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  • From: Lawrence Lessig <lessig AT pobox.com>
  • To: cc-lessigletter AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Community_studios] [cc-lessigletter] CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on Important Freedoms
  • Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 16:37:38 -0800

[This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig and
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From last week's episode:
Next week, I'll turn to some of the critics of Creative Commons. But
this week, indeed, right now, we still need your support.
http://creativecommons.org/support/

The story continued…
Creative Commons is a young organization. And while we've been more
successful than I ever imagined we'd be, we've also made mistakes.
Some of these mistakes we've corrected. Some I hope to persuade us to
correct. But throughout the three years since our launch, we have
worked hard to build a solid and sustainable infrastructure of
freedoms for creators.

Along the way, we have picked up some critics. I don't have the space
here to address every criticism. In this email, I'll talk about just
two — one directed at our NonCommercial license option, and the other
at two of CC's non-core licenses. But I'll continue this discussion
next year in a new forum that we'll launch just for this purpose.
Mark Shuttleworth is my model here, and I will be a part of that
discussion whenever I can.

In the meantime, a bit from our critics.

(1) Criticism of the use of Noncommercial licenses
In an article in http://intelligentdesigns.net , Erik Möller argues
against the use of a Creative Commons NonCommercial (NC) license. His
argument has five parts, but the core is a concern about
incompatibility. As he puts it, "[f]ree content is no longer a fringe
movement." He cites Wikipedia as an obvious example, and correctly
points out that content licensed under a NC license can't be included
within Wikipedia. This is a problem, he argues, especially for
"collaborative projects." As he says, "marking up regions of content
as non-commercial and consistently following these boundaries is
almost impossible in a collaborative environment."

Möller is absolutely right. The NC license does interfere with this
sort of collaboration. It does create potential incompatibility. Of
course, as Möller also acknowledges, there is incompatibility even
without the NC restriction: As I described last week, [ http://
creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5709 ], it's not possible to mix
content licensed under the FDL with even an equivalent CC license.
That's because both licenses, as they are presently designed, block
interoperability. This is a real problem for the ecology of free
culture. And again, as I argued last week, this is a problem that
Creative Commons intends to fix by launching a project to federate
free licenses to encourage interoperability between licenses of the
same type.

Yet even if we succeed with federation, the problem that Möller
describes will remain. Some license types are incompatible with
others. And among the kinds of incompatibility most likely to cause
trouble is exactly the sort Möller has identified: The NC restriction
will block content from being included within ShareAlike projects
such as Wikipedia.

So what's the solution? My recommendation is much like Möller's — use
the least restrictive license that you can. But I say "much like
Möller's" because my sense is that he'd really like to see the NC
license never used at all, and I believe, given the wide range of
creators using CC licenses, there are important cases where a NC
license makes sense.

For example, imagine you're in a band and you've recorded a new song.
You're happy to have it spread around the Internet. But you're not
keen that Sony include it on a CD — at least without asking you
first. If you release the song under a simple Attribution license
there's no reason Sony (or anyone else) couldn't take your song and
sell it. And I personally see nothing wrong with you wanting to
reserve your commercial rights so that Sony has to ask you permission
(and pay you) before they can profit from your music.

Möller suggests you can avoid this problem by copylefting the song,
using, for example, a CC-ShareAlike term. As he argues, "[a]ny
company trying to exploit your work will have to make their ‘added
value' available for free to everyone. Seen like this, the ‘risk' of
exploitation turns into a potentially powerful benefit."

But this is not quite right. The ShareAlike requirement kicks in only
if the adopter makes a "derivative work" out of the song. Merely
adding it to a CD isn't a derivative work. So that's not a sufficient
protection against this particular form of exploitation. And it is
thus for this sort of case that the NC term is designed.

It is certainly true, however, that for a great deal of the
creativity being added to the net — especially in the context of
collaboration — there's not much need to protect commercial rights.
My blog, for example, is licensed under a simple Attribution license.
CNET Japan translates the blog and sells advertising around its
content. For my purposes, that's just fine. I write to spread ideas;
I try to avoid tariffs where I can. From my perspective, Möller is
certainly correct: the least restrictive license is enough for me.
And I would generalize the point: We all should use the least
restrictive licenses that we can, consistent with our goals.

We've not done a good enough job helping users understand this.
Möller is right to call upon Creative Commons to do better. We will
do just that. But the lesson Möller is absolutely right to teach is
that we all should consider the consequences of our choices. Some
will want nothing more than that their content be available
noncommercially. For them, the NC license is a useful option. But
others really simply want their work used and incorporated into the
remix of the net. For them, the NC option may do more harm than good.

(2) Criticism of the Sampling and Developing Nations License
Creative Commons offers six core licenses. Each of these six gives
people the freedom "to copy, distribute, display, and perform" the
work. But in addition to these core licenses, Creative Commons offers
two licenses that don't give these freedoms. These are the "Sampling"
License, and the "Developing Nations" License.

The Sampling license was inspired by the band Negativland and one of
Brazil's most famous musicians and current Culture Minister, Gilberto
Gil. Basically, it say this: you can remix, or "sample" this content.
The default Sampling license says you can even remix for commercial
purpose. But the default Sampling license also says you don't have
permission to copy, distribute, display or perform the underlying
work. Those rights are reserved. The only right given away is
essentially the right to make a certain kind of derivative.

The Developing Nations license is different. It was inspired by
activists in the Access2Knowledge movement —most prominently, Jamie
Love. They wanted a license that would free content (completely)
within developing nations even if it wouldn't alter the rules for
that content outside of developing nations. So the Developing Nations
license basically says that this content is free even for commercial
use within a developing nation. But outside of the developing
nations, ordinary rules apply. That means for content licensed under
the DevNat license, outside of developing nations, there is no right
to copy, distribute, display or perform the underlying work.

Richard Stallman criticizes the one element that these two licenses
have in common —that while they both secure important freedoms, they
also both forbid (for some groups at least) the right to "copy" the
underlying work. For him, that right is fundamental. And thus for
him, any license that denies this fundamental freedom does not
deserve the support of Creative Commons. He's thus asked us to either
drop, or disassociate ourselves from, these two licenses.

It's extremely important first to clarify what this disagreement is
not. Some of you will remember the battles between the "free
software" and "open source software" movements. To some, those were
battles between a movement that believed in values and a movement
that believed in pragmatism. The disagreement between CC and Richard
Stallman is not of that sort. It isn't pragmatism that drives us to
adopt the Sampling and DevNat license. It is instead a different
conception of value. CC will never offer licenses that secure just
any freedom; we believe CC licenses should only secure important
freedoms. But that's precisely what we believe these two licenses do
— they secure important freedoms, even if they don't include the
freedom to copy. That's not because the freedom to copy is not an
important freedom in some contexts, or for some creators. But the
freedom to copy is not an important freedom in all contexts — at
least if it interferes with other important values.

For example, imagine you're a teacher in Nigeria. You want textbooks
to teach Algebra to your Fulani speaking students. That you would
have the right to copy a particular English textbook isn't really of
much use to you. What you need is the right to translate that book.
In that context, the derivative right is the critical one; the right
to copy is unimportant.

The same point could be made more generally. Our view is that the
necessary freedoms in different domains of creativity are not
necessarily the same. That music could be different from software,
software different from film. And as we have done throughout this
project, we have asked leaders in different fields who share the
values of freedom to help us understand what values are important
within those specific fields. Gil and Negativland know something
about music. So when they say that the freedom to remix is critical
even if the freedom to copy is not, it would take a great deal to
persuade us they are wrong.

The same is true of the DevNat license. The target here is creativity
that depends upon a domestic market but never expects to exploit a
developing nations market. So, for example, one of the coolest
adopters of these licenses are architects designing low-cost housing.
They've marked their designs with the DevNat license, meaning people
in the developing world are free to do with them what they want. But
in their view, at least, they can't also give these designs freely to
their direct competitors.

These creators may be wrong. Gil, Negativland, and Jamie Love might
be mistaken about what rights the relevant creators need to keep. But
what's needed is an informed debate among creators about what
freedoms they need. We hope to encourage this debate. But in the
meantime, we'll continue to guide ourselves based upon the values
that the relevant communities have identified.

As I've said, there is much more I should say about other thoughtful
criticism. This email, however, is already too long. We'll announce
the discussion space sometime early in the next year. And stay tuned
next week when I'll turn to some of the particular projects we're
working on right now — as well as ask again for your support.
http://creativecommons.org/support/


-------

To link to or comment on this message, go to:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5719

Week 9 - Lawrence Lessig on Compatibility
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5709

Week 9 - Lawrence Lessig on Compatibility - Spanish Version
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-9-es.pdf

Thanks to Maria Cristinia Alvite for translation.

Archive of Lessig Letters
http://creativecommons.org/support/letters

Support the Commons
http://creativecommons.org/support

Learn More
http://creativecommons.org/learnmore

For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1,
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/




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  • [Community_studios] [cc-lessigletter] CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on Important Freedoms, Lawrence Lessig, 12/07/2005

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