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cc-licenses - [cc-licenses] BY-NC-SA 4.0d1 Notes

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>
  • To: cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-licenses] BY-NC-SA 4.0d1 Notes
  • Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2012 18:12:14 +0100

General Points
==============

* I agree with Luis, the new license looks great. It is very easy to read.



* I am concerned about the various explicit statements that the license makes about not covering other rights (especially patents) in the light of OSI's discussion of CC0:

http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-February/000231.html

It may be best simply to mention model releases.



* I am concerned about the scope of ShareAlike, as indicated by my notes on 1.d below. Both from the point of view being a strong proponent of copyleft, and from the point of view of practicality.





Specific Points
===============

* Preamble:"To the extent this Public License may be considered a contract,"

I assume this careful phrasing will avoid the license being considered a contract in the US:

http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/



* Preamble: "This Public License does not affect third party rights in the Licensed Work."

What does this mean? How could the license affect third party rights?



* Preamble: "Additionally, You are responsible for complying with other laws that may apply"

I assume that this doesn't fall foul of the same problem as the UK OGL, which mentions *specific* *national* laws:

http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/od-discuss/2011-October/000064.html



* 1.d: "The Licensed Work may be accompanied by or integrated with other work, content or material not covered by this Public License, such as public domain content or works owned by third parties."

What does "accompanied" mean?

What does "integrated" mean?

Is "may be" a warning or a grant of permission?

On the one hand this makes clear that reblogging or critiquing ARR work in a CC context isn't an attempt to CC license it. Which is good.

On the other, it does make it clear that BY-SA is a *very* weak copyleft, going further than the FDL and more akin to the Open Gaming License in its ability to interleave non-free material. Which may be bad.

If BY-SA is very weak copyleft and may accompany ARR work, what does this mean for "stronger copyleft", as per Drew, Wikipedia and the FSF?

And how would this affect GPL compatibility?



* 2.a.3: "where the Licensed Work is a database, in addition to the above, extract and reuse contents of the Licensed Work"

This creates an incompatible copyleft with the ODbL. At present, ODbL data may be used to produce BY-SA works.



* 2.b.1 "To the extent possible and necessary to allow You to reasonably exercise the rights granted to You under this Public License, Licensor waives or, where not permissible, agrees not to assert:

(i) Licensor’s moral rights in the Licensed Work; however, Licensor retains all other moral rights Licensor has in the Licensed Work; and"

I like this.

Is the fact that it creates an uneven standard internationally, where previous versions harmonized things more, a problem or a valid response to moral rights as a limit on free culture?

What "other moral rights"? I can't parse the second part of (i).



* 3.a.1: "If You Share the Licensed Work or an Adaptation, You must provide, in any reasonable manner based on the medium or means You are using..."

Reasonable as defined by the licensor or by the licensee? Unreasonable licensor attribution demands have been a problem for Wikipedia iirc.



* 4.a, from the notes: "Removed from this draft the portion of 3.0 Section 4(a) disallowing restrictions to be added to license (also removed from SA provision). These will be addressed in Additional Terms proposal in later 4.0 draft."

I would urge caution in allowing additional restrictions, and draw people's attention to the GPLv3's handling of them:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

"All other non-permissive additional terms are considered “further restrictions” within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term."



* 5.a "If You fail to comply with any conditions of this Public License, this Public License will terminate automatically"

Is it worth having a GPLv3-style compliance window?





- Rob.




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