Creative Commons v3.0 Launched

An anonymous reader writes "Creative Commons announced the release of its licenses on Friday 23 Feb 2007. Changes include "Clarifications Negotiated With Debian and MIT", CC-BY-SA "compatibility structure", endorsement control, etc."

Comments

I am just now changing over to the new licenses

[MarkWatson]

I use CC licenses for my Java AI and Common Lisp primer "free web books" and was the 'featured commoner' a few years ago.

I am pleased that CC is not standing still on licenses. Although I have written 14 published books, there are a few strong reasons why I am transitioning to CC open content authoring; the the primary reason is that I tend to be interested in niche technical areas and conventional publishers in the past have pressured me to tailor my works to a larger market. I am in the slow process of "dual publishing" my CC licensed content: free PD downloads and lulu.com instant print books for a fee for the occasional reader who wants a physical book.

My original motive for doing CC open content was simply that I got tired of having teachers, etc. ask if they good copy a chapter or two of my published books for their students - and my having to turn down their requests because my publishers own my material. Other reasons for CC based open content are a wider readership and thus more frequent interesting connections with my readers.

Really, the only advantage of using publishers is making money :-)

Flawed licenses: Not free content

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad enough that CC promotes the non-free -NC/-ND license terms, with 3.0 they have made one important change that makes the license non-free in most of the world.

Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce, Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as part of any Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation.

What they were attempting to do is harmonize the rules around the world. Some nations (like France and Japan) strongly enforce a class of rights called "moral rights". These rights are held by the author of a work, are non-transferable, and never expire. They allow the author to demand attribution and prevent his work from being mutilated.

Rather than releasing people from moral rights to the greatest extent possible, CC decided to impose these moral rights restrictions on the entire world. Worse, the terminology is hamfisted and more restrictive than the moral rights laws almost anywhere. As a result you must comply with this vague term as well as the applicable moral rights laws.

The net effect is that anyone who has a copyright interest in a CC-By-* work now has a powerful tool built out of copyright law to attack anyone who modifies their work in a way which they disapprove, or anyone who redistributes their work in the process of criticizing. This discriminates against some classes of use and is not acceptable in a free license. CC already offers -ND terms for authors who are concerned that their works will be modified.

Slander, misrepresentation, and other forms of fraud are bad but there are laws in every civilized nation to prevent these things. We do not need or want additional restrictions for this purpose imposed in a license which purports to be intended for free content. If they were concerned about the interpretation and validity of the license in places like France they would have been better off including a clarification which stated that the authors intent is to allow derivative works to the greatest extent possible, but that the license doesn't wave your other obligations under the law such as restrictions involving personality rights, trademark, patent, slander, etc.

If you're a newbie to slashdot and not down with the groupthink yet, you might want to find out more about what people expect in a free content license. Check out http://freedomdefined.org/Definition

CC is 'Open Source' not FSF

[Jack Action]

In recent years, Creative Commons has gone in an 'Open Source' direction, far from the principles of the Free Software Foundation that CC founder Lawrence Lessig said inspired his movement in the first place (cue howling anti-RMS Slashdotters).

In fact, in the recent GPLv3 furor, Lessig came down on the side of Linus Torvalds, against Richard Stallman. This is when I first began questioning the value of supporting CC by using one of their licenses.

It seems, like others in the 'Open Source' movement, CC has mades its compromises and now plays nicely with those who want to make a ton of money off of user generated content (MySpace, Rupert Murdoch anyone?), without necessarily preserving the rights of users.

CC now resides in the ESR category.