Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Antoine Pitrou <solipsis AT pitrou.net>]

On Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:24:15 -0600
"Carlos Solís" <csolisr AT riseup.net> 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.
> 
> 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.

The essence of free culture is that you don't know how your works will
be re-used by other people. Legal guarantees against misrepresenting
your writings or opinions already exist (moral right, defamation/libel
laws, etc.). Richard Stallman may not like the idea of having his works
re-used to promote different opinions from his, but that just means
that he's uncomfortable with the whole idea of free culture and free
art.

Common sense and honesty should be enough to prompt people to disclaim
when they have changed the spirit of someone else's writings. Not
everything needs to be formalized in a legal license.

Regards

Antoine.