Cc-uk mailing list

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

(I am not a lawyer, I am not a member of Creative Commons).

On Friday, August 06, 2004, at 10:35AM, Cotter, Colin J 
<colin.cotter AT imperial.ac.uk> wrote:

>I'm a bit surprised that CC doesn't allow you to make such a modification 
>inside the 
>license - does the organisation provide any support to get something like 
>this working if I 
>could create enough interest in the folk community?

There's a very wide range of possible options for licenses. CC boiled it down 
to 11, now 6 or so. The problem with having too many licenses is that people 
can't share their work bcause it's locked into an incompatible license. I 
think one of CC's aims is to allow work to be shared and built on as widely 
as possible. It's difficult getting the balance right but IMHO they've done a 
good job.

You can copy, paste and modify the license but then it isn't a CC license, 
and other people who have CC'd their work can't use it. I don't think CC will 
add a license with a "special purpose" limitation on commercial exploitation: 
it's a limitation on "freedom".

It is possible to multiply-license a work, which I suppose is what my 
original suggestion was. My knowledge of music publishing is very, very 
limited but don't venues get a license for performance of published music via 
the PRS? What additional limitations or freedoms do you require over the PRS 
scheme?

(This may be of broader relevence to CC-UK. How do CC'd works interact with 
the PRS, DACS, etc?)

>>Personally I'd just go CC-BY-SA *after* releasing the work on CD, which I
>>assume is the commercial exploitation you wish to avoid?
>Well it's not quite so simple because the publication we had in mind would 
>be in the form 
>of an online "book" of music manuscript (i.e. notation, not recordings). 
>Some of the music #
>has already appeared on CD, although much of the rest will have been 
>performed at PRS ]
>registered venues.

OK. So you want people to be able to modify and distribute the score, but 
only exploit it commercially for dance performance, is that right? What kinds 
of commercial exploitation are you concerned about, and how common/likely are 
they? 

One of the more "Free Culture"-type arguments could be that you shouldn't 
worry about commercial exploitation. Instead you concentrate on encouraging 
people to "give back" content that you can use in return through the 
ShareAlike license. One good way of encouraging them is to allow them to 
exploit the work commercially. So "giving away" your work in this way may get 
you back more content than you would get otherwise, which you are then free 
to exploit commercially in return. All thanks to the license. It sound 
upside-down but it works very well with software through the GPL. 

This may not be relevent to your situation, but it's worth considering, 
particularly where I assume there is a creative community that can be tapped 
into. 

- Rob.