Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Kat Walsh <kat AT creativecommons.org>]

We are most of the way through our consultation period for the process
and criteria, which we will be wrapping up on the 28th, and publishing
in early June.

Based on the feedback we have received so far, here are the things we
are planning:

1. We are not going to be specific about the attribution requirements
of a candidate license: we will evaluate these in a public process on
a case-by-case basis. (We have one more request to raise in its
thread.)

2. We will not require that candidate licenses address ETMs in the
same way that the CC licenses do. A candidate license should address
this somehow, but this may be handled differently, or may even be
implied by other terms in the license rather than explicit.

3. We are planning to allow one-way compatibility. The strongest
argument is that many people in our community want the ability to
remix with GPL works, which is otherwise legally uncertain. Barring
very strong arguments against or widespread opposition, this will be
permitted. However, because of the considerable trade-offs involved
(as identified by many of you in the relevant thread), there will be a
high barrier to meet for one-way compatible licenses. These will be
considered where there is high demand or some other specific need, but
otherwise CC may reject these candidates.

4. Though there is broad agreement about the undesirability of license
proliferation, positions are mixed on how to consider vanity licenses.
We will evaluate these requests on a case-by-case basis, but will
consider it within our discretion to reject a compatibility candidate
on this basis alone.

We are also adding a statement that CC may change the process and
criteria at any time, provided that we also have a public consultation
before any changes are made; we may find additional areas for
refinement after the first few candidate licenses are considered, and
want to allow for the possibility of addressing these.

The changes we've made to the draft document are visible here:

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/index.php?title=ShareAlike_compatibility_process_and_criteria&diff=97751&oldid=97633

This draft is still open until May 28, and we welcome further comment.

Alongside the SA compatibility process and criteria, we will also
publish the revised version of the Compatible Licenses page, which is
specified in the license text as where compatible licenses must be
listed. A draft is up on the wiki, and we welcome feedback on it:

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Compatible_licenses_page_draft

----

Here is a summary of the feedback received on the open questions:

Attribution:

There should be adequate room for differences in attribution
requirements, as requiring exact alignment would present too high a
bar. Candidate licenses should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

ETMs:

This restriction should not need to be present in a candidate license
in the same form as in the CC license, especially because we don't
have evidence of its effectiveness here. Candidate licenses should
have an approach, but not necessarily the same one--for example,
allowing parallel distribution.

One-way compatibility:

There have been many expressions that this should be possible, but
also many expressions of concern about the tradeoffs involved. One
proposal was that this should be permitted, but only with a high
barrier to consideration: specific need, low impact, high demand, or
other such considerations.

In particular, there is strong demand for compatibility with the GPL,
which is otherwise legally uncertain, and one commenter mentioned
having to use GPL for content which was otherwise better suited to
BY-SA if there was any possibility they would want to remix with GPL
works in the future.

The example of GFDL to BY-SA compatibility was given as one where
one-way compatibility had happened with general agreement; the time
limit created special circumstances but the example could generalize.
Another raised the same example as evidence that this makes the
license irrelevant, as GFDL has faded out. The examples of CC BY and
BY-NC, which are widely one-way compatible, were raised as
counterexamples.

Perhaps the largest concern is that one-way compatibility may further
fragment the commons. Dual-licensing was proposed as a solution, but
this was argued to create fragmentation with more undesirable effects,
as a remixer could choose the more lax of the two licenses to comply
with (whereas under one-way compatibility, the remixed work would be
under the less lax of the two.) However, this concern presents a
strong argument for limiting the allowability to cases where
compatibility solves an existing fragmentation problem.

One comment raised the possibility of simply designating the GPL as
the next version of BY-SA; because many of its requirements aren’t
suited to the uses of many of the communities using BY-SA, we will not
be pursuing this option.

Vanity licenses:

There is broad agreement that license proliferation, especially
proliferation of vanity licenses, is undesirable, but not broad
agreement on what to do about it: fighting them may be worthwhile, but
may be counterproductive. A possible solution proposed was to place a
blanket ban; another was to consider them on a case-by-case basis.

-Kat


-- 
Kat Walsh, Counsel, Creative Commons
IM/IRC/@/etc: mindspillage * phone: please email first
Help us support the commons: https://creativecommons.net/donate/
California Registered In-House Counsel #801759
CC does not and cannot give legal advice. If you need legal advice,
please consult your attorney.