Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand discussion

["Sutherland, Paul" <Paul.Sutherland AT ccc.govt.nz>]

Haven't read the Stallman article - imagine its very nice

But surely rather than getting Stalanistic/Calvinistic/Stallmanistic about NC 
why not imagine a solution to enable NC moving forward. 

NC is not evil just like commerce is not evil.

I imagine many many people will want to continue to have an NC license. 

And would like some tools to use to ensure tracking - unlike the problem of 
the orphan works from the past

The Gift always has to be paid for.

/paul

 

-----Original Message-----
From: cc-nz-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org 
[mailto:cc-nz-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Danyl Strype
Sent: Sunday, 27 January 2013 4:11 AM
To: Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand discussion
Subject: [Cc-nz] Stallman on the orphan-multiplier effect of NC licenses

Kia ora koutou

Just stumbled across an interesting claim by Richard Stallman about the use 
of CC licenses which include the NonCommercial clause (CC-BY-NC and 
CC-BY-NC-SA).

>> The problem arises because, with the Internet, people can easily (and 
>> lawfully) pile one noncommercial modification on another. Over decades 
>> this will result in works with contributions from hundreds or even 
>> thousands of people.

What happens if you would like to use one of those works commercially?
How could you get permission? You'd have to ask all the substantial copyright 
holders. Some of them might have contributed years before and be impossible 
to find. Some might have contributed decades before, and might well be dead, 
but their copyrights won't have died with them. You'd have to find and ask 
their heirs, supposing it is possible to identify those. In general, it will 
be impossible to clear copyright on the works that these licenses invite 
people to make.

This is a form of the well-known "orphan works" problem, except exponentially 
worse; when combining works that had many contributors, the resulting work 
can be orphaned many times over before it is born.
<<
http://stallman.org/articles/online-education.html

If this is true, it's definitely an issue which needs addressing because of 
the popularity of the NC clause with many people who contribute to Open 
Educational Resources (OER). Either creators of OER need to stop using the NC 
clause (even though some are very attached to it), or this aspect of NC 
licensing needs fixing.

My first thought was that one way to fix this could be to give the creator of 
the original the right to give permission for commercial use of all 
downstream remixes, as well as the right to be acknowledged as the 
originator, which would be necessary for this to be useful.
Then it occurred to me to wonder if the creator of a remix of an NC work has 
any commercial rights to their remix in the first place?
Obviously they have no commercial rights to any part of the original.
But do they hold the commercial rights to any novel parts they have added (or 
any re-ordering of parts of the original), or does the effect of the NC 
clause propagate to derivative work, reserving commercial rights to them in 
the hands of the original creator anyway?
Is Stallman wrong that this is a problem? It would be good to get some 
clarification on this.

In the bigger picture, I think the best way to manage the copyright of large 
bodies of CC-licensed OER is the same way they are managed in large free code 
projects like LibreOffice and Mozilla, through Copyright Assignment 
Agreements which make a non-profit institution the steward (and where 
necessary, enforcer, or granter of extra
permissions) of the conditions of the license used. Since most teachers work 
for or with an educational institution anyway, one option is for those 
institutions to become the copyright steward of any OER projects their staff 
initiate. The status and reputation they gain from this could be seen as a 
way of offsetting any perceived loss of monopoly opportunities. Another 
option is for the copyright to be vested in an independent body like the OER 
Foundation.

Another potential benefit of this is that the steward could be charged with 
standardizing a process to make sure that improvements made to their OER 
suites propagate successfully to all derivative works (where these are 
allowed), or even just to those using the suite in active teaching. I'd be 
interested to know what people think of this idea.

Ma te wā
Strypey

--
Danyl Strype
Community Developer
Disintermedia.net.nz/strype

"Geeks are those who partake in our culture."
- .ISOcrates

"Uncomfortable alliances are not just necessary; they reflect and speak to 
the tremendous possibility of our political moment."
- Harmony Goldberg and Joshua Kahn Russell
http://www.nationofchange.org/new-radical-alliances-new-era-1337004193

"Both Marxists and Chicago-school libertarian economists can agree that free 
software is the best model."
- Keith C Curtis
http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?page_id=407
_______________________________________________
cc-nz mailing list
cc-nz AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-nz
Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand
http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/
**********************************************************************
This electronic email and any files transmitted with it are intended 
solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.

The views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender
and may not necessarily reflect the views of the Christchurch City Council.

If you are not the correct recipient of this email please advise the
sender and delete.

Christchurch City Council
http://www.ccc.govt.nz
**********************************************************************