Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam AT benfinney.id.au>]

Antoine Pitrou <solipsis AT pitrou.net>
writes:

> 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].
>
> 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.

I agree entirely. Thank you for writing succinctly what I was trying to
form in a much longer message.

> 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.

Defamation law, fraud law, and other similar laws are better positioned
to protect the author's meaning and intent in their work. Copyright is a
poor tool for the job, and as many others have pointed out we have
better tools available.

As for Creative Commons, the Attribution licenses allow the copyright
holder to constrain redistributors of the work that they “must not
distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to
the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or
reputation.” <URL:https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode>

So those who don't want their published opinions to be misrepresented
already have what they need, with the full force of copyright law if
they wish. Surely that should suffice for what is being requested here?

-- 
 \           “I am as agnostic about God as I am about fairies and the |
  `\           Flying Spaghetti Monster.” —Richard Dawkins, 2006-10-13 |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney