Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Alexander Genaud <alex AT genaud.net>]

Well stated Anthony,

Watering down BY seems a more productive endeavour addressing
practical rather than philosophical concerns. I believe BY should only
articulate moral norms, similar to fair use citation, just as BY is
already interpreted in general practice today.

There is often a clear distinction between a modification to a whole
work (translation, crop, remaster) versus sampling (even when more
than fair use) and the level of attribution should be (and is in
practice) relatively appropriate. May I suggest replacing most/all
instances of MUST in Section 3(a)(1) with SHOULD with qualifications
if necessary? Perhaps 3(a)(1)(A) MUST identify the creator(s)... while
(B,C,D,E) SHOULD retain notices, etc.

I think (by-nc-sa_4.0d3) 3(a)(2) (medium, means and context ... by
providing a URI) is appropriately vague and reasonable. However, I am
not sure I understand 3(a)(1)(D) (indicate if You have modified the
Licensed Material and if so supply a URI or hyperlink to the Licensed
Material in unmodified form if reasonably practicable). If the adaptor
is reasonably able to supply a modified license, then they can most
certainly supply the original license in the exact same manor.

Furthermore, if we are retaining notices, references to old licenses,
(and perhaps summarizing content changes), then I think it's entirely
reasonable to make clear that an adaptor has added additional
licensing restrictions, even if applying another vanilla CC license.
For example, if Alice releases a work CC BY and Bob corrects some
spelling and releases the adaptation CC BY-SA, then he should clearly
mark that he has added the additional SA restriction, lest recipients
believe (in practice) that he has sublicensed both works.

Regarding (Marking Proposal No. 2: Require description of changes made
to original work in adaptations. .. Cons: Requires a lot of extra text
that could get very detailed; increases burden on reusers .. 4.0 d.3:
Not incorporated), a short summary does not unreasonably burdens
reusers. If the original author wished not to burden reusers they
would have released CC0 or the like. A translation should clearly
state that it is a translation, a Photoshop edit and crop should be
appropriately labelled, a music sample should indicate the chorus, the
singer, the rhythm or whatever was ripped as appropriate. I believe
summaries of changes are palatable considering the first paragraph
above (SHOULD not MUST). Even Wikipedia gives editors an optional
opportunity to summarize their changes, logged in the history.

It is good practice to summarize all changes to content, licensing,
additional restrictions, and appropriately attribute the original
creator to the extent it may benefit reputation and enable contact
with the creator. However, these and extant requirements may be
impractical. The license should respect moral reality. As long as CC,
creators, and reusers wilfully ignore, expect, and encourage
'reasonable' violations, the licenses should respectably abandon MUST
and embrace SHOULD.

Cheers,
Alex


PS - (dead link to 'termination provision' should redirect to
/4.0/Termination from
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/Attribution_and_marking . Prop 7:
Cons mentions ARR. This abbreviation (Artists Resale Right?) should be
expanded, problem articulated)


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