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Creative Commons Launches CC+ License

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the all-about-just-gettin-paid dept.

E1ven writes "Creative Commons has this week released their CC+ protocol, which provides a way for authors to allow other people to commercially reuse their work, and give them a pre-negotiated fee or percentage. It makes it easy for people to release the Material under CC-No-Commercial, and then have a way to charge for commercial use if companies are interested."

8 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    So I could CC+ license my C++ code? What if it was something for a class and I'd only gotten a C- on it? so GCC is GPL, is GGPL now CC+ licensed? I'm confused.

  2. That's smart... by SerpentMage · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Finally a smart license... Open Source, but if you want binary or commercial, here are my terms... That lets the developer play nice with Open Source, but gives those that don't want to be nice to Open Source an avenue to buy, thus letting the developer playing nicer with Open Source...

    --

    "You can't make a race horse of a pig"
    "No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
    1. Re:That's smart... by Niten · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you're entirely missing the point here. Sure we've always been free to dual-license things, but many people just aren't good at writing copyright notices and the like. This essentially provides content providers and potential licensers with a consistent user interface within which to operate.

      Imagine that a publisher sees a really insightful code example in a blog entry on Erlang, which he thinks would make an excellent addition to an upcoming book. But the blog's author hasn't made clear whether this work can somehow be licensed for commercial use; or even if he has, the publisher might be having a hard time parsing the author's legalese. The publisher very well might just give up on it rather than go through the effort of contacting and negotiating with the author, and in the end both the publisher and the author lose out. On the other hand, if the author can just put a Creative Commons CC+ button on the page, the publisher can see it immediately and think: "I've seen this before and I know what it means. This work can be licensed, I can click here to find out what it will cost, etc."

      This protocol continues Creative Commons' legacy of making public licensing accessible to the common man. And I think it's an excellent idea.

    2. Re:That's smart... by novakyu · · Score: 3, Informative

      Perhaps you should check the definition of free software, or the Debian Free Software Guideline (which is the basis of the Open Source Definition).

      Any license that does not grant free redistribution (not free as in beer, free as in freedom---as in that the re-distributor is free to charge money for the service, if someone would pay) is definitely not free, and most likely not open source.

      I don't know why people get these wrong impressions that "free software" == "anti-commercial", but nothing could be further from the truth. Free software is just about as Laissez-Faire, free, capitalistic economic system as you can possibly get (free from government-granted monopolies, etc.). Licenses that "play nice" with communities by "graciously" granting non-commercial uses is definitely better than completely proprietary licenses (or a lack of one), but it's only halfway there since any such license still restricts your freedom in ways that are not acceptable.

      If you aren't totally convinced still why these "non-commercial only" licenses are wrong, here's a very simple reason why: Those licenses are GPL-incompatible, since GPL does not allow addition of restrictions with small exceptions, and any project or software using those restrictive licenses is excluding a lot of code out there that is already released under GPL.

  3. Sure, I've heard about this by Chairboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's like the original Creative Commons license, except with pointers.

  4. Re:Cookbook like examples please? by boyko.at.netqos · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, here's a real-world example (and I was praying for something like this...)

    I'm making a documentary that I may as well plug now, www.followingalexiswest.com. (In fact, I'm making this post from LAX, having just returned from on-location filming.)

    Now, in any documentary, you typically get about 20-25:1 shooting ratio. What that means is that for every hour of actual documentary, you've filmed about 20-25 hours of raw footage. In my case, much of that is interviews - educational, important interviews.

    That would normally end up on the cutting-room floor - but there's so much educational, important information there. Once I get the stuff digitized, I'm taking a copy of all the raw footage and giving it to the New Zealand Film Archive, and uploading it online on Google Video. And I want people to use this raw footage in their own documentary projects - especially if they're students.

    But there are still "commercial" uses - indie documentarians like me - who could also use the footage. I don't want them to take it without negotiating a fair price, but I do want to let them know that it's within the realm of possibility to licence the footage without breaking the bank.

    Now, I could release it under a CC licence and sell it to commercial interests, but a CC+ licence makes it explicit that I'm looking to make money - but if you just want to muck around with it for a student project, you'll get no hassle.

    --
    I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
  5. How do you define commercial? by Njovich · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, what are the limits of the word 'commercial'? The way I read this license, you basically can not use this for anything. Websites with advertisements have an indirect trade or profit goal, you can't use the content on something like Youtube (which is part of a for-profit company), you can't use the artwork in a GPL'ed piece of code (it allows commercial use). Even a private artwork can be seen as a work to improve someones portfolio. The potential for good would be a lot bigger if the CC licenses didn't have this limit.

    Of course, everyone should pick the license they want, but I think people underestimate just how limiting the NC licenses are for people that try to stick to the law.

  6. "Commercial Use" ill-defined? by ortholattice · · Score: 3, Interesting
    One problem I have with this and other "non-commercial" CC licenses is that "non-commercial" doesn't seem, to me, to be clearly defined. Certainly there can be blatant commercial uses that are easy to identify, but there are many situations where it is not so clear. Suppose, for example, the material is posted a personal home page, which is provided free by the ISP in exchange for advertisements. Does that constitute "commercial use"? Clearly, the ISP is profiting from the material if it is drawing people to that page and thus the ads. Who owes who what money?

    Is a Red Cross advertisement commercial or noncommercial? If the Red Cross paid a magazine for an ad containing a CC+ licensed image, then the magazine is earning some money from it, even though the Red Cross itself is non-commercial. (Or is it?)

    It is even hard to come up with examples where the use is disconnected from the slightest taint of a direct or indirect commercial connection.

    Of course, CC+ is also incompatible with GPL-licensed software. For example, a CC licensed "non-commercial use" icon in a software package would prevent a commercial entity from using it, defeating the purpose of the GPL.