Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Parker Higgins <parkerhiggins AT gmail.com>]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 6:55 AM, drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com> wrote:

On Tuesday 11 December 2012 12:56:30 Heather Morrison wrote:
> Noncommercial is not optimal either. However, from a language perspective
> it is better than "commercial rights reserved" because it gives the creator
> an opportunity to say that "this is outside of the commercial realm".

 

The NC license we have does not make the binding promise to keep the work out
of the commercial realm nor does it put others on anywhere near an equal
footing with the copyright holder. It instead allows the copyright holder to
make commercial use of the work whenever he wants to while not allowing
others to do the same. This situation reminds me of the benevolent dictator
situation my dad spoke of when I was a child.

Just to underscore this point (and at risk of explaining the obvious to people on this list) that's why -NC is the license-of-choice for some of the most prominent CC license users, who happen to be more-or-less traditional commercial artists. Nine Inch Nails, Cory Doctorow, Jonathan Coulton, etc, etc, use -NC precisely because they wish to reserve the commercial rights. That's what the license does. If it were to preclude them from entering their works into the commercial realm, I think they would not be using it in many cases.

Thanks,
Parker

--
parker higgins
san francisco, ca

http://parkerhiggins.net

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