Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Sarah Pearson <sarah AT creativecommons.org>]

Thanks for weighing in, Christopher. Here are a few considerations for us to think about as we decide on various categories of rights -- 

1) Every right we include in the license grant creates the possibility that someone holding those rights may apply the license, even if that same rights holder does not own the copyright. This raises a number of challenges. 
- CC licenses were built as copyright licenses, so the license may not be the right fit if applied only to rights other than copyright. If the scope of the additional right being licensed varies significantly from the scope of copyright, it would be very confusing for someone holding only that additional right to apply a CC license. (For example, if that additional right does not allow adaptations of the work, we would have to somehow ensure that those rights holders only applied the ND licenses.) For this reason (among others), we need to thoroughly understand the scope of any additional rights we include in the license grant. 

2) As a general matter, we likely only want to include rights likely to be held by the copyright owner. If not, we greatly increase the risk of the scenario I described above, which increases the complexity of the licenses considerably. (Otherwise, how would licensees know what permission they are getting when they use a CC license?) That means a baseline question for any new right is likely: Is the right likely to be held by the copyright owner? 

3) Even where the copyright owner holds additional rights, we still must keep in mind that the license was designed as a copyright license. Because some other areas of law have extremely different rights and subject matter, we will want to think very carefully about the implications of adding any significantly different types of rights (such as patent or trademark). 

4) Where it does not make sense for us to include a particular category of rights in the license grant, a waiver is another option. This approach avoids the scenario above where someone holding only rights other than copyright applies a CC license. But it would have the benefit of neutralizing rights owned by the copyright holder that might interfere with the copyright license. Of course, CC's experience with the database rights waiver should lead us to approach this option with caution as well. 

5) Where we do not include additional rights in the license or waiver, those rights may prevent licensees from exercising the rights granted by CC licenses. This is an obvious point, but one worth making because it is the reason we are considering the issue at all. 

Curious if others have additional considerations to add to the discussion.

best,
Sarah

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 4:24 PM, Christopher Covington <cov AT vt.edu> wrote:

For whatever it's worth, I think semiconductor mask rights are so
similar to copyright that they should be given the same
treatment--licensed rather than waived. Design patents should probably
be treated similarly to traditional patents. I for one am in favor of an
explicit patent grant. I don't have much more than a piecemeal
understanding of all the issues and a gut feeling to motivate these
positions, however.

Regards,
Christopher

On Thu, 2012-04-12 at 10:15 -0700, Sarah Pearson wrote:
> Thanks very much for this concrete proposal, Christopher. We have
> added it to the 4.0 wiki.
>
> Defining the scope of the license is the most challenging aspect of
> the 4.0 drafting process. We continue to struggle with the tension
> between wanting the license to be as comprehensive as possible to give
> licensees all of the rights they need to truly exercise the rights
> granted, and on the other hand, preventing it from being so broad it
> includes rights that are not likely to be held by a single licensor.
>
> Note there is also a second question as to whether these rights beyond
> copyright should be licensed and subject to all of the license
> conditions, or whether they should simply be waived or not asserted by
> the licensor (and if so, which rights should fall into which
> category). The initial draft of 4.0 includes a waiver of "ancillary
> rights" to the extent possible and necessary for the licensee to
> exercise the rights granted under the license. We are very curious to
> hear thoughts on whether this dual approach is practical and useful.
>
> All of these issues are extremely important for receiving community
> feedback. Any input would be much appreciated.
>
> best,
> Sarah
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 3:59 AM, Christopher Covington <cov AT vt.edu>
> wrote:
>         With the expansion of rights licensed expanding to include
>         database
>         rights, I'd like to propose also adding other sui generis
>         rights,
>         specifically semiconductor mask rights and design rights.
>         These were
>         both recently added to a modified version of the Apache
>         license to come
>         up with the Solderpad Open License [1].
>
>         1. http://solderpad.org/licenses/SHL-0.51/
>
>         Regards,
>         Christopher
>
>         _______________________________________________
>         List info and archives at
>         http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
>         Unsubscribe at
>         http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/cc-licenses
>
>         In consideration of people subscribed to this list to
>         participate
>         in the CC licenses http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0
>         development
>         process, please direct unrelated discussions to the
>         cc-community list
>         http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
>
> _______________________________________________
> List info and archives at http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
> Unsubscribe at http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/cc-licenses
>
> In consideration of people subscribed to this list to participate
> in the CC licenses http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0 development
> process, please direct unrelated discussions to the cc-community list
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community


_______________________________________________
List info and archives at http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
Unsubscribe at http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/cc-licenses

In consideration of people subscribed to this list to participate
in the CC licenses http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0 development
process, please direct unrelated discussions to the cc-community list
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community