Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Andrew Rens <andrewrens AT gmail.com>]

Hi Greg

On 16 April 2012 12:00, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell AT gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 7:37 PM, Andrew Rens <andrewrens AT gmail.com> wrote:
> Not even a a maximalist reading of copyright law can prohibit all the ways
> that a work can be monetized, a coherent way to define monetization hasn't
> emerged yet, instead all attempt suffer from the same vagueness as the nc
> clause.

I wasn't proposing 'monitization' as license language: Rather, I was pointing
out that your particular language excluded (one of) the most
significant ways which creative works are commercial exploited online, and as such— I consider that particular language fatally flawed.

ok.

I suggested in my previous email that if this is a significant way that creative works are commercially exploited online then it may well be worth adding. However whether it should be depends on two questions: (1) can it be defined in the same certain way as the other categories such as sale and (2) is this something that licensor reserving commercial rights want restricted?

> Copyright law doesn't restrict every act with a work, since that leads to
> indeterminacy (at least at the margins) but specific acts such as copying.

Thanks for the lecture. It's not particularly relevant here, however.

As I said in my previous email I assume that you know this, I was simply spelling out the basis of my response for the purposes of clarity.

No need to assume bad faith.

And in
practice the majority of the interesting acts require copying and/or
performance, and so there is usually plenty of room to hang whatever
awful requirements you deem necessary.

> what I am doing is making clear why I think that all the ways to monetize a
> work is not a useful test for a licence.

All? Perhaps not.  But if a license claims to inhibit commercial exploitation/
use in commercial contexts/etc... then it's a pretty poor license if it actually
fails to do so in substantial ways.

and that is why it is simply proposed, open to for discussion

if there are substantial ways then lets identify them and see if they can be clearly defined

> Have you successfully used the NC licence to ear advertising income? It
> would useful to see examples of such successes.

I haven't personally, as it's not something I'm interested in doing.

So you wouldn't use the CRR licence whether or not it was clarified in the way that I a suggesting

 

It's trivial to do so:

Throw the content on youtube, enable advertising revenue sharing, and use
the license violation to shut down competing clones of your work which
are being spamvertised.

Can you point us to an actual example that has occurred?

[snip]

> If it is popular that should give us pause to think that perhaps those
> practising such businesses have determined that to be the best option
> available to them to achieve popularity of their work through having others
> distribute them.

Then the license holder is free to permit that usage—

That is a good point, although right now it is still burdensome for most licensors it should be trivial but somehow we haven't seen automated permission giving take off as much as it should.

and they can
achieve the outcome where if anyone is getting a cut of a distributors advertising income it's them.

Agreed. So how could one define accompanying advertisements in a clear way?

Listing the commercial rights reserved, whether or not it is a closed list seems to be a good way to smooth the way to automated permission granting.

> Do you think NC as currently defined avoids this?  If you've spent much time
> on CC discussion lists over the years you'll have seen people who maintain
> that NC bans both you examples, others who think it permits both, and yet
> others who think it allows Ebaumsworld's use but not sale of a CC licensed
> book of the month club and vice versa.

Yes, I do. I used that set of examples because I thought it highlighted
clearly non-desirable outcomes from the language you proposed, thats all.

Many people don't think NC clearly avoids this, That is not surprising since NC relies on divining intention and it is difficult to do so especially online.

-- 
Andrew Rens

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