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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Heather Morrison <hgmorris AT sfu.ca>
  • To: Development of Creative Commons licenses <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [cc-licenses] CC-BY and - or versus - open access
  • Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:46:22 -0700

This is more a matter of interpretation than updating the licenses per se,
but I'm not sure what is the best forum to raise this question, so I'll raise
it here as well as open access discussion venues.

Many in the open access movement consider CC-BY to be the very embodiment of
the spirit of the Budapest Open Access Initiative - giving away all rights to
one's work, including commercial rights, for open access. My own take on this
is that while CC-BY can provide a useful tool for those fully engaged in the
open access spirit, the license is problematic for open access. This is
important now that funding agencies in the U.K. are beginning to require
CC-BY licenses when they fund open access article processing fees. That is to
say, we are now looking at a situation where organizations that do not have
any commitment to (or even liking for) open access, may be required to use
this license.

Some questions that I think should be raised at this point:

The CC-BY legal code, as I read it, does not mention open access, nor is
there any wording to suggest that the license can only be applied to works
that are open access. Here is the URL for the legal code:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

Questions:

1. Am I missing something in the legal code, i.e. does it say somewhere
that this license is only for open access works?

2. Is there any reason why a publisher could not use a CC-BY license on
toll-access works? (Here I am talking about an original publisher, not a
licensee).

3. Is there anything to stop a publisher that uses CC-BY from changing
their license at a later point in time? (Assuming the license is the
publisher's, not the author's).

4. Is there anything to stop a toll-access publisher from purchasing an
open access publisher that uses CC-BY, and subsequently selling all the
formerly open access journals under a toll-access model and dropping the open
access versions? The license would not permit a third party to do this, but
what I am asking about is if the original licensor sells to another publisher.

To sum up, my perspective is that CC-BY, while superficially appearing to be
the embodiment of BOAI, is actually a problematic license with significant
loopholes and serious thought should be given to this before it is
recommended as a standard for open access.

best,

Heather Morrison, MLIS
Doctoral Candidate, Simon Fraser University School of Communication
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com








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