Creative Commons Add-In for Office Released

Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "Creative Commons has announced the release of an add-in to Microsoft Office that allows the easy addition of a CC license to files created with Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. It was co-developed by Microsoft and Creative Commons and only works in Office XP and Office 2003. It can be downloaded from Microsoft's download center after a validation check, and CNet has a screenshot available of the tool."

Comments

it is a crock off shit

[seanadams.com]

... and it stinketh.

I can't see how anyone could construe this as an endorsement by Microsoft of unconventional copyright terms.

Can anyone explain how this is NOT a thinly-veiled a ruse to encourage use of Microsoft's proprietary file formats for potentially important, widely distributed documents?

Re:it is a crock off shit

[nuzak]

God forbid that Microsoft should encourage anyone to use their own product or anything. Such a shame that no one is able to write CC-covered material with any other product anymore, thanks to the exclusive arrangement that CC no doubt made with Microsoft.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[IWannaBeAnAC]

You have missed the point a bit, I think. Any kind of big media company (Disney especially, but Microsoft is in the same boat), want to actively encourage other people to release their creative works under very free licenses. Preferably, BSD-style. Definitely not share alike (GPL style), but I guess they are prepared to take that gamble?

But I agree, the irony of using proprietary formats for such documents, cannot have escaped the Microsoft Humor Department.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[Doc Ruby]

Since the US Federal government found MS a monopoly, but isn't stopping Microsoft from "encouraging" people to use their software by abusing it, looks like god is the only one left with jurisdiction might actually forbid it.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[cnettel]

Of course MS loves to see massive use of their formats. Can we really blame them for that?

On the other hand, one point with (some of) the CC licenses is continued editing; although another point is to maintain the distinction against public domain with "full edit/no attribution" rights. That is, a PDF version might not technically hinder you from integrating a CC work into your own document, but if you use MS Office (or even OO.org), a MS Office document might mean an easier way to do it. This means that we can't say that distribution in ONLY a highly presentation-centric format like PDF would be a good thing, despite it being open.

Lots of people use MS Office and won't convert to anything else if this "licensing wizard" download was missing. It might encourage a few to license works in a clear and less restrictive manner. I see nothing wrong in that.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[bi_boy]

Can anyone explain how this is NOT a thinly-veiled a ruse to encourage use of Microsoft's proprietary file formats for potentially important, widely distributed documents?

I like how you started out with an assumption then expect other people to verify that assumption for you. Oh shit I mean.... rawr M$ is teh evil rofl mao

Re:it is a crock off shit

[seanadams.com]

I like how you started out with an assumption then expect other people to verify that assumption for you.

Quoi? I clearly challenged anyone to show the contrary...

Perhaps the first statement is not related to the second in the way you think. One refutes their ostensible intent, and the other is my assertion of their actual intent.

Ah the hell with it, I'm all geeked out for today - you win.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[NemosomeN]

I had friend who used this. He tried to save it as HTML and it blocked it. The he tried saving it as plain-text and his compute locked up. He finally tried to save as a PDF, and clippy jumped out and stabbed him in the face. Wait, no, none of that happened. (I even made up the "I had a friend who used this" part.) Why license your stuff anyway? Who is going to have such a large volume of people trying to reproduce their material that getting emailed requests would be too burdensome? And in cases where it is, you might as well just do it manually, as it's obviously worth it to you. I only see this bloating documents unnecessarily with license text from the F/OSS crowd. I'm all for Open Source, and I think it's noble. I've used Linux, and I use it (Knoppix/DSL) often for fixing simple issues easily (fdisk, cfdisk, etc.) when the Windows way to do it would be a pain. I use OSX, and I love it. The truth is though, if you use Linux/OSX, I probably won't like you. Most of the F/OSS crowd is an angry, belligerent, and or annoying bunch, and I think that's holding them back. Imagine how many people would just be annoyed by the license text at the bottom of every document from that hairy guy from IT. "I reset your password. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Slovenia License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/si/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA." (Btw, the license is not copy/paste friendly at that link. They should link to legalese, and have a link at the top of that to "English")

Re:it is a crock off shit

[cammoblammo]

Most of the F/OSS crowd is an angry, belligerent, and or annoying bunch...

No, just the angry, belligerent, and or annoying ones.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[Mr. Underbridge]

Can anyone explain how this is NOT a thinly-veiled a ruse to encourage use of Microsoft's proprietary file formats for potentially important, widely distributed documents?

Christ, lose the tinfoil hat. I'll explain it: they've made a tool to do a Good Thing with their software. They haven't tried to embrace/extend CC. They are *allowed* to add features to their software.

I've also evidently missed when CC documents became important and widely distributed to lend any credence to your conspiracy theory.

If this had been done by Open Office (or probably Apple) people would be blowing their loads all over the place.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[WalterGR]

I can't see how anyone could construe this as an endorsement by Microsoft of unconventional copyright terms.

Hrm... Well, then how about these:

"Microsoft today announced the release of its Simple List Extensions specification to RSS under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license." (source)

"The Microsoft-hosted PatternShare community brings together information on software patterns organized by wiki inventor and now Microsoft employee Ward Cunningham." (source)

From Lawrence Lessig's blog: "So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support..." (source) And then a few days later... "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." (source)

And so forth

Re:it is a crock off shit

[NemosomeN]

Most of those who aren't like that are like me, and don't associate themselves with the crowd. I never said all, so I don't see why you feel the need to jump on the defensive personally. I do find it ironic that one of the most laid back, pragmatic people in the Linux crowd is Linus himself. By the way, I don't count Stallman in the group. You can't blame a whole group for the loud extremists.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[Americano]

Do you *really* have any notion of how paranoid you sound? Let's look at the simple facts:

1. Microsoft does NOT force you to write your documents in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. There are other non-MSFT alternatives you can choose.
2. Microsoft does NOT control the terms of the license. The Creative Commons licenses are NOT Microsoft creations.
3. You are free to NOT INSTALL the Office add-in, if you don't wish to use it.
4. Given that Office (PPT, XLS, DOC) formats are used *primarily* in business settings, and distributed to a typically very limited audience of interested people, I don't think we'll see many people releasing DOC-formatted CC works to wide-spread fanfare and adulation.

But with all that said, I intend to apply a Creative Commons license to ALL of *my* TPS reports, spreadsheets, and customer presentations that, on a good day, 6 people in the world actually care about.

Mash that up, bitches!

Re:it is a crock off shit

[NemosomeN]

Extremist != annoying people. Michael Moore, Stallman, Anne Coulter, etc. ar all people that cannot be used to fairly criticize a group. I'm speaking from experience, and this isn't a scientific journal or anything, I don't have to provide proof, it's an opinion. Anyway, it's no longer worth debating this.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[cammoblammo]

I never said all, so I don't see why you feel the need to jump on the defensive personally.

And I never said I was one of them, so no defensiveness intended!

We'll See

[jlechem]

I'm sure there's a line in the EULA somewhere about how using that program gives M$ control of your everlasting soul (and your creative work). Of course what M$ would want with the half assed songs I would create with this software is beyond me.

Re:We'll See

[adtifyj]

Of course what M$ would want with the half assed songs I would create with this software is beyond me.

I am sure that Microsoft would want to know about this hidden feature you are using!

Re:We'll See

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

In the Visual Studio EULA, you cannot redistribute the "Redistributable Code" and the "freely"-licensed sample code in any license that is a "Prohibited License." A Prohibited License is any one that allows other users to modify your code and recompile.

Re:We'll See

[sconeu]

There's an analysis of the tool's EULA over at Groklaw. Amazingly enough, the tool isn't CC, as far as I can tell.

Re:We'll See

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

But it's not just the .NET framework. What about the scaffolding code that the compiler "wizards" auto-generate? You have to practically never use VS's code-generation features if you're writing OSS.

Why do you need an add-in?

[ThinkingInBinary]

Why would you want a "Creative Commons tool" for Office? Wouldn't it just be easier to add a page after the title page, like the copyright page, but instead explaining the license of the document? Why do you need a program to do it for you?

What would be far more useful would be a way to tag Creative Commons documents in web pages, and then if some search engine (Google? please?) would explicitly label Creative Commons results as such, and encourage people to listen to, view, combine, mash up (shudder), and otherwise use them.

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[ReverendLoki]

I for one can see how this would be useful. You see, there isn't one set of terms and conditions, but rather there's a whole range of possible conditions applicable under Creative Commons licensing.

What this looks like is pretty much a wizard that asks you how you would like to allow your work to be used, and then generates the CC license for those conditions. Although a nice add on, it really doesn't look all that complicated. I'm hoping it isn't long until someone makes a good wizard for OpenOffice.org as well.

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

A total non-event. Just shows that the most mindless gadget or add-in can be news if it's within the open-source/free-software/free-copyright paradigm.

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[monomania]

"What would be far more useful would be a way to tag Creative Commons documents in web pages, and then if some search engine (Google? please?) would explicitly label Creative Commons results as such..."

There is; on the web badge code, the following (or, depending on the license, something similar) is encapsulated:

<rdf:RDF xmlns="http://web.resource.org/cc/"
        xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
        xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax -ns#">
<Work rdf:about="">
<license rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/2.5/" />
</Work>
<License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 2.5/">
      <requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Attributi on" />
      <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Reproduct ion" />
      <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Distribut ion" />
      <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Derivativ eWorks" />
      <requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Notice" />
</License>
</rdf:RDF>

It's up to the browser/search engine/application as to what is done with it.

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[yogikoudou]

> It's up to the browser/search engine/application as to what is done with it.

There is a Firefox extension that displays the 3 symbols (By, NC, SA) in your status bar as they are found in an RDF chunk in the page you're visiting.

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

then if some search engine (Google? please?) would explicitly label Creative Commons results as such

From advanced search:

Return results that are:
- not filtered by license
- free to use or share
- free to use or share, even commercially
- free to use share or modify
- free to use, share or modify, even commercially
More info

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[Grey Ninja]

Wow. Thank you. I always used Yahoo when searching for CC content for usage in my projects. That simple note makes things a whole lot easier. (Although I still wish that there was a special google portal for CC)

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[Finite9]

I read 20 or so comments on this story and not one of you has understood the meaning of cc. It's not about DRM, it's not about open source, and comparing it to either is plain wrong. It's not even about Microsoft! Creative Commons is an add-on to copyright law, sort of. Copyright law is draconian and does not cater to modern technology. Copyright law is an all or nothing affair. Creative Commons addresses this oversight by adding on clauses to basic copyright law, letting a content creator decide which license best suits their needs, by opening up the rights to third parties who may want to use the original work as the basis of their own, for example. As this has nothing to do with patents or standard software licenses, why wouldn't Microsoft be willing to include it? It neither harms them nor aids them. It's for the benefit of content creators. The reason for an add-on in word is that cc is a 3 part license, one of which is a piece of code so computers can detect the license. If you dont have the add-on, you can't tag the document. Read my lips: there is no conspiracy! --finite9

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[monomania]

Finite9 is dead-on right (and his post should be modded up) -- reading through nearly all the posts in this topic I'm dismayed by how little Creative Commons is understood (and how much copyright in general is misunderstood). I follow the issue very closely because I'm a professional writer (both within the industry as a technical writer and as an author of fiction) and have written code for commercial distribution (nowadays I limit my engineering efforts to open source projects) and it's a part of my professional duty and responsibility to know and understand copyright and licensing. It should be everyone's, and assuming that a goodly share of Slashdot are also contributors to the culture or to the industry in some way or another, this manifest degree of misunderstanding bodes ill for everyone. It's no wonder that those who would abuse our rights for their own profit have been so flagrant in their abuses, and successful in their attempts. For better or worse this is not the 18th Century anymore (nor are we still 18 year olds if you know what I mean) and smug ignorance is no adequate defense against the real IP thieves.

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[Finite9]

I should have added in my post, that although i am by no means an expert on the matter, I felt that this was such an important issue and that I should try to find out more about it. Lawrence Lessigs e-book: http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf was the best reference I have read and gives a very good overview of the issues at stake. Everyone, and certainly everyone in IT, should read it to be able to accurately inform people not in IT about the real issues.
--finite9

Why should they need to?

[Manip]

There is something very wrong with our copyright system when people have to attach a licence to all media they create in order for others to use it... Perhaps I should start wearing a badge that reads "Your eyes and ears have permission to consume my copyright material (e.g. My voice, and face."

Why isn't media created free/public domain unless its creator wants it protected? ... ?

Re:Why should they need to?

[cnettel]

Well, if you don't ever intend to use your rights, it's practically in the public domain. Adding a license makes it obvious, you can't go back later and say "hey, I DO want full rights to this". If, on the other hand, everything was free that wasn't explicitly tagged, I think we would run into even more draconian assertions of all material that should be protected: imagine that you see some rather long excerpt where the copyright note is NOT present, and imagine if that meant a practical carte blanche to copy it?

Re:Why should they need to?

[Chosen Reject]

i got ball this is my adress 108 20 37 av corona come n do it iam give u the copyright so I can hit you wit it
-- With Love, the **AA

Buy the t-shirt today!

Re:Why should they need to?

[Ctrl Alt De1337]

If you don't attach a license with your work anyone can do anything with it without you being able to do anything about it.

This is the exact opposite of what the law says. If you create an original work of any kind, whether or not you register it with the copyright office it is still copyrighted to you and no one can do anything with it without your permission. If you don't put a license on it, then it is assumed that you are reserving all of your rights not waiving all of your rights.

Re:Why should they need to?

[Qzukk]

And how would you prove that it is an "original work" and you have "created it" if you didn't register it.

Simple, when you get around to wanting to sue someone over it, you file your registration, which you can do at any time.

Re:Why should they need to?

[FoaadH]

Simple, when you get around to wanting to sue someone over it, you file your registration, which you can do at any time.
Of course if he didn't beat you to it.

Re:Why should they need to?

[QuantumG]

No. You are wrong. All rights are reserved by default. If I create a work that can be covered by copyright, it is covered by copyright, and you have no rights under the law to copy the work without my express written permission (excluding fair use). This is one of the many ways copyright law is draconian.

Re:Why should they need to?

[BootNinja]

generally, there will be some sort of record of when you created the work. i.e. a hard drive date stamp, or some such. Additionally, if you have created a work with the intention of distributing it, generally you will have showed it to somebody who can bear witness that you created it first. It is not a sure thing, but it has been upheld in court before.

Re:Why should they need to?

[Qzukk]

The postmark thing is generally not acceptable, since they can be faked. You could even mail an empty envelope to yourself and steam it open and reseal it with whatever you wanted at a later date.

As another person alluded, it also doesn't prove that you made the document, only that you (ostensibly) mailed a copy of it.

Re:Why should they need to?

[QuantumG]

The courts don't care. They leave it up to the person being sued to prove they created it. Other than Microsoft, no-one registers copyright, and even when people do register copyright they register so little of the actual work that it's not possible to tell what work it is they are registering. In the case of computer programs, it is typical to register the first and last 3 pages of the source code.. Yes, that's right, pages.. wtf is a page of source code? Who knows.

Re:Why should they need to?

[Planesdragon]

Why isn't media created free/public domain unless its creator wants it protected? ... ?

We tried that. Publishing companies (think of RIAA, but without the need for good PR) simply said that the author didn't delcare a copyright, and made millions without giving a dime to said author until they were taken to court.

It's trivial to make something public domain. CC makes it a bit more complicated, but they do have a theoretical way to authenticate what is and is not allowed, which nicely removes the only problem with public domain -- it can be hard to verify.

Re:Why should they need to?

[John Nowak]

You have not a single fucking clue what you're talking about. Read ANYTHING on the topic before commenting further.

Not Office 2K?

[MMC Monster]

What is so special about this macro that it doesn't work in Office 2K or even Office 97?

Re:Not Office 2K?

[cnettel]

Task panes (i.e. non-modal dialog boxes integrated in the window border) were added as a new UI object in Office XP. Quite a lot of things that could have been made into wizards or plain dialog boxes in older versions are panes in XP/2003. I guess this download makes use of that GUI style as well.

"Smart tags" were also introduced in Office XP, the most popular one being the one where you choose the paste settings after you've seen the results of pasting with default settings, but it wouldn't make even less sense to package this functionality as a tag.

Re:Not Office 2K?

[cnettel]

Forget it, the CNet screenshot does look like a normal dialog box. Then I guess they are just lazy, or highly speculatively there's some signing of the macros involved that doesn't play well with older versions. I doubt that, though, the point of adding signing was rather to stop macros to autorun in new versions, not stop them in the old ones (like wide-open good old O97).

Direct link to screenshot

[Anonymous Coward]

Direct URL to screenshot image:
i.n.com.com/i/ne/p/2006/ccprompt_466x359.jpg

What's the point

[chord.wav]

What's the point of creating a CC licensed file in a propierary format?

Re:What's the point

[Keeper]

What's the point of posting on a website not under your control?

Re:What's the point

[Trevahaha]

Because you're licensing the content not the format it's presented in. People generally copyright the text on a website or inside a book, not that the book was printed on white paper using a serif font or that your website is running on Apache or IIS.

Re:What's the point

[alshithead]

PR! Good public relations is worth anything. Sell your soul to the devil for good PR! That is how you generate $$$.

I'm assuming you meant proprietary. Sorry, that's the spelling nazi in me.

After Validation?

[dustwun]

What's this "after validation" business? Doesn't this seem slightly hypocritical when compared to Creative Commons? The xml in the document has 'MICROSOFT" all over the place, so it's not like you can say you didn't make it in an office product.

Re:After Validation?

[pla]

What's this "after validation" business?

Microsoft has a problem - We hate them, and they fear us.

We have the techology to pirate their products, the motivation to do so even if we don't like using them, and the influence to convince others to either switch to Linux or use the pirated copies we give them rather than buying.

You'll notice that this only works in the two most recent versions of Office. Why, do you suppose, they chose not to include it in all of them? It has nothing to do with XML - All the older Office-native formats have the ability to store metadata (as various companies and governments occasionally discover when someone accidentally starts a "new" document by opening "supersecretespionageplan.doc", deleting everything they see, then saving and releasing the new "happyfunPRcampaign.doc" to the world.

No, they only use the new versions because they want us to update. And they want us to update to a far more restrictive version, that includes at least some smidgeon of DRM, whether online activation or Genuine (dis)Advantage or what-have-you.

Personally, on my machines that run Windows, I have Office 97. Not enough has changed to make cracking a new version worth the effort, and - Did you know, you don't need to install it? Nope - You can literally just copy the CD to your HDD, find "winword.exe" and the rest, and run them without corrupting the rest of your system (including, critically, the ability to do this as a non-admin user!). It will warn you (just once, not even as annoying as most shareware) that it needs repair every time you run it, but I have yet to find a feature actually broken from never bothering to formally install it.


Hmm, I've drifted a bit. Okay, I'll stop here.

Re:After Validation?

[Dachannien]

You can't even download the DirectX redistributable package anymore without validation, despite it being on almost every PC game CD I've bought in the past decade.

Why? And what about OpenOffice?

[rafadev]

I really don't understand why M$ would want to develop such a tool. I guess they want OTHER people to share stuff, NOT them, of course. Its reasonable that the Creative Commons staff would want it to make it easier for people to creativcommonize their documents, but really, supporting a plugin for Office XP and 2003 doesn't actually cope much with the open philosophy. At least they don't ask you to validate your windows version, that would be really funny. I guess it would have been more reasonable if they did such a tool for OpenOffice, or another open office suite, I think that it would be much more usefull than making one such "uncompatible"...

Quoting from the M$ download site:

Microsoft Office productivity applications are the most widely used personal productivity applications in the world, and Microsoft's goal is to enhance the user's experience with those applications. Empowering Microsoft Office users to express their intentions through Creative Commons licenses is another way Microsoft enables users around the world to exercise their creative freedom while being clear about the rights granted to users of a creative work. In the past, it has not always been easy or obvious to understand the intentions of some authors or artists regarding distribution or use of their intellectual creations.

It seems to me that that is the biggest load of lies I've ever heard. It's nearly as missleading as the healthy McDonald's trash. "Microsoft enables users around the world to exercise their creative freedom" Creative freedom?, Microsoft? I guess those terms don't really cope. I think that before releasing such a tool they should try applying some creative freedom themselves.

Re:Why? And what about OpenOffice?

[EvanED]

MS has quite a few projects that are out under their own open source license. I forget what it's called, and I think it's incompatible with the GPL, but MS does go OSS when it thinks it will benefit them (which isn't very often).

Re:Why? And what about OpenOffice?

[Serapth]

Question for you...

Do you insist on saying M$ because:
a) Your pandering to the Linux Zealot crowd, where as you think any Microsoft bash will result in more Karma coming your way?
or...
b) You are just trying to inform time consumed folks how biased your opinions are, so as to save them from wasting more time reading whatever else it is you have to say?

If its B, I thank you for the courtesy and time savings you have given me!

Re:Why? And what about OpenOffice?

[bit01]

No, he's saying M$ because it's appropriate. Helps remind people that M$ is still taxing the world $40,000,000,000+ per year for about a dozen programs mostly written more than a decade a go with the most difficult bit, the device drivers, largely written by third parties.

---

Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.

AutoLawyer

[Doc Ruby]

Who's got software that automatically reports whether/which CC license is assigned to a given file?

Creative commons isn't a good thing

[mrcaseyj]

I don't think creative commons is a good thing because only some of its licenses have full freedom. Microsoft has probably released some free software too, but that doesn't mean we should promote Microsoft as free software.

Re:Creative commons isn't a good thing

[Ahnteis]

Absolutely. The whole WORLD is black and white. It's either great or horrible. Nothing in between.

Re:Creative commons isn't a good thing

[bcat24]

And in the real world, nobody gives a damn. I like the open source ideology much more than the free software one. Proprietary software is not evil. Neither are non-sa Creative Commons licenses. Licenses are a means, not an end.

Re:Creative commons isn't a good thing

[mrcaseyj]

Non-freedom licenses are OK for some things. The only problem with Creative Commons is that it causes a little confusion in that it lumps together free licenses with restricted ones. It tries to take advantage of the goodness of the free licenses rubbing off onto the restricted ones. This is actually a minor flaw. Simply having a different name for the free licenses and the restricted ones would be fine. Of course then the name recognition of "Creative Commons" would be diluted. It's actually a close call, but overall I'd say its not a good thing to lump them all together.

The first method

[Kuku_monroe]

They wanted to paste a "Captain Copyright" logo in everypage.

But of course, the image was copyrighted.

Go back later?

[Mateo_LeFou]

I have a question that came up as I encouraged a music-writing partner to license some stuff with BY-SA: how would you go about saying something like "after two years, I reserve the right to forbid commercial users". After some discussion, I talked him out of actually doing this, but I wonder if any CC experts know about the legality/feasibility of that sort of thing?

That screenshot is a fake!

[garcia]

CNet has a screenshot available of the tool.

That screenshot looks nothing like Ballmer!

Microsoft...Creative Commons...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does not compute.
Hive mind stack overflow at 0xEE00FF33
Core dumped.

Cats living with dogs!

Seriously, what am I to make of this?
CC muddy themselves by association with the Devil.
M$ send confusing message about IP

Isn't this a little backwards?

[DittoBox]

Isn't this like asking Satan the story of Jesus or something?

What good is an `open' license if the format in which it's published is closed and restrictive?

Re:Isn't this a little backwards?

[bcat24]

The license covers the content, not the format. Given the right license terms, I can transfer the content to an open format and publish it.

Re:Isn't this a little backwards?

[DittoBox]

I know the license only covers the actual work and not the format, but if you have to use proprietary/closed applications to get to your work that simply defeats the purpose of opening your content. At least partially anyway.

Clue?

[Mateo_LeFou]

I'm baffled as to why they would touch this stuff, too. My best guess: "...first document to be CC-licensed using this tool is the text of Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil's iSummit keynote speech". Lotta people in Brazil. The Vole's been trying to roll back their F/OSS support for awhile...

Call me when..

[crabpeople]

They develop a plugin to read ODF files. Thats kind of what I thought this was - by way of gross misunderstanding - and i was about to jump for joy. Then maybe people wont have to keep two versions of a document depending on who they are sending it to.

Improper licensing - What if...

[Tiger4]

What if I improperly tag a document with a Creative Commons license? For example, say I am an employee in a large office. Lets make it a government office just for spice. I create some document of some importance to my boss. I have done it as a work for hire. I have done it in a government office, but it is not intended for publication. Somehow, I manage to tag this document with a CC license. I send it around for review, and the information in it is rolled up into a document that IS intended for publication. It wasn't my document to license out, but the license is now bundled up in there. What, if anything, happens next?

Re:Improper licensing - What if...

[ClamIAm]

This has already happened many times. When George Romero released Night of the Living Dead, they forgot to put a copyright notice on the film. The law back then stated that you must put a copyright notice on your work to maintain copyright. Because of this, this film is now in the public domain.

My example is a bit different, but the main point is this: once something is released to the public, anyone who receives the work gains all the rights of fair use, as well as any others that you give them. The status of your document would be whatever license it got released under. As for you, you would most likely be fired and/or sued for negligence or breach of contract.

Google Creative Commons Search = good

[ThinkingInBinary]

Yay. So now we need a feature in web site designers/blogging tools to label things. Word documents are islands of text, not interlinked hypertext media. Adding CC license tags to web pages and media files would be far more useful.

You know why?

[slashflood]

It is there to get you used to the idea of DRM. It is actually part of the DRM system integrated in Office. Sooner or later, users will be presented with a far more complex DRM tool to choose an appropriate license and protection scheme. Standard users are protective about their ideas, thoughts and works. If they are asked by Office, if they want to share it with the rest of the world or put a restrictive license and protection on their creation, they'll click on "It is mine, my IP, nobody else should reuse it".

I really think this is only just the beginning of a broader DRM tool.

Re:You know why?

[LittleBigLui]

"It is mine, my IP, nobody else should reuse it".

I wrote it, it is mine, my Intellectual Precious! DRMollum! DRMollum!

Very smart...

[arborlaw]

...great way to start building acceptance for DRM. Attaching a license electronically to the file (even the Creative Commons license) is still attaching DRM. Now, DRM is not all that bad: implemented properly (ie, let the marketplace make its own decisions whether or not to participate in DRM labeling) and it could save hundreds of millions in transactions costs on obtaining permissions. I would love to know what legal terms were attached to a particular item. The problem is, if DRM becomes a mandatory attachment for acceptance of files in general internet traffic (ie, they might not even be accepted without DRM as an email attachment), then fair use really will cease to exist.

Re:I was wrong

[bcat24]

Amen to that. Come on people, sometimes an addon is just an addon.

Please don't use this!

[zsau]

Please don't use this plugin if you are releasing your content under a free Creative Commons licence. No document is free if it's encoded in one of Microsoft's proprietry formats. You are much better off to use the online Creative Commons licence chooser, and copy the text to a document written in OpenOffice.org, TeX, Gnumeric, HTML or the like yourself. This way, you will know that all your potential audience is able to read the document (even if they have to download some software first), even in ten years time when Microsoft Office XP is no longer supported and the current version makes a hash of old files.

Re:Please don't use this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, of course, if you're interested in making the document widely available, the alternative document formats are SOOO much better. Last I checked almost nobody has OpenOffice, TeX, or Gnumeric installed on their machines. Conversely, I don't think I know of anybody without access to a machine capable of opening a .DOC file.

What kind of guarntee is there that I will be any more able to open an OpenOffice file 10 years down the road than to open an Office XP file? OpenDocument is a standard, but standards come and go with time. How many bright-and-shining standards do you think have fallen by the wayside since Windows 95 came out just over 10 years ago?

Re:Please don't use this!

[Planesdragon]

. No document is free if it's encoded in one of Microsoft's proprietry formats.

Right now, today, anyone who can't read a .doc file is either ignorant or obtuse. I think I might have one device that can read a text file and not a .doc format -- and most of them have at least two ways to read that format installed. .doc is never going to get worse than it is today, because .docx and .docm (the new Office formats) are compressed XML, just like the old OOo format (albeit with a different schema.)

Are proprietary formats potentially very harmful? Yes. Is .doc a harmful format, because of its proprietary nature? No. (It's harmful because of it's word-processing nature, being really a WYSIWYM format that pretends to be WYSIWYG.)

Re:Please don't use this!

[goMac2500]

Because we all know that somehow OpenOffice is guaranteed to still be maintained 10 years from now!

Seriously folks. It's a freakin document format. And last I checked, OpenOffice can read Word files anyway. I'm assuming 10 years from now, even if Word does disappear off the face of the Earth, OpenOffice will still read Word files. It's not like Word files are using some ultra secure encryption that only Microsoft will ever be able to decipher.

Suppose I'll go don my flame proof suit now...

Re:Please don't use this!

[zsau]

Right now, today,

I was at least as concerned about the future as I was about today. And I've never been happy with the output of imported Word files in OpenOffice.org and other similar software; the formatting's usually screwy in some way or another. (Obviously, HTML/CSS formatting is different from one program to another, but HTML/CSS at least doesn't try to be WYSIWYG.) If the content is essentially textual so the loss of formatting doesn't matter ... why not just use HTML or plain text? It's easier, because your readers will probably find the file through their web browser, and HTML and plain text are just about guaranteed to be readable with a web browser. If the formatting does matter, then because OpenOffice.org and other platforms (and I'm told—but can't confirm—even other versions of Word) don't maintain the formatting with any precision, you're doing yourself (and your audience) a disservice by using this plugin. You're better off using a documented file format like TeX/PDF that will format the same on different computers.

Regarding filetypes in future versions of Office, that is of no interest to whether or not you should be using this plugin. This plugin works with versions of Office that are available today that use the proprietry file type that is available today. When the next version is released and if it's file type is a nice compressed XML file that can be retrieved & understood easily by other software, then my statement might not hold, and I'll be the first to admit it. But that's not the case today, and you still should not use this plugin.

Re:Please don't use this!

[zsau]

Because we all know that somehow OpenOffice is guaranteed to still be maintained 10 years from now!

True, but the format is documented so any future software can easily implement it, preserving the same formatting as the publisher intended. The same cannot be said about Word in spite of your assertions (or at least, OpenOffice.org doesn't yet maintain Word document formatting precisely). There's also other formats available; if you're really concerned about long-term preservation, I'd recommend something like HTML or plain text (for documents in which the prime concern is information); or TeX (for documents [incl. ppt slides] in whch formatting is important). I realise that TeX isn't especially fun for newbies, so OpenOffice.org documents (which are human readable even without software designed for it) in conjunction with PDF or PostScript is probably a successful compromise.

Also, Word is not the only format in Microsoft Office. One other format likely to be used with this plugin is PowerPoint. As I'm studying for my exams and reading the PPT slides released by my lecturer, I can assure you that OpenOffice.org is far from perfect in importing those, too. Some slides are quite unreadable till I've spent a few minutes fiddling around with them.

(See also my response to your sibling.)

PS: I think your attitude is quite common amongst Slashdotters, which is why I felt the need to express mine; I fear yours is in the majority. I doubt you need a flame-proof suit any more than I do.

PPS: Sorry about my tone/language, I'm in a funny mood right now and I've been reading stuff written in a funny way, so I can't quite get rid of it...

Re:Please don't use this!

[zsau]

PS: I think your attitude is quite common amongst Slashdotters, which is why I felt the need to express mine; I fear yours is in the majority. I doubt you need a flame-proof suit any more than I do.

Or, I could be wrong, and they just express agreement/disagreement in different ways.

I wonder how many of geniuses at MS...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...it took to help develop this macro. Inserting text. Not just any old text. English text. Theyt must have hired a bunch of natural language gurus or something. Sounds really hard!

I'm glad I have /. to keep me informed of the latest bleeding edge software development.

Re:I wonder how many of geniuses at MS...

[Rolo Tomasi]

Dear Sir,

after reading your comment, my sarcasm meter caught fire and exploded, inflicting considerable damage on my person and the interior of my office. You will be hearing from my lawyer soon.

Yours truly,

Rolo Tomasi

Typical M$.

[twitter]

Any kind of big media company ... want to actively encourage other people to release their creative works under very free licenses. Preferably, BSD-style

The old, "What's ours is ours and what yours is ours, thanks for giving" license.

Microsoft and others love that and this tool reflects that love. The choices are restricted and the defaults are just what M$ would like:

• "Allow commercial use of your work" is first with a default of "yes".
• "Allow modification of your work" is the ONLY other option, with a default of "Yes"

Attribution choices are missing which would make this a 2.5 license only. Indeed, OO2 shows a link to the 2.5 license page defined by the author. The defaults are very similar to earlier BSD licenses, which Microsoft loves and encourages.

Cnet's description, "This window allows people to set restrictions on use," is amazing because the defaults do everything to strip away all control and allow maximum exploitation.

Here's why I think it's useful.

[kesuki]

Remember, Office documents have DRM capabilities, by having a plug-in that is offficial then people worried about DRM can still use the Creative Commons License to publish writings. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of DRM, but some people ask for it, so now those people can still choose to use the creative commons license with DRM protected office documents.

It's an add-in :) nobody made you download it, if you don't like it someone else already told you what you could copy/paste to acheive a non-drm version of the same thing.

Mod Parent Up!

[shylock0]

You're absolutely right. Microsoft has done a fantastic job of not only supporting old versions of their files, but supporting old versions of *everybody else's* file formats as well. Word is just about the only thing that will open my WordStar documents from the early 80s. This is something I actually trust Microsoft to do. If you're paranoid about it, keep hard copies -- or print to PDF.

Wow, 2006 and MS invents cut and paste!

[alcmaeon]

Woopie, I'm really excited.

Very Strange

[NickFortune]

Remember, Office documents have DRM capabilities, by having a plug-in that is offficial then people worried about DRM can still use the Creative Commons License to publish writings

That seems an odd idea.

At first glance it just seems silly. Why make something free redistributable, and then employ a technology designed to prevent redistribution. So no-one's going to be using the DRM in that way. What else is there?

I can't see how the non-commercial aspect is going to be enforced. You can set property on the document, but you hardly need DRM to do that. I suppose the doc could ask if it was being illegally redistributed and refuse to decrypt instead, but I'm guessing that anyone willing to flaunt the licence is also going to lie to the DRM, so that's probably not much help.

The no-derivs clause is probably the best fit. You could (presumably) distribute a .doc file wit your litterary masterpiece and be fairly confident that the document won't allow others to amend the text. Not much of an impediment to a determined attacker, since the analogue gap is particularly easy to access for text documents. Maybe the idea is to embed your multimedia in doc file - but then why not use wmv?

And of course, the attribution can only be enforced for a write only doc, so that only really usefuk with no-derivs.

Still, I can't help feeling that most of the CC crowd aren't really going to be interested in technological preventatives. CC seems to be mainly about retaining your rights while allowing free distribution, while DRM is mainly about making people pay for every access. I don't really see it catching on.

Of course, it does offer potential benefits to third party distributors who want to make money from non-comercial CC material. Afte all, you wouldn't be paying them for the content, just for the privilege of decoding it. I just don't think the creators will see that as a desirable outcome.

It's an add-in :) nobody made you download

We're talking about the CC plugin again, right? Not the DRM

GPL for VisualStudio

[dushkin]

Imagine this "GPL add-in for VisualStudio." (Never gonna happen)

requires Windows XP/2003

[glorpy]

I'm sitting at my 4 year old Windows 2000 box at work, click on the download link and discover that no, it's not the Office version so much as the version of Windows. Grr.

Wizard for OO---oops!

[lildogie]

> hoping it isn't long until someone makes a good wizard for OpenOffice

Maybe the uSoft secret weapon here is to patent their CC wizard to stop OO from making one?