Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Luis Villa <luis AT tieguy.org>]

+1 to Mike's analysis.

(That presumes that use "in the wild" matters; I think it should but I can understand if that makes CC somewhat nervous.)

On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 12:15 PM, Mike Linksvayer <ml AT gondwanaland.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 2:52 PM, Sarah Pearson <sarah AT creativecommons.org> wrote:

As mentioned on this list, the Free Art License is currently under consideration for compatibility with CC BY-SA 4.0. We are seeking input from the community via several discussion prompts. This is the first and will address attribution.

If the FAL is deemed a compatible license, it means a reuser will be able to take a BY-SA work, adapt it, and then apply the FAL. Someone who receives the adapted material downstream must attribute the adapter and the original author, but they may attribute both authors in the manner dictated by the FAL.

The two licenses have slightly different attribution and marking requirements. The FAL has fewer total requirements than BY-SA, but it does have some requirements that are not included in BY-SA.

Specifically, the FAL requires:

1. name of author(s),
2. attach license to work or indicate where license can be found
3. info on where to access the originals

(Sec 2.2)

It also requires that you indicate if you modified the work and note what type of modifications were made. (Sec 2.3)

Do you feel the FAL requirements will meet CC licensor expectations as to how they will be attributed by downstream users? Any and all input welcome.

Yes, two reasons:

1. I have not noted any systematic differences in attribution practices for BY-SA and FAL works in the wild; assuming practices continue as they have, licensors (not to mention licensees) would see zip difference in practice if people chose to distribute derivatives under the other license. This is just years of casual observation, but if someone wanted to try a rigorous comparison of practices, one place to start would be https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:FAL and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:CC-BY-SA-4.0 in addition to some sampling of diverse web pages.

2. The most substantial differences (attribution parties and disclaimers), if provided in good faith by the licensor (as opposed to in an attempt to make compliance so burdensome as to make licensed use of work ... useless) should be provided in a way they can be obtained via a link to the licensed work, which matches FAL's requirements for accessing originals. But with respect to these, also see previous point: I cannot recall seeing a licensor attempt to stipulate attribution parties or disclaimers as part of attribution, thought I might have seen such, and I'm pretty sure I have never seen such terms being complied with -- except, again, via a link to page with such info which happens to be same as link with license and other info about original.

I feel similarly about other differences enumerated in http://wiki.creativecommons.org/ShareAlike_compatibility_analysis:_FAL -- these licenses' policies are in the same spirit, their actual use in the wild is identical, and their minor differences in terms should not continue to thwart compatibility, lack thereof being contrary to the overall aims of both.

Mike

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