are not discussing here, the
latter is morally and logically unsound.

- Rob.