Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Tim Cas <darkuranium AT gmail.com>]

So I'll change an 'A' into a 'a' and call it modified. See where I'm going here?

Anyways, in my opinion, the one-but-last statement says it all: "BY derivatives should not be bound by the anti-DRM clause."

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what people here think, but rather those who use the license. I'd wager that the vast majority of CC-BY-* users do not know about this clause, and if they had, I think things would have been different. Again, not counting -SA here, where the clause in question *does* make sense. It should not be present in -NC either; more on this below.

Personally, I've used CC-BY and derivatives before for my work, but I've been rather put off ever since I learned about the clause... You see, if I allow the use of my product for any purpose, then I, well, expect to allow the use *for any purpose* - DRM-encumbered or not.

While I personally am *strongly* against DRM, I also don't like politics being mixing with licenses, but that is *exactly* what the clause does; it mixes anti-DRM and anti-proprietary politics and policies into a license. Licenses are not political documents or manifestos of a group, they have a different purpose. If I wanted politics, I would have picked the GPL.

In other words, when I say "for any purpose", I don't want to put some hidden "and"-s and "but"-s (attribution notwithstanding) into the license.

So, why do I think that this clause should be removed despite the fact that I'm strongly against DRM? Two reasons:
1) When I release a license as CC-BY, I mean it. Hiding some anti-DRM clauses in there is simply being dishonest... It's like the fine print, sure, it does say this *somewhere* but not many people read fine print and are thus unaware of the consequences.
2) How do you differ between proprietary formats for technical reasons (filesize, efficiency, ...) vs DRM anyways? Or what if the user himself wants to, say, convert the work from EPUB to Kindle's proprietary format - who are you to shout "CC-BY! CC-BY!" on one hand and deny the user (or the company, for that matter) that right on the other hand?

The point 2) here is why I believe that this should not be present in -NC either - someone can release a derivative only for Kindle (which would mean that there is no, say, EPUB "original") and yet gain (or expect) absolutely no profit from it, say if they release this for free. Should they be punished for (say) not being aware of Kindle's proprietary nature?

On 24 January 2012 21:34, Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org> wrote:

On 21/01/12 01:41, drew Roberts wrote:
> On Friday 13 January 2012 15:22:55 Kent Mewhort wrote:
>> (of course, it
>> is always open for the original author to only distribute TPM'd versions in
>> the first place, but in this case I don't see why such an author would even
>> release under CC at all).
>
> Well, one reason is for the positive buzz without the correspondent
> contribution.
>
> On the whole though I see you main point re BY-SA versus the others.

DRM should be forbidden on *unmodified* work under non-SA licenses.

This is because otherwise the freedom that the license grants to receive
and use them, and in the case of non-ND licenses the power that they
give you to remove the freedom of others, is effectively removed.

BY derivatives should not be bound by the anti-DRM clause. But on that
basis should CC-BY-NC derivatives have to be NC? ;-)

- Rob.

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