Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Francesco Poli <invernomuto AT paranoici.org>]

Hello to everybody,
Section 3(a)(5) of CC-by-sa-v4.0draft2 states:

[...]
>      (5) You may not offer or impose any additional or different terms
>      on the Work.  You may not restrict the ability of a recipient of
>      the Work from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient
>      by the terms of this Public License, including through the
>      imposition of any effective technological measures.
[...]

The last part is the infamous anti-DRM (or anti-TPM, if you prefer)
clause, probably the most controversial part of CC-v3.0 licenses.
Again, it does not seem to have changed significantly.

As I said previously [1], I strongly recommend that this clause be
enhanced, so that it *explicitly* allows parallel distribution.

[1] https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2012-January/006582.html

I hope this suggestion may be implemented in the next draft.

As was pointed out [2] by Anthony "osm", it's strange "that CC would
take such a hard line against DRM, while at the same time providing the
unquestionably non-free NC licenses."

[2] https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-licenses/2012-April/006835.html

Moreover, CC currently takes this hard line against DRM (through an
anti-DRM clause that I consider non-free), but, at the same time, *no*
CC license (not even CC-by-sa!) requires source availability.

I think this is very awkward: you *can* distribute CC-by-sa-licensed
material in a format that hampers modifications (while keeping your
preferred form for modification for yourself), but you *cannot*
absolutely apply even the weakest form of DRM, not even if you make
DRM-unencumbered copies available in parallel!

I acknowledge that DRM is worse than source secrecy, but anyway,
what I described above looks like a sort of self-contradiction...


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