Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <rob AT robmyers.org>]

On 04/29/2012 05:24 PM, "Carlos Solís" wrote:
> Several authors in the free software movement (most particularly the
> members of the FSF) are reluctant to use DFCW licensing (CC-BY-SA, or
> CC-BY) because, in that way, their works of opinion could be freely
> modified by others, which could be used to distort their opinions [1].
> However, despite of the obvious reason for their decision, such a position
> has been perceived as incongruent by free culture advocates [2]. A way to
> be able to freely license a work, while guaranteeing that the integrity of
> the authors of opinion works and their ideas is upheld, should be of great
> concern for the following versions of CC-BY-SA licenses.

BY-SA 3.0 already requires that modified versions be marked:

"3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, 
Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, 
perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to 
exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:
[...]
b. to create and Reproduce Adaptations provided that any such 
Adaptation, including any translation in any medium, takes reasonable 
steps to clearly label, demarcate or otherwise identify that changes 
were made to the original Work."

It also contains a non-endorsement clause, 4.c:

"You may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection 
with, sponsorship or endorsement by the Original Author, Licensor and/or 
Attribution Parties, as appropriate, of You or Your use of the Work, 
without the separate, express prior written permission of the Original 
Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties."

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

> My idea to do it would be to add a mandatory disclaimer for derivative
> CC-BY-SA works of opinion that states whether the derivative work has been
> stated by the original author to be in the spirit of the original work or
> not. In the negative case, the derivative work must clearly state that the
> derivative work's ideas are solely from the author of the derivative work,
> not necessarily from the original author.

This is an administrative burden on both upstream and downstream 
authors, and an opportunity for game playing on the part of upstream 
authors. For example if evil author A doesn't answer requests until 
after my book adapting their book is published, or if popular author B 
gets requests to approve many fan adaptations.

- Rob.