Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Gregor Hagedorn <g.m.hagedorn AT gmail.com>]

Dear Heather,

we have an existing CC NC license. What the "NC" means here, is
defined by the legal license text. The title "non-commercial" is
relevant only for advertising this license to licensors and licensees.
We largely agree that the legal license text does not describe a
effective vision of a "non-commercial realm.

Many of us are experiencing the problems embedded in this mismatch of
what people believe "non-commercial" includes, and what it actually
does legally, in our daily work as a huge problem, preventing a more
effective and compatible common to be created. We therefore propose a
new title or label for the existing legal license, to reduce
misunderstandings. We believe "Commercial Rights Reserved" is a better
communication of what the license actually does.

In doing this, the existing legal framework, which is after all the
most used CC license in world (unfortunately, it is also the least
re-usable...), will persist, but with a better communication as to
what it achieves.

Doing this would create no impediment to create a new license that
truly matches your vision of a non-commercial realm. I have not seen a
workable legal definition for that, but that does not mean anything
for the future. Here I only plead to not confuse these two issues. A
new "non-commercial realm license" would be a totally different legal
text from the existing one. There would be absolutely no chance of
making this license compatible with the CC NC-3.0 license. In
Contrast, CC NC-3.0 and CC CRR-4.0 would be totally compatible,
because the legal definition would essentially remain the same.

Gregor