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Creative Commons Includes GPL And LGPL Metadata

Posted by timothy on from the self-documenting dept.

TrentC writes "I was looking at the Creative Commons site this weekend, and was surprised to find, on their license generation page, entries (translated into Portuguese) in a sidebar for the GNU General Public License and GNU Lesser General Public License, including RDF blocks. Since CC is pushing for projects that can generate, validate, display and search for CC license metadata, how cool would it be to be able to do a Google search for GPL-licensed material, or a P2P network for MP3s released under the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license? As an example, Nathan Yergler has released mozCC, a plugin for Mozilla and Firebird that allows you to view CC license information embedded in a webpage, and provides icons on the status bar displaying the CC license options."

9 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Would be great for P2P by mrdaveb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Select the "must be licenced under CC" box, and then search for music and other stuff you can download guilt-free.
    Not sure there would be many results to your search though, but it might catch on.

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  2. Moz Plugin by Xoder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seems like the Moz plugin is what would be really powerful. Then the license data could be slammed into a sidebar for anyone who really needs it, and the icon would profide enough information for Joe FreeData.

    I can't even begin to think about what a feed showing all (L)GPL and FDL stuff would look like. Fatter than the Freshmeat feed, I would suppose.

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  3. GPL and CC -- Can they co-exist? by dexterpexter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would love a search engine on which I could search for Open Source Software and CC media, all with one click. However, and perhaps someone more informed than I can explain this, I was under the impression that the GPL was distinct from the CC because, under CC work, any user can use it for any reason and reproduce it without notice, and can then sell it. However, under the GPL, all contributions made under the GPL must be re-released and made available to the public with the GPL notice. In CC, you don't have to worry about license issues.

    Anyone able to compare and contrast the two?

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    1. Re:GPL and CC -- Can they co-exist? by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Informative

      The main Creative Commons licenses are based on the three questions on this page.

      Basically, a CC license could require attribution or not, allow commerical use or not, and allow modification or not allow modification or allow modification only if licensed under the same CC license. It's very flexible, and easy to express in 3 icons which options have been selected.

  4. Brazilian Portuguese translation of GPL by Via_Patrino · · Score: 4, Informative

    IIRC it was translated for portuguese because the brazilian government is promoting Free Software and contracts in english are not valid in Brazil.

  5. Underground music and CC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Our biggest problem is that we, as a society, have confused well marketed with "good." There's thousands of great musicians running around that are not well known. What main stream America wants is the marketed music. Well, guess what? marketing machines are about making money. Imagine who cool it would be if all the effort thrown into pirating the marketed stuff went into creating an underground force for marketing independent music? The cool thing about the creative commons license is that it is a start in making such an underground force.

  6. Creative Commons offers a spectrum of licenses by TrentC · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, their comic "A Spectrum of Rights" explains it better than I can, but in brief, you have several licensing options:

    • Are you required to give attribution to the author?
    • Is commercial distribution allowed, or non-commercial distribution only?
    • Are derivative works allowed, or must the work be distributed as provided?
    • Are derivative works allowed to be relicensed, or must they be distributed under the same terms as the work being derived from?
    • For the GPL and LGPL metadata, they added options for "Make source code available" and "Preserve copyright and licensing notices"; those are not necessarily appropriate for an MP3 file or a text file, and don't seem to be available from the license generator.

    Those first four options can be combined to form eleven different licensing combinations, and the CC website will generate the necessary metadata and provide you with links to the "human-readable" (heh) and legal license documentation. The GPL would probably be considered similar to the Attribution-ShareAlike license.

    The important thing to remember is Creative Commons is not a license, it's a spectrum of licenses that can be tailored to your needs. And remember, you can always contact the author and work out a better deal if their license doesn't work for you.

    Jay (=

  7. Re:limitations of CC by afree87 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This problem has already been solved by the CC people, who thought of it when the issue of adding metadata to music came up.

    So there's no problem, with MP3s at least.

  8. Heh by r00zky · · Score: 5, Funny

    Look at the different outputs in page 2 of the license generator:
    - Human readable
    - Lawyer readable
    - Machine readable

    Good to know lawyers aren't humans, i was starting to worry :P

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