Cc-uk mailing list

[Tom Chance <tom AT acrewoods.net>]

Ahoy,

Thanks for your clarifications, very helpful.

On Friday 18 Nov 2005 13:34, Tsiavos,P wrote:
> The issue of complexity is not really solved with such a clause either. On
> the contrary it is intensified: if my CC licence interoperates with a
> series of other free/ open content licences and as such my derivative works
> can be licensed under their terms and conditions, it is not clear under
> exactly which terms and conditions the derivative works are licensed.
>
> Again as Rob has highlighted, there is a good reason why there is a range
> of licences out there. If a creator wants to go for a dual licensing
> solution, she is by all means able to do so even under the existing
> versions of the licences. Since licences are non exclusive I can always
> license my work under both a CC-BY-SA and an FDL licence. Whether and under
> which circumstances such a scheme would make sense is a different story all
> together, but at least through such a solution I am the one that makes the
> choice and not the CC on my behalf.
>
> I will make the same points to Larry and Mia as well.
>
> Btw, is there anyone having a different view on this issue?

Well I disagree on the issue of complexity. Whilst I can see how making 
licenses compatible in this way might increase complexity, dual-licensing is 
no solution either.

The problem is that your response is a lawyer's response :) Talk to anybody 
who already knows little about copyright and try explaining those concepts - 
you'll lose them at the first hurdle. What we need for free culture to thrive 
is for the law to work for creative people, to empower them, not to tangle 
them in legal complexity.

If in ten years time every piece of copyrighted work were freely licenses, 
but 
under a mixture of the FDL, GPL, OCL, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-NC-SA, etc. then 
we're really not that much closer to a free culture. The law will be putting 
absurd burdens on people who want to share and remix licensed works, and so 
most will simply not comply and fall back on a commonsense interpretation of 
free licenses, that they're all basically the same. Then the legal status of 
the licenses will really be serving no purpose, except to give lawyers and 
pedants a lot of legal fun chasing up violations.

That raises a lot of complex issues to do with the nature of law and the aims 
of the free culture movement, I realise (and apologise) :) But there we go... 
it's a garbled articulation of why I think CC-US' move is flawed but tackling 
an important issue.

Regards,
Tom

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