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Re: creative commons



Francesco Poli wrote:
>>The CC lawyers are trying to draft a generic, useful and good license.
> 
> Useful to *whom*?
> Useful to end users and to the community (and hence to the society)?
> Or rather useful to authors that are not willing to grant important
> freedoms to recipients of their works?

It is important to remember that, without creators, there will be no
works to have such freedoms in the first place. You may not like this
reality, but it is no less true because of that.

Regrettably, many in the Debian project have become committed to the
idea that there is "no difference" between "content" and "code", and yet
this issue has repeatedly demonstrated the falsehood of this assertion.

The GPL, drafted before the DFSG, and used largely as a guide for
creating it (along with other licenses of the time) takes special care
to protect the particular needs of software developers -- namely that
source code is always made available.

The principle of copyleft is designed to protect the creators of free
software, and therefore, the body of work created.

Likewise, CC's licenses are drafted with the particular needs of content
creators. On the surface, these needs appear to be the same as those of
software developers. However, there are subtle differences. The issue of
 banned TPM-distribution versus parallel distribution methods is one
such difference. It can be quite successfully argued that for
utilitarian purposes, parallel distribution serves all the needs of
creators, because people who write code can control the platform in
necessary ways to unlock monopoly behavior.

However, content creators, whose work is not "executed", and cannot
change the nature of the platform, lacks those kinds of tools for
protecting its own freedom. Thus it's much safer to avoid obstructionist
laws or technology entirely. The CC licenses recognize that distinction.

> Drafting and actively promoting licenses that forbid commercial use
> and/or modifications harms the free software movement, rather than
> helping it.

This is debatable. Certainly NC-licensed works are not themselves "free"
in the same sense that we mean with free software, but they do exhibit
important freedoms to the people who get them (relative to
commercially-sold proprietary content -- I am all too aware of the
problems they present relative to free works).

Some argue that this promotes the values of freedom to people who would
otherwise not appreciate the point. People so introduced to the concept,
will have their awareness of free media increased and will become more
interested in truly free works.

Ironically, this is the same argument used by proponents of "parallel
distribution" to try to allow TPM-locked distribution of "free" works
through proprietary channels.

Which I think shows that there is in fact a great commonality of intent,
even as there are difference of opinion on implementation. Stallman
overstates the case against Creative Commons, in my personal opinion.

What I do believe Creative Commons has done wrong is to essentially
"pass off" NC licenses as "free" licenses, diluted the "free" brand
image. Recipients of NC works may think that they've already appreciated
the full depth of "free content" and not realize that they are
experiencing a crippled version of it.

Of more particular interest to me, creators who use NC licenses may not
appreciate that they are not reaping the full benefits of free media,
and may become disillusioned with the idea before really trying it.

These problems are better served not by CC abandoning the NC licenses,
however, but by promoting better "brand differentiation" between NC, ND,
and free licenses. The false unity created by using the label "Creative
Commons License" needs to be eliminated.

But it also has to be appreciated that CC doesn't want to make moves
like that too quickly, lest they create confusion and disaffection in
their existing community.

> As I already said, forbidding commercial use is definitely *against* the
> spirit of free software and the intent of the DFSG.

Yes it is. But AFAIK, no one is debating the DFSG-freeness of CC NC or
ND licenses. They are pretty obviously non-free.

> Hence, I cannot imagine a reason why doing so could be "important to
> free software".

Proponents (I'm not claiming to be one -- I'm somewhat ambivalent on
this subject) argue that a taste of a small amount of freedom builds a
desire for greater freedom. As I say -- exactly the same argument
parallel distribution proponents use for why they don't like CC
licenses' prohibition of TPM distribution.

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock@AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com



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