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Creative Commons Urged To Drop Non-Free Clauses In CC 4.0
TheSilentNumber writes "A member of Students for Free Culture has just published a thorough and detailed post calling for the retirement of the non-free clauses, NoDerivatives (ND) and NonCommercial (NC). They state, 'The NC and ND clauses not only depend on, but also feed misguided notions about their purpose and function.' and that 'Instead of wasting effort maintaining and explaining a wider set of conflicting licenses, Creative Commons as an organization should focus on providing better and more consistent support for the licenses that really make sense.'"
Note that the opinions expressed are of the author alone and not necessarily the entire organization. More info on the process of revising the CC licenses.
Someone posts a message about a message complaining about a message about a license and this is somehow postworthy?
Not newsworthy, just flamebait.
Some people just want to be able to give their works away for free and have them be shared.
They'll still want that whether or not the Creative Commons organization wrote the license for them.
One of the worrying things about using CC material is: What is a derivative work?
This matters for the viral/copyleft CC-SA (CC Share and Share Alike) license.
For example, if you have a web page, and you either excerpt or publish a full Wikipedia article, along with your other content, have you just given permission to people to use your content from that webpage?
Is the virality of the CC-SA limited just to the part which you excerpt, or the whole webpage, or your whole website?
I.e., you include some CC-SA material, and now your entire website is considered a "work", and it's a derivative. What if you also have GPL and GFDL stuff in the mix? Which license wins?
If you include CC-SA stuff on a CD, does the entire CD become CC-SA?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
(popularly marketed as “open source software”)
There's something weird about that way of putting it
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Newsworth? I don't know. But absolutely Awarenessworth! Currently, more and more people are releasing their own music and videos under the CC licenses for our own free enjoyment, and also it's one of the greatest forces we have against the ever increasing stupidity of the big labels.
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
Why is it that you suck?
I like using NC for images, and I think people are a lot more likely to release their images under this (without this clause they may be less likely release them as CC at all, and just keep them closed).
I really dislike that wikipedia won't accept NC stuff, though.
Sent from my PDP-11
If I say, make an art asset and post it to say, OpenGameArt, I have a choice of options.
I can list it as one of the CC licenses, for instance, or even under a derivative of the GPL.
Personally, I am a fan of CC:SA. I don't mind a small time person using that asset to make a game. That's why I donated it in the first place. That does not mean I want say, Zygna to go "Oh, art assets? FOR FREE!? OM NOM NOM NOM!"
It is this latter one that I feel warrants the "no commercial" verbiage, even today. The tradgedy of the commons happens when the commons is not protected, and happens without fail. Would I care if a small "for profit" project, like is often done with humble bundle used it? Not so much, as long as they gave attribution in 10pt font in the credits or smething. But Zygna? Fuck them.
The problem is that it is a binary on/off situation with commercial use. I would happily give an indie project commercial use rights, but it would be a cold day in hell when a major studio would get it.
If there were some finer granularity, I would use it, but in place of that, "no commercial" is at least a step in the right direction.
Removing it let's abusive companies go om nom nom with community assets.
Essentially the argument is "because there are some instances where commercial use is not well defined, all instances ought considered vague. Very poor logic there. There exist distinctly commercial uses of work (putting something I wrote under a CC license with a NC clause in a book and selling it) against which the NC clause protects. The NC clause is absolutely a useful option to have.
into something called the Evolutionary Commons, where everything's guaranteed to be changeable and freed from any special Creator privileges.
Seriously I think CC is fine enough as it is for everybody that wants a taste of culture. Not everyone is a creator. As far as I can tell, there are no CC licenses that would prohibit somebody putting up stuff on Pirate Bay, which I think is the bare minimum for something to be called free. However, If there are licenses that can be used to sue jobless teenagers leeching and seeding in their basements, these licenses should be purged.
This is really, really silly.
Counterexamples:
1. I write an opinion piece for my local paper on why G.W. Bush was the worst US president in history. Under any free license, someone else can write a revised version in which my opinions are all changed, then distribute it with attribution to me and the reviser. Fair use doesn't allow this. An ND license does what I want, which is to prevent this misrepresentation of my opinions.
2. Alice Randall wrote a book called The Wind Done Gone using the setting and characters of Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell's estate sued Randall and won. If Gone With the Wind had been distributed under an ND license, this would have been prevented. Under a free license, it would have been allowed. Fair use doesn't allow this use.
3. I make coffee mugs with Harry Potter characters on them and sell them on the internet without paying a royalty to J.K. Rowling. If Rowling had chosen any free license, this would have been allowed. With an NC license, it's prohibited, which is what she wants. It doesn't fall under fair use.
Yes, this is blindingly obvious. In all three examples above, the original author had no intention of contributing to a shared commons.
Perhaps the silliest thing of all about this is the belief that people can somehow be prevented from using NC or ND licenses. Nobody can prevent this. The CC organization could "deprecate" them, and this would have absolutely no effect.
Find free books.
If the authors would really want a license that amounts to one/both of the NC/ND and there's none to reference on the CC site, they'll specify them expressly; so "hiding" them from the CCv4.0 set of licenses won't bring more "liberty" for the community.
Also, if an author releases the creation with NC/ND clauses, it doesn't make their creation "absolutely non-Commons" - granted, not the same degree of freedom, but neither completely "private".
If, for some purposes, somebody needs exceptions (eg distributing Wikipedia on offline media, in communities without internet access), what's wrong with contacting the author to ask for another license, to be granted (or not) on a case by case basis?
In my mind, the request to drop NC/ND from CC is akin to asking the Open Source community to abolish GPL and use only BSD derived licences.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
A summary of this article is:
I want CC No Commercial (NC) and CC No Derivatives (ND) clauses removed because they don't really support free. Works don't enrich the commons unless you can do whatever you want with them. Also, the NC clause should be eliminated because it is really hard to define commercial. Does commercial mean you can't share a file on a website that has ads?
My opinion is that a little free is better than not free. I should be able to donate my work to the commons without expecting to see it on a billboard. Which has actually happened. In terms of the commercial example, I think we can all judge when things move over the line from donation based to blatantly commercial. The good news is that it is up to me as a rights holder to enforce the license. I can allow uses of my file in ad supported web sites, but object to my song being used in a local TV ad. Yes, there are ambiguities in everything. That's life.
If you object to these licenses, don't use 'em. Or anything with them.
Disclaimer: I've licensed songs I've written as CC NC.
Apparently it was newsworthy enough for you to read the article and then post on it....
You seriously want to remove all commercial protection that a CC user obviously wants (given how much stuff is released using one of these licenses), just because a few scenarios are in a gray area? You may think you should be able to profit off someone else's original content without permission, but I don't think that.
If I can't protect my work from commercial duplication (IE a newspaper, publisher or magazine selling my article/book/photo/whatever with impunity), then I'm not going to use Creative Commons anymore, simple as that.
One of the worrying things about using CC material is: What is a derivative work?
That is an excellent question and one that directly relates to my use of the 'NC' licence. When releasing educational materials I'm happy with everyone getting to use them for free and sharing them with others but I do not want to see them get incorporated into a text book or used as supporting material for a textbook which publishers are charging students obscene prices for (especially as those prices are one of the primary motivations for making the material in the first place!).
While you might be able to argue that a textbook which incorporates pages of text and/or questions is a derivative work many publishers now offer flexible publishing options where you can pick and choose what chapters and sections of a book are included for your course. In such a case does all the book count as a derivative work or just the sections or chapters where they use CC content adapted to the book?
While the term 'non-commercial' might be ambiguous so is the term 'derivative works' so if ambiguity is an argument to drop the term both should be dropped. Personally I thing the argument for dropping the 'NC' clause is more to do with the author's political persuasions than any other argument given. I think keeping the option to give us a choice is important. Looking at open source there is clear support for both BSD-like and GPL-like licences. What is nice with CC is that it accommodates both camps under one umbrella. If they drop the 'NC' I predict a licence fork to fix the omission.
Because my mum didn't love me
Instead of wasting effort maintaining and explaining a wider set of conflicting licenses, Creative Commons as an organization should focus on providing better and more consistent support for the licenses that really make sense.
"Instead of wasting effort maintaining and explaining" -- Presuming the conclusion. You are supposed to convince us why it's wasted effort, not just label it such.
"a wider set of conflicting licenses" -- the licenses don't conflict just to conflict but rather because they embody different and incompatible ways of licensing the same work.
"Creative Common as an organization" -- as opposed to Creative Commons as a giant lizard-robot, very important.
"should focus on providing better and more consistent support" -- they don't provide good and consistent support? Since when?!
" for the licenses that really make sense" -- where 'really' here is a synonym for 'to me' because we know that no content creator could possibly want to use a license whose terms conflict with the ones that I would chose.
Creative Commons isn't intended to be a free license-we have the GPL, BSD license etc for that. It's intended to be a license that supports distribution of creative works while preserving certain rights. It's also intended to be user-friendly for both parties. It's not supposed to be one of the more politically-oriented licenses.
Also: You can't 'retire' a license. It's a legal agreement, a piece of text. A CC license can't be retired anymore than a book can be retired.
Which is why the Students for Free Culture wants to make it more daunting for artists to migrate to free licences by making it an 'all or nothing' deal. Brilliant way to shoot everyone in the foot, guys.
Activist movements need some shorthand for shaming idealists who rush the group's goals without consideration for gradual pragmatic change—like a dunce cap, only larger, and with flashing lights.
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Drop NC/ND and the authors who want to use them will find an alternative. Probably a more closed one. This helps no one.
Or with software you saw source code to. Or rounded corners on your phone.
You see to answer your question "what is a derivative work?" you need to talk to someone who knows YOUR LEGAL SYSTEM. IF you feel it is unfair or obscure FIX YOUR LEGAL SYSTEM.
This is no more a problem with CC licensed work than it is the fault of Microsoft.
We could call it the Richard M. Stallman award for activistic excellence.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I remember back in the 2400 baud modem days, when you had to carefully decide what to share. People who are just getting onto the internet don't understand how easy it is to share, and why it's not okay to share everything they have.
The entire "non-commercial use only" problem is a serious problem, and widely misunderstood. By default, CC's NC licence should operate as "commercial ~mass production prohibited~", eg uploading a video to youtube or a file to dropbox, even though the sites make money in some way, should not prohibit placing the content somewhere that is easily accessible. On the other hand, you have the China problem where video (legal or not) is taken from somewhere, dumped onto DVD in China, and then sold on eBay. This is the problem that "non-commercial" was meant to solve. It wasn't meant to, and shouldn't mean "don't rehost my content on a commercial website."
Another tangent to the CC licence that is also problem, is the translation and censorship of content. If I have, for example, a webcomic on my website and a foreigner who wishes to rehost translated copies of the content, I'd be fine with that. I however would not want the content to be censored, or the english copies to be rehosted, because I make money only when it's on MY site. However you see many "scanlation" and "fansub" websites that clearly do not have the rights to do what they are doing at all, but there is too much of a language barrier to get permission from everyone involved (foreign artists, agents, publishers, etc) so many of these sites operate in a grey area only dealing with the unlicenced content. The problem comes back to bite the copyright holders later however as those unlicensed copies hurt future sales should they ever be licensed. The internet doesn't forget.
So this comes back to the CC NC clause. If the original artist puts their content under CC NC, they don't care if someone translates, censors, and puts it on another website. CC ND prohibits translation and censorship, so it's only useful purpose is to ensure that content isn't being censored, but at the same time it prevents translation.
I'd suggest maybe replacing ND with "No Censorship", where the content can be edited to add value or context but not to excise undesirable parts. NC needs to be more like a "No Access Rights Locking" where the content can be shared, even commercial copies made, but they can't be locked down to prevent further copying.
Right. Or they'll write their own licenses, which has a couple of big disadvantages: (1) Non-lawyers will write their own licenses and mess up, or people will put things in their license that will have unintended consequences. (2) There will be lots of different and incompatible licenses, which makes sharing more difficult. Neither of these is purely hypothetical. There really was an overproliferation of licenses ca. 2000. E.g., here is a license created in 1999; its author now recommends using CC instead. The existence of both GFDL and CC-BY-SA has created huge hassles for a lot of people. There are definitely examples of misconceived clauses in software licenses, e.g., the infamous BSD advertising clause. A similar example in non-software licenses would be the optional invariant sections clause in the GFDL, which caused major hassles in debian documentation.
Find free books.
Nope.
"Assimilating" someone else's work is still going to yield derivative work.
This is something that is quite independent of the FSF. The FSF did not invent these concepts. They merely exploit them.
You can't just pretend that this is some sort of hippie inspired conspiracy.
You can't take someone else's work and pass it off as your own. The politics of your victim really don't matter.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I guess that would work within the realm of the free culture movement, but I was thinking even more generally. Any cause you can name—environmentalism, multiculturalism, gender equality, whatever—has overeager radicals who don't want (or know how) to balance their vision with public acceptance. They may not even be wrong about what they're talking about (I think a lot more people would agree with RMS in theory than in practice, for example), and yet they can do a horrendous amount of damage to their own public image. It's daunting to imagine how far back society's been set by the misanthropy of overenthusiasm.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
There is natural conflict in the development process, because after spending hundreds or thousands of hours creating something cool, it's hard to let go. This conflict is especially difficult if you decide that releasing your project as open source is the best way to distribute it and get others to use and extend it. The first knee-jerk reaction is to attempt to retain as much control as you can -- "Yeah, it's open source, but I don't want you using it commercially or as the basis of something else." -- If you follow through with that restriction, you're essentially releasing source code or design files for a closed project. It's open in name only.
Once you recognize that your biggest fear is actually the idea that someone will take your idea and do a better (or more successful) job at it than you have, you can begin to step forward. The first step is to understand that if you have a really good idea, someone will clone it. In fact, it's likely that 15 people will clone it. And that's good, because they might do a better job and there's nothing from stopping you from incorporating their good ideas into your project (a derivative work of a derivative work!). Whether or not you explicitly grant permission for someone to use your ideas, rest assured that they will. To that end, it makes the most sense to release with a CC Share Alike requirement that ensures that your ideas and their derivatives stay public and accessible to all.
Quite a few comments from artists(?) that want to share their work but at the same time do not want to share their works. So what do you want, to share or not to share?
I'm a software developer and any ND or NC license is useless for me.
What is a derivation? If I take your art (like an icon) and re-size it or use a different color, ups can't do, because it is a derivation and ND don't allow it.
What is commercial? I develop a free open source tool and release it on my site, but the site have ads from Google, or it have other commercial applications there, too. Can't do that with a NC license.
I think I'm not the only one who just skips any ND or NC licenses. Is it what you want? Why to share your work in the first place?
If some big studio takes your work and makes a great game out of it, isn't it what you want as an artist? Better to have your name in the credits of Big Game Foo then to live in obscurity. And just maybe the Big Publisher will hire you for the next game.
I'm agree with the article author opinion. The ND and NC licenses are contrary to the goal of Creative Commons.
What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons helps you share your knowledge and creativity with the world.
Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical
infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and
innovation.
It's like the GPL or the BSD would be useless with a fields-of-use clause. And the ND or NC is like a fields-of-use clause.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
What if I write notes in the margins of a book? Does that create a derivative work? What if I insert whole pages? At what point does it become illegal for me to resell the book?
I didn't say anything about passing someone else's work off as my own. I can use someone's code under a BSD license, toss it in the middle of one of my source files, and simply mark it with the BSD license, and state that it applies only to that portion of the file, and that the rest of the file is licensed under whatever license I want to put it under. The only reason I can't do that with GPL code is because the GPL requires me to license my entire work under the GPL.
(eg distributing Wikipedia on offline media, in communities without internet access), what's wrong with contacting the author to ask for another license, to be granted (or not) on a case by case basis?
Can you think of any practical way to ask the thousand of contributors of Wikipedia for an exception?
In my mind, the request to drop NC/ND from CC is akin to asking the Open Source community to abolish GPL and use only BSD derived licences.
No it is not. It is akin to abolish any field-of-use terms in the GPL or the BSD (which they not have). NC and ND basically say: That work is free but only if you are not using it for Xxxx and Zzzz. Which means it is not free at all.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Say, I publish a book under my own name. I don't care if people reproduce it on their websites, and I don't care if commercial enterprises included it into their own collections. Hey, it's not the money I'm after, so they can sell it too, if they want. What I do care about however, is that nobody comes and starts modifying (adding to, modifying or deleting from) that text... because my name and reputation are associated with it. That's what ND is for. Even if CC removed ND from its list of options, nothing prevents me from releasing said book under an ND-like condition nonetheless.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
I'm someone who writes and publishes music under CC-NC-SA. Since I'm doing artistic stuff rather than engineering stuff with it, it's possible my perspective is a bit different, but I suspect the argument will apply just as well.
I'm not afraid someone will do it better. I'm afraid that some organization will take what I've given away, copy it, make a token modification, and copyright it, thus turning the work that I made as a gift into something that has a price on it, all without paying me a dime. They might even be able to turn around and issue DMCA takedowns and sue people for performing my work, claiming that they're really performing their version rather than my version. They've now taken free artistic work and made it no longer free. In other words, they aren't really adding any value at all, just taking value from me and from the public and declaring it theirs.
An illustrative case: Pete Seeger took biblical verses and wrote the song Turn, Turn, Turn, releasing it into the public domain. Several other folk musicians performed it, and it gained in popularity, and Pete finally recorded it in 1962. In 1965, the Byrds recorded it, and now most people who've heard of the song think that they wrote it originally, and some others think Bob Dylan wrote it. Had Pete Seeger not been a relatively well-known figure, it's quite possible his contribution would have been forgotten entirely.
If somebody wants to take my stuff and use it in a commercial project, releasing it under CC-NC-SA doesn't say they can't do it, it just says that they need to get in touch with me and work out some sort of arrangement. In practical terms, it means that if someone else wants to sing my song among friends or something, they can just do it, but if somebody wants to put it on an album or book or something like that, we need to talk about it.
I am officially gone from
Activist movements need some shorthand for shaming idealists who rush the group's goals without consideration for gradual pragmatic change
I think the term "Fanatic" works pretty well. Filled with excessive or single-minded zeal. Uncritical enthusiasm.
It's too obscure to use, but among Discworld fans you could call them "Shoes".
I've been writing music for the last 12 years. I will never release my music without an NC ND clause. The reason is that I intend for Joe Public to freely download and share as much as they like. But:
a: If someone wants to earn money off my hard work, I want remuneration commensurate for my efforts
b: If someone wants to remix my music, I want to know what they're doing with it first. I don't wish my music to become the backing track to another 'famine song'
Fanatic is OK from an external perspective, but I think to be maximally successful the word really needs to be something that can be uttered as an accusation within the group. Something along the lines of hyperopia, perhaps.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
"The peer production license is an example of the Copyfarleft type of license, in which only other commoners, cooperatives and nonprofits can share and re-use the material, but not commercial entities intent on making profit through the commons without explicit reciprocity"
http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License
Far, far better than just NC-ND
>central tenant of open source
Tenant, huh? Is he a fat guy with a beard?
I'm one of the guys behind an open source music hardware project (meeblip.com) and strongly against NC/ND restrictions. They exist out of fear and stand counter to the central tenant of open source (*anyone* should be able to study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or a derivative work based on that design).
Sorry,
The key assumption in your argumentation: "open source software/hardware" and "open artistic creation" are identical. I assert that there's a fundamental difference between the two:
1. software/hardware is an engineering problem, and the results can be improved, polished, maintained over time in sync with technological advances.
2. By contrast, an artistic creation is meant to transmit/produce emotions/feelings/sensations etc... For some creations, the author may feel that any change in the expression would alter too much the intentions s/he had when creating it
Say whatever one may, no-one - maybe not even the author - can "improve" on a specific artistic creation
Yes, you can try to use an existing creation to build something equally appealing to the people, but in doing so you are going to dilute the original authors intentions (if not outright destroying them entirely).
Another example
Pink Floyd's attorney Robert Howe describes the band's albums as "seamless pieces." No-one who's heard 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' would quibble with that.
You know, I do agree with that and not only in respect with The Dark side of the moon.
My opinion is: the "open source" or "closed license" character for an artistic creation is irrelevant - the creator's wish is to be respected . Anything else would show a lack of respect for the original creative act, which I would say is more dangerous for society than the potential loss of another derivative creation.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I wish I could remember the exact incident, but I remember the gist of it very well: some corpo-suit type was talking about a very successful Open Source software project that the company he represented had either originated or incubated or otherwise given a big boost to. And this corpo-suit was bemoaning the fact that they hadn't locked "their property" up and made people pay through the nose to work with it, because then think of how much they could have reaped from people's eagerness to work with "their" code. Thus entirely missing the fact obvious to everyone else, that if it had been locked up and completely pay-to-play like that, they wouldn't have had anywhere near the interest that they did.
This "member of Students for Free Culture"* sounds like he's making the exact same mistake, only from the other side. Creative Commons licenses were meant to serve creators who didn't necessarily want to give away all rights to their works, but wanted to give some non-traditional rights to their audiences in a legally safe way. This student is saying "No, we shouldn't be letting anyone find a comfortable middle ground; Creative Commons must serve only those who come completely over to our side!" Missing the point completely that those who do want to go all the way to the Totally Free side already can do that, and if Creative Commons limited themselves to only those people, they would have cut off a lot of their own support.
* I really wonder how many degrees of separation there are between this student and the submitter...
Those extremists provide real value to their cause.
Pretend, for a moment, that society has to pick a number on a scale from 0-100. Right now, public opinion on average thinks the number should be around 40, and mainstream media generally considers it acceptable to discuss proposals that involve numbers as low as 25 and as high as 55. Now, suppose there's well-funded group A that thinks this number should be 0, and a well-funded group B that thinks this number should be 80, and both have legitimate and reasonable-sounding arguments for holding their respective position. If group A adopts the moderate approach, they'll advocate for 25. If group B adopts the extremist approach, they'll advocate for 80. If both groups have equally convincing arguments and can get their message out equally, the public opinion will shift not from 40 down to 25 but from 40 to 52, because group B has successfully convinced a significant number of people that it's reasonable and socially acceptable to think that numbers in the 55-80 range are right.
A practical example of this in action: 20 years ago, gay marriage or gay civil union was unthinkable in the US. In general, 'respectable' liberal political groups didn't want to touch the issue at all, because what was considered the range of acceptable opinion was a spectrum from "Ok, the police shouldn't be able to arrest gay people and throw them in jail for being gay" to "Beat 'em up and force them to be straight". But the less respectable gay rights folks kept up the pressure for gay marriage to be legal, as complete extremists and nutjobs for at least a decade. And by doing that, the idea started entering popular culture, and eventually got some political decisions going their way, and now is legal in many places and has the support of over half of Americans.
I am officially gone from
Atavistic excellence?
Absolutely, when progress is hindered, activism, and perhaps of an extreme sort is necessary for any cause. I wish to heap blame on those who would rally prematurely, though, and in doing so endanger their movement. Extremism can be good, but jumping ahead out of turn harms everyone. At this point in the game, we're still convincing people that free culture is socially and economic viable—and this SfFC member is already calling for the CC to take on an exclusionist attitude toward people who are just dipping their toes in. That's not helping anyone; it's spiteful and downright moronic.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Zealotry. Call them by what they are. Zealots. Fanatacism to the point where there is no longer reason. Absolutism.
It's not a matter of vision and acceptance. It's a matter of imposing of The Way It Must Be upon people who don't see things quite the same way (everybody else). There are visions that do not involve the absolute. The Constitution embodies one such vision, the Republic that is the United States being its implementation. Not coincidentally, said vision is slowly being ripped apart by absolutism.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
GPL claims to have much greater powers of assimilation than mere copyright law, to the point where many have come around and consider the GPL to be an EULA and not merely "copyleft".
I found the article incredibly repetative and wishy washy and I think the author needs to go back to critical thinking class. It seems boil down to anybody who wants NC,ND is mistaken and doesn't understand creative commons. Other than pointing out the ambiguities on NC, it really doesn't justify the point of view other than "I'm right, you are wrong" with vague references to "outdated business models". More importantly, the author of the articl never attempts to address the uses cases intended by these clauses. One use case is that an owner of copyright wants to make it available to others, but does not want it modified (ND). If I put a photo up of my nephew and I want my family and friends (and family friends) to be able to share it amonst themselves, including with friends I don't know, CC makes a lot of sense. ND means that you don't get to use my nephews photo in your latest LOLimage and NC means some company doesn't get to use it in the ad campaign. And if you follow some of the groups on flickr, you find that photos are being routinely appriated for advertising use.
In the end, if the ND and NC clauses are struck from CCv4.0, people like me will simply stay with CCv3.0, or fork a new CC2v4.0
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
(eg distributing Wikipedia on offline media, in communities without internet access), what's wrong with contacting the author to ask for another license, to be granted (or not) on a case by case basis?
Can you think of any practical way to ask the thousand of contributors of Wikipedia for an exception?
Well... though luck... what would you find preferable:
1. not have a Wikipedia at all (not even online) because a less restrictive license would not have attracted the same participation
2. have an online version and no offline version.
Before jumping up with the accusation of "false dichotomy", note that I am not excluding
a. an attempt to still try to "negotiate" a more liberal distribution license with Wikipedia as an organisation... It may or may not be successful... but, as the "SOPA blackout protest" demonstrate, there are chances for the Wikipedia to act as an organisation rather than a heterogeneous group of authors (that is to say: it is not me to push the problem in a "false dichotomy")
b. would point a. fail, nobody stops anyone in starting Wikipedia (under another name) with a more liberal license.... you know? Just to check if the level of participation...
In my mind, the request to drop NC/ND from CC is akin to asking the Open Source community to abolish GPL and use only BSD derived licences.
No it is not. It is akin to abolish any field-of-use terms in the GPL or the BSD (which they not have). NC and ND basically say: That work is free but only if you are not using it for Xxxx and Zzzz. Which means it is not free at all.
The cited resource define the term in the "patent license" genus. Are you sure the same apply for the copyright protection?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The Leeroy Jenkins Award?
You can't take someone else's work and pass it off as your own.
Good artist copy, great artists steal. (C) Anonymous Coward 2012
A sensible possibility.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Unfortunately the concept of zeal disparages them for believing in their cause, and is an innate slur against other members of a given movement. A new word, more specific to the idea that they are acting against their own interests, is necessary. 'Radical', in my opinion, has the same problem, since it implies their belief is, again, more essential.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I don't know about everyone else, but just the fact that we can argue about what these licenses mean over 200+ posts tells me they are written too damned ambiguous and seriously need a rewrite.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Apparently it was newsworthy enough for you to read the article and then post on it....
you must be new here...
:)
GP did not RTFA. No one rtfa's. ESPECIALLY AC trolls.
No offense intended.
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
So you just want normal plain copyright? That's fine, but I don't see why there should be an CC logo on that.
You don't know how right you are friend. I mean if you were a company looking at using and contributing to an Open Source project so you could use the code in some hardware you were working on wouldn't you think twice after RMS named a company by name with an attack clause in the new GPL? I know I would, it makes him look like he is using the license to settle personal scores, which I'd argue he is. Considering how many nasty things he's had to say about Google I wouldn't be surprised if GPL V4 has an "Anti-Androidization" clause in it.
But that is the problem with zealotry in a nutshell, its "You are with me or against me" with no middle ground. Removing the middle ground of ND and NC will simply make that many more shy away from using a CC license and letting us enjoy their work because they won't want to see that work sold or even twisted, like the girl that had her picture taken for a car ad and ended up in magazines half the world away in ads that made her sound like a hooker.
Isn't it funny though how you can change one or two words, here and there, and TFA sounds like a pro corporate speech? I always found it amusing that zealots on either side of a debate use similar enough language that all it would take is a few alterations to turn one into the other, kinda like how you can take all the anti-BSD posts about "stealing" and "theft" and with just a few words make it into a pro *.A.A speech. I always found that kinda interesting, although when you point that out oh boy do the zealots get mad!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Drop NC and ND and authors will just use plain Copyright, that puts us back to square one.
I tried to post the following comment on their blog but it didn't seem to want to take it---
I agree that culture should be free but I disagree that the NC and ND should be disallowed. Why?
As a singer / songwriter of non-mainstream works I have no problem releasing those works with a CC license as long as it is not released commercially. Why not? Explain why I as a content creator should allow corporate entities to reap a profit from my creativity with a "free license" when I have been excluded from the market by them? Why should I support monopolists that care only for profits and not for culture or cultural heritage?
The entertainment companies are not the friends of human culture except as far as it provides a profit center -- therefore the non-commercial license is an option for me. I favor shared culture but not the trend toward the theft of human culture by "corporate entities" who see only profits and exclusive property not art. Also why should I as an artist want to support those that punish listeners who do not "pay the medicorpse" for work the mediacorpse never created?
You are mistaken that NC is counter-intuitive. It is a perfect means for a content creator to thumb their noses at commercial entities. Why shouldn't I be allowed to say sorry Big 5 Record Companies but you cannot make a profit from my work? When the IP monsters roll back the copyright laws they paid for to reasonable limits [Life + 75 years is not reasonable - 50 total years is].
A non-commercial license allows the recording and performance but without corporate entities using my work to make a profit. With an NC license the works could be free for cultural purposes -- call it protected public domain...
The same kind of argument can be applied to "No Derivatives". An example: What if the content creator creates "anti-holocaust" art and releases it but their is no license option for "no derivatives" and then someone with an opposing view takes the work and turns it into a "pro-holocaust" propaganda?
Creative Commons should be about giving the content creator a full set of options. NC and ND give content creators options. Removing ND and NC would remove options which may be important to some artists that are willing to release their work to the commons. To create a commons with fewer options will make the commons smaller and possibly drive away some which might make important contributions. The bigger the commons the better the commons.
Actually I don't think that is what happened with gay people at all. I live in a small church college town in the middle of the bible belt, where you'd think it would be VERY far right on the issue of gays, buts its not, why? Because gay people quit hiding and instead of getting in everyone's face like the extremists simply chose to live their lives, no different than anyone else.
Now nobody says a word about the gal working at the cigarette shop, or the guy that works at the deli,or the dozens of others, they are simply open and make no bones about it one way or another. Its a lot easier to hate some group if you've never (to your knowledge) had any contact with them, its a lot harder when you know you are talking about that nice young man that cuts your hair or the girl waiting on you at your favorite diner.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I think including an ND variant is important for works which are polemic rather than purely informational. For example, if some person or group writes a political manifesto, they may want it distributed as widely as possible, and thus allow redistribution and commercial use. They will probably also want their name associated with that manifesto. What they do not want is someone else to take that manifesto, change the text slightly so that it advocates distasteful or diametrically opposed ideas, and then redistribute the modified version while preserving the original authors' names in the credits. This makes it seem as though the original authors are promoting the ideas contained in the modified manifesto, particularly if the modifier has (deliberately or otherwise) credited them conspicuously. The modifier need not even have bad intentions in doing so; perhaps his intent was not to embarrass the original authors but simply to reuse what he thought was very good prose and very good arguments.
Of course, this is a potential problem even with non-polemic texts; I could find some CC-licensed software manual or Wikipedia article written by some famous figure, incorporate parts of it into a distasteful manifesto, and then release it with the innocent authors' names attached to it. But I think such scenarios are less likely to occur simply because it's more difficult to attach opinions and calls to action to a purely informational text than to one which is already polemic.
and this is exactly why I support Greenpeace.
a/c.
I was originally aligned with Wikimedia Commons, ie BY and BY-SA are cool. As a big proponent of copyleft, BY-SA was the obviously superior choice of the two.
Then on IRC somebody commented that he actually preferred the NC clause. That made me think that I wouldn't like to have to pay for stuff but on the other hand I would like to be able to sell the stuff made by others.
The FSF/GNU uses the ND license extensively on their website. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OpinionLicenses
So all in all, I nowadays think the NC and ND have their place and uses. What makes me happy though is that the CC license chooser clearly guides the user towards the BY and BY-SA which should be used for most cases. To quote Tim O'Reilly (via Cory Doctorow): Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than "piracy".
In my mind, the request to drop NC/ND from CC is akin to asking the Open Source community to abolish GPL and use only BSD derived licences.
The GPL allows both commercial distribution and derivative works, so that's not a correct analogy. No-Derivatives is more like that Microsoft Shared Source licence that lets you look at the code but not change it, Share-Alike would be comparable to the GPL, and as far as I know there is no mainstream Free Software license that corresponds to Non-Commercial. BSD corresponds more or less to CC-BY I'd say.
Of course, this is all rough correspondences, and it's not clear that the same arguments apply to software and art anyway. I've seen RMS opinion pieces under a CC licence with the No-Derivatives clause actually, so I think he's fine with that clause at least.
The people who want to remove the "non free" clauses do not understand the difference between Art and Code.
(of course a program can also be a piece of art, but mostly it "does something").
Non commercial helps people who want to be "outside of the commercial world" or "agree to share for promotion but still want to live from their art" to offer free culture without loosing something that is important for them.
The Non derivatice clause is about artistic integrity.
The people who want to remove these options think they are "expanding" the discussion of GPL vs BSD and similar licences.
But the situation is very different, if I write a piece of code it almost always needs to evolve to stay useful.
For instance an analytics package that does not interoperate with new database API becomes useless....
Therefore the GPL maximise the probability that a "more modern" version will still be "free".
The Mona Lisa does not need to be "updated", so once free is always free, there is no need to make a "derivative work" to integrate it, so prohibiting this is not really the same kind of issue. (you might want to, but do not need to...)
So the whole discussing is a bad idea, and more liable to turn off artist from GPLed Software than convince them that a "maximaly open licence is the right thing for them".
I'm not afraid someone will do it better. I'm afraid that some organization will take what I've given away, copy it, make a token modification, and copyright it, thus turning the work that I made as a gift into something that has a price on it, all without paying me a dime. They might even be able to turn around and issue DMCA takedowns and sue people for performing my work, claiming that they're really performing their version rather than my version. They've now taken free artistic work and made it no longer free. In other words, they aren't really adding any value at all, just taking value from me and from the public and declaring it theirs.
DMCA takedown notices must have a statement, under the penalty of perjury, that you represent the copyright owner. Unless your company rep/lawyer wants to go to jail, you are talking about a very unlikely scenario.
An illustrative case: Pete Seeger took biblical verses and wrote the song Turn, Turn, Turn [wikipedia.org], releasing it into the public domain. Several other folk musicians performed it, and it gained in popularity, and Pete finally recorded it in 1962. In 1965, the Byrds recorded it, and now most people who've heard of the song think that they wrote it originally, and some others think Bob Dylan wrote it. Had Pete Seeger not been a relatively well-known figure, it's quite possible his contribution would have been forgotten entirely.
So what? If you want to be attributed, don't give it to the public domain. That's what CC-BY licenses are for, which of course didn't exist back then.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
I fail to see how dropping NC/ND types from CC v4.0 would be a benefit.
The idea behind the Commons is that you have a set of resources that anyone can use at his or her convenience. In the digital realm, this refers to the set of works that can be freely distributed, modified, and you are allowed to create any service based upon them. This realm, lets call it the "free world", is huge: it includes Wikipedia, Free Software, and a plethora of other projects. The beauty is that you can pretty much take any parts of the existing free world to create something new, enriching the Commons in the process.
NC and ND are not part of this blessed realm. They form isolated patches of works that cannot be combined with the rest. They will never be part of the Commons. In that way, these licenses are not better than having no license at all. Or even worse, since they create distractions by leading authors to believe they are doing a good thing when in fact they are not.
So, if dropping NC and ND results in a single work being relicensed under a free license, this would be a benefit.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
I completely agree: This turns CC into an'all or nothing' deal. And for me, if i had to choose between the two, it would easily be 'nothing'.
I'm a photographer with a moderate fan-base. In the past i've published most of my works as NC-ND because it enables me to retain my artistic vision, while also making sure that if a website/corporation uses one of my images, i 'll get a fair share. Take that away, and all i'll ever post online are 200x200 thumbs. Who wins from that? Certainly not the people who enjoy my photos, since they'll have extremely limited access to them. Definitely not I, since i'll have more difficulties getting my photos to a new audience.
No NC-ND would probably mean "All rights reserved" for me.
You charge $149.95 for your hardware don't you? Since you don't give your hardware away for free, then tell me why any content creator should be effectively forced give away their music or poetry or prose or photographs for free for you to use in your non-free software/hardware bundle? Since when did a CC license become a "Public Domain" license in your mind?
In open source there is a giving of equal value. One person gives this and another gives that and soon there is a whole ecosystem-- But all things being equal in an open source commons, why should you get "free content" without giving free hardware to content contributors? To be sure you'll say "oh but the designs are are free, the software is free..." then why isn't the hardware free to a content creator? The point is that you are using the moniker "open source" to get something for free that you yourself do not want to be forced to pay for and are unhappy that you can't get it for free.
When you want to give me, as a content creator, something of equal value [the hardware] I'll be happy to share in your commons but to force me or any other content creator to share their work without receiving equal value on your forced terms is nothing more than theft with a BSD license applied.
There is a difference between free culture and open source culture in this instance. I as a content creator prefer not to make my "free" culture into your "for profit public domain work" where you have put no effort into the creation of the work but bundle it into your work and charge anyone and everyone for a bundle that includes my work but excludes my possessing a copy because you charge money for owning it.
My biggest fear is not that my work will be made better... no my fear is that a monopolist oligarchy will make my work part of their "pay me" culture-- locking it away from the cultural commons. NC / ND maintains my control over how I want my work used. Just as the GPL and BSD and other "open source" licenses control the ways in which works published with those licenses control how a work is used. More options for a content creator is better not less.
free culture does not necessarily mean free profit at the expense of the exchange of "equal value" even for an alleged "open source project"
what is acceptable is called the Overton window. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Since their comment form is as good as their ideas ("completely fucked up") I'll leave my comment for these "schoolboys for free culture" here:
As a long-time user of CC licenses who has been publishing music, photography, graphics and videos -some of them used by commercial and uncommercial publications, major open source projects and all sorts of remixes- under CC for at least six years, I support your cause in case of ND clauses which are a major hassle to anyone.
When it comes to "NC" clauses, however, I strongly disagree. It's always possible -and essentially neccessary- to give a separate, exclusive or non-exclusive commercial license to someone who is up to use your content in a commercial way. I have done so in a few cases and there never was any problem neither for the licensees to contact me nor for me to find a way that was acceptable for both sides. A general permission to use my content commercially without my consent - and without having to pay a single cent to me. however, would be nothing but commercial suicide to me and a lot of other independent producers. Such a step would simply put absolute power to major media companies which already make frank use of CC-licensed content (i.e. using "NC" or "BY" works for ads without attribution or permission, as Yahoo/Flickr) and take even the last bit of control from legitimous authors (notice "authors", not "rights owners" or "publishers"!).
In other words: Take the "NC" clause and I, as well as meny others, would have to stop publishing under CC licenses immediately. Generally, I'd suppose, you get back to school and stop messing around with things you don't know jack about.
Thanks in advice,
Tom A.
Producer
Intuitively I would say yes: academic culture typically encourages the freedom to use, study the work, make and redistribute copies. In this way we have people contributing to an ever large pool of knowledge and culture. (Ignoring for a moment the behaviour of many academic publishers which is antithetical to academic culture.)
However, while academic culture certainly encourages building on previous work, it encourages this as new papers not as modifications of existing papers. So academic works typically do not give you the "freedom to make changes and improvements" as per your definition of free culture.
So before campaigning to drop CC ND, can we please think about the effect on licensing academic works. It seems obvious that it would be a good thing to have academic works licensed under similar and familiar CC licenses. As open access academic publishing becomes more the norm we need to offer a license that fits their needs (or their perceived needs) or they'll end up using even worse licenses.
Because gay people quit hiding
In the 1990s that was an extremely radical thing to do. Gay people had been mostly closeted up until then, with the exception of neighborhoods like Castro. It also wasn't a safe thing to do: gay people lost their jobs and got beaten or killed or arrested for being gay. And if you ask them, you'll notice that they still don't feel very comfortable engaging in the kinds of public displays of affection that straight couples take for granted.
I am officially gone from
What are you talking about? Art and text of Wikipedia are licensed under the CC-SA-Attribution. There is no ND/NC restriction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
The text of Wikipedia is copyrighted (automatically, under the Berne Convention) by Wikipedia editors and contributors and is formally licensed to the public under one or several liberal licenses. Most of Wikipedia's text and many of its images are co-licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
Re-use of non-text media
Where not otherwise noted, non-text media files are available under various free culture licenses, consistent with the Wikimedia Foundation Licensing Policy. Please view the media description page for details about the license of any specific media file.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
Free Content License
A license which meets the terms of the Definition of Free Cultural Works specific to licenses, as can be found at http://freedomdefined.org/Definition version 1.0.
http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
To ensure the graceful functioning of this ecosystem, works of authorship should be free, and by freedom we mean:
the freedom to use the work and enjoy the benefits of using it
the freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it
the freedom to make and redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expression
the freedom to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative works
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
No - I want non-commercial use to be freely available to anyone who wants it, and commercial use to be restricted to those who pay for it. Under CC-NC, for instance, if a church choir wants to sing my stuff on a Sunday morning, they can download and print off copies and sing it without worrying about copyright, which they can't do if it's under normal copyright. If a folk singer gets up and sings one of my songs in a coffeeshop open mike night, that's A-OK, but if Bruce Springsteen performs it in an arena that's a different story.
So free for amateurs, free for charities, free for pros to sing at their kitchen table, but not free if you're going to sell it.
I am officially gone from
No - he wants people to be able to redistribute his work non-commercially, and make derivative works from it.
That's the exact opposite of normal plain copyright.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
DMCA takedown notices must have a statement, under the penalty of perjury, that you represent the copyright owner.
But they do have copyright, on their version of my song, which is somewhat different from mine. The thing is, if somebody besides me and them record a performance of it, who's song is that, mine or theirs? What if the performer put my notes to their modified lyrics, or vice versa?
I am officially gone from
As a writer I don't mind people reading my stuff - heck I love to get constructive feedback, I do at the same time not particularly like to try to get involved with big media "lawyery" antics for now and NC & ND releases and asking people to contribute what they feel is the right price, is a better and more acceptible way for me to head down for now. I would as a content creator however feel rather cheated to see my characters exploited without seeing a single dime if it became wildly popular, so the option is to release as CC under ND and NC to insure that people don't just run off with an idea without prior agreement by me and secondly to ensure people do not try to profit on what I want to make available for free at least not without a consultation with me. I can understand it might be a nuisance to have to get in touch with me to be allowed to use my ideas or characters, but hey those are the terms. I as a writer just want to make sure that my audience gets my stuff with minimum hassle - that does not mean I am willing to sign away every right I have to my stuff or any opportunity to make a profit off it just because someone doesn't like to pay for it, while they themselves wish to do exactly that, i.e. make a profit. Thus the NC as in - If you want to use it comercially - get in touch with me. And the ND - If you wnat to introduce something into my "universe" we need to talk. There is nothing in the CC preventing me the owner from releasing to someone else under different terms - we just need to talk first. Throwing away the ND and NC from the CC license would make me go for a different licence as I wish to in some respect have an influence on what I create. Heck if someone threw a big bag of money at me I might just say feel free use as you please - but till that day - Forgive me but I'll stick to NC and ND.
MS, ALS, Aphasia ? http://globability.org - Me http://einarpetersen.com
As a Documentary Film Maker, I am glad that any one is watching my films and happy to redistribute them. But, I don't want TV station taking my hard work and making a profit off them and not giving me a cent. I also often use footaged owned by large productions houses (As time machines are unavailable, I can't reshoot historic moments), and there clause are pretty standard, that for every dollar I make they want a peice; which, as a film make (that cost to produce films) I need to make money so have no problem with this logic.
"You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people." by notnAP (846325)
The thing is, if somebody besides me and them record a performance of it, who's song is that, mine or theirs?
Merely performing a song does not entitle to any copyright. In some countries (not in the US), the performers are granted so-called "related rights", which result in similar protection like copyright.
What if the performer put my notes to their modified lyrics, or vice versa?
If they modify the lyrics, the rights to the modifications, but not the original version, lie with them.
But I hope you see that the whole situation is a bit complicated, and therefore CC is not really doing everyone a favor by offering licenses with implications most artists do not understand.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
And if you ask them, you'll notice that they still don't feel very comfortable engaging in the kinds of public displays of affection that straight couples take for granted.
I'm sort of curious about what kinds of "public displays of affection" you are talking about from "straight" people? Minor hand holding and a couple kissing each other before heading off to work? I think there is much more variation between people of different cultures and their attitudes towards public affection than there is between "straight" and "gay" kinds of affection, or for that matter even between different families within those cultures.
I certainly have seen embraces, hugs, and even kisses being exchanged between men or between women that was done in a non-sexual way and just accepted as a part of that culture (something that is pretty common in South America in particular, but other places too). That these people who might be gay are having a problem with public affection is something that I think is a part of their upbringing, where their families likely weren't really into any sort of public affection at all.
I've really noticed the American military in particular has some really weird ideas about public affection. I think it is a cultural thing within the military, even though I do understand some of the reasons for avoiding such signs of affection while on duty and supposedly trying to perform some critical job. Still, the off duty behavior of many in the military who seem to be against public displays of affection or even giving a hard time to civilians for their displays of affection seem to go over the top. Even in the military though, it varies quite a bit in terms of what is considered acceptable behavior by even that standard. In the case of the military, relationships tend to be under a whole lot of strain because of the long hours, often distant deployments, and the incredible stress that happens for those who may even be the root of this attitude, where those with lousy relationships simply don't want to be reminded that some people can maintain a healthy relationship with a partner/girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse. Military service used to be a whole lot more common in the past than it is now in America as well, which may be some of the root of this "no public affection" attitude.
> NC and ND basically say: That work is free but only if you are not using it for Xxxx and Zzzz. Which means it is not free at all.
No, it means that it is not entirely free. Being "not free at all" would mean there are no freedoms; but there are some freedoms, so your terminology is little more than an emotively charged gross exageration.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
The original Zealots weren't all that bad. It was a faction of Jewish society at the time of the Roman Empire who did tend to take things to an extreme, but there was a rationale to their actions as well. They thought that many in their society were being too lax in their observances of the various feasts and festivals, thus tried to push back by insisting upon strict observances of those events and other aspects of Jewish life. In many ways it was perhaps even more like a political party, but included religious observances and practices among those who called themselves Zealots. By political party, I am referring to the various factions that made up the Sanhedrin in Jewish society at the time.
Still, calling somebody a Zealot is more or less also calling them a Jew in a very bigoted and hateful way and dangerously approaches Godwin's Law.
> So, if dropping NC and ND results in a single work being relicensed under a free license, this would be a benefit.
Even if thousands of equally skillfully crafted works were no longer released under any CC license and kept proprietory because the NC or ND clause was deemed too important?
I cannot subscribe to that point of view.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
The odd thing that I did see RMS doing with his license suite at the Free Software Foundation was to provide an "escape clause" for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation to switch licenses from the GFDL to CC-BY-SA. I felt at the time it would have been better to reform the GFDL instead of switching licenses, but it was an interesting action that they took and shows RMS isn't so fanatical about his principles.
About the only really controversial feature that has been added into a FSF license is the "patent clause" which tried to address issues with software patents in GPL'd software. It was also a legal issue that needed to be addressed in some manner, and the problem facing the Free Software Foundation was no prior experience at dealing with the problem. Sometimes you have to make bold moves, even if they turn out to be wrong or that they need to be tweaked in the future.
So, if dropping NC and ND results in a single work being relicensed under a free license, this would be a benefit.
Even if thousands of equally skillfully crafted works were no longer released under any CC license and kept proprietory because the NC or ND clause was deemed too important?
It's not like people would stop putting stuff on the internet if there were no NC/ND licenses. You will still be able to download the work and enjoy for your personal use as you don't need a license for that. Only when you want to redistribute the work or modified versions of it, the license becomes relevant.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
They propose creative common make it more difficult to license their work non-commercial or no derivitives, how does that help artists create free culture ?
Empowering people to make their own decisions about their work rather than manipulating them into one of two pre-approved types of people (commercial or libre) might actually encourage them to release more.
I am surprised that the other versions of CC licenses are allowable by them. They are all about 'free from restrictions!!1!!11'. FREE THE DATA!
Why aren't they arguing about Attribution then? Man, all that time tracking down who the owners are.... so wasteful. Damn restrictions!1!! You gotta list all the names. It sucks maaan.
Heck why any license at all? What they should be doing is pushing for the publishing of Public Domain material. Instead they are trying to change CC licensing into something that all ready exists.
overeager radicals who don't want (or know how) to balance their vision with public acceptance.
I don't think it's just balancing public acceptance, but accepting and accounting for reality.
For most of these good causes, there are usually counter-arguments with some level of validity. Environmentalism needs to recognize that people also need some level of industry and productivity. Multiculturalism needs to recognize that different cultures don't always gel so well together, and some cultures are fairly dysfunctional.
And even among those who completely agree with your ideals, there will be some who will say, "We need to take our time and transition." Sometimes it's a stall tactic, but large scale social changes aren't without their casualties, and sometimes it's worth having a plan for how you're going to get from point A to point B. So if you're an environmentalist who wants us to use 100% green-energy, you might want to give us some time to research different energy options, improve efficiency of power generation, and build our solar panels or wind turbines (or whatever) before we turn off the coal power plants.
I don't think "Samantha Wright" is claiming that they don't provide value, but also noting that there's a downside to their advocacy, and that more mainstream advocates need a good way to separate and differentiate themselves from hardcore zero-compromise activists.
The advantage of keeping the "proprietary" licenses, is that the Music or Movie industries might move away from traditional copyright, and use creative commons instead (all of the licenses). This would be better as they have a digital metatag, that is not only searchable, but it filterable (meaning they can show up in a server log as well). The works and the license can not be changed due to the DMCA not allowing it. Any artist or interst holder could elect to use creative commons and by doing so, allow various uses of "selected sections" of their proprietary work to be "free" to use under a different MORE FREE creative commons license... for remixing etc. Todate, this can only be done with creative commons where no lawyer is needed. Most likely the lawyers for proprietary artists (Music interests and Movie Studios) are advising their clients to stay away from any creative commons license due to the fact that when creative commons is uses, even for proprietary NONFREE licenses, that no lawyer is often needed for various levels of permission granting (no costly contract, or signatures) for use of the creative commons licensed works (FREE and NON FREE both). Having a license that non-free folks can use with creative commons then attracts the bees to the honey. Creative Commmons is the honey, that all content creators should be using, and getting used to... should not exclude or create classes where discrimination against someone else's view of ownership is looked down on... it all about keeping creativity alive, all of it.
Say whatever one may, no-one - maybe not even the author - can "improve" on a specific artistic creation
What about video games? Clearly they can transmit and produce emotions, tell a story, etc, etc, as good as any other art form. But just as clearly, they can be patched, modified, and may have to synch to technical advances. Was Portal an artistic creation or an engineering creation?
For example, if Wikipedia were under a NC license, it would be impossible to sell printed or CD copies of Wikipedia and reach communities without internet access because every single editor of Wikipedia would need to give permission for their work to be sold.
Thanks for the correction.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Say whatever one may, no-one - maybe not even the author - can "improve" on a specific artistic creation
What about video games? Clearly they can transmit and produce emotions, tell a story, etc, etc, as good as any other art form. But just as clearly, they can be patched, modified, and may have to synch to technical advances. Was Portal an artistic creation or an engineering creation?
Brilliant example. I haven't thought of it and it doesn't seem a trivial questions. From the top of my head, it seems games are mostly licensed as software (i.e. engineering), but ... how much should it be so, I can't tell. I'll have to sit on it for some time.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
"Saboteur" could work, except that it has more of a "witch hunt" feel... Too much like "plant" or "spy" or "turncoat".
I'm sort of curious about what kinds of "public displays of affection" you are talking about from "straight" people?
Take, for instance, kissing your lover on the lips in public. Obviously, it's not something that everyone's doing constantly, but it also definitely happens a fair amount.
I am officially gone from
The 'NC' and 'ND' clauses do have a purpose. Just because this guy wants everyone to share their property for them to modify and change into their own mash-ups doesnt mean that every artist wants to allow them to do this. The Creative Commons license is a simple way for content creators to license their work outside the default copyright restrictions. Most people do not have the money for lawyers in order to draft their own legal copyright text, so the CC licenses provide some options for those who want to make their work 'more free' then they normally could... while still restricting some of those rights. For example, a music artist may want to make their song available to you for free and allow you to freely share it with your friends, but not want you to resell the song or play their music at a paid concert. This is completely reasonable and is definitely more "free" then a default copyright would imply. If Creative Commons where to remove their "ND" and "NC" license, Im sure it would result in less people selecting to use the license entirely.
I dont really understand the purpose of the "ND" clause as much as the "NC" clause. It seems to me that an artist who selects "ND" may be concerned about the context in which their art is used. Perhaps taking their content out of context and used in a way that would offend them.
There is a license which provides what you want. It is the "CC-By" license. I wish more people would use this license for their work. I just dont see how forcing everybody to use this license would benefit the free art movement. I think it would reduce the amount of CC content by removing those who do not want to allow you to make money off their work.
If the concern is about multiple licenses using a single "Creative Commons" moniker, maybe there should be a movement to rebrand the CC-By license under a different name/logo. But there are totally free licenses already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Art_License
The guy that wrote this article is wasting his time. Instead of trying to change something wide into the narrow limits he wants... maybe he should concentrate on encouraging artists to use the license option he prefers
That depends on where you're downloading it from, of course.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Actually that too depends on where you live. Where I live in the middle of the deep south you only see that among the teens, once you hit your 20s its kisses on the cheek and hand holding but no kissing on the lips. Its probably because we southerners tend to want to be social without being overboard and overly PDAs make people uncomfortable so they simply aren't done. Even with the teens if its more than a quick smooch its frowned upon.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
People hate to hear the truth about their precious little license.
I'm not afraid someone will do it better. I'm afraid that some organization will take what I've given away, copy it, make a token modification, and copyright it, thus turning the work that I made as a gift into something that has a price on it, all without paying me a dime.
I'm not sure that you've understood the CC licence options correctly. If all you want is to prevent commercial operators from copyrighting modifications made to your work, then NonCommercial is overkill - ShareAlike would do that just fine. ShareAlike means that people can charge money for products including your work, but they can't copyright the modifications they've made - or at least, can't prevent other people from using them. And if you want to reserve the right to later sell commercial rights to companies (ie, giving them the right to NOT allow others to share and remix their work), you can do that just by holding the copyright and dual-licencing the original work to them under a full commercial licence.
The main purpose of CC is to promote a legal "share and remix" culture, assuming that value gets created for society by allowing multiple people to remix, modify, incorporate, and translate works. As opposed to the current paradigm of "one author who has all the inspiration and gets all the rights, many viewers who can't do anything but passively consume", CC and the Open Culture movement want to legitimise the idea of "prosumers" - everyone can read, modify, write and pass along the rights to do the same.
The "NonCommercial" tag seems to me to be a very heavy hammer and really breaks the prosumer model. It means people can't incorporate your work into anything that involves money changing hands in any way, which can restrict small busineses and non-profit social groups alike. It puts any organisation that uses your work on very shaky legal ground if in any way shape or form that work contributes to any money-making activity. It completely locks your work out from WikiPedia or any similar "commons" project. It means nobody who views your work can ever feel safe using it; they have absolutely zero guarantee of any kind of rights in the future should any money at any point cross their hands. Just like an ordinary commercial licence, it divides the world into two very different classes, content owners vs content consumers, and makes sure the consumers know that they're always and forever second class citizens.
NonCommercial, ironically, actually marks your work as being practically identical to commercial. It's more like a sort of "try before you buy" kind of sampler licence for than a practical contribution to Open Culture in the long term. As a sort of sampler or demo of open culture, sure, fine - maybe it's an okay interim strategy. But it's not comparable with genuine copyleft any more than renting a building is comparable to owning it.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The thing is, if somebody besides me and them record a performance of it, who's song is that, mine or theirs? What if the performer put my notes to their modified lyrics, or vice versa?
Ignoring for a moment the complicated non-Euclidean weirdness of music licencing, where there's about four different types of "content" involved (music/lyrics, performance, recording, broadcast - if I understand correctly, and I probably don't) - what you're talking about is already covered under the concept of ShareAlike and "derivative work".
Public Domain is NOT CC-BY, and CC-BY is NOT CC-BY-SA. Public Domain means anyone can create derivative works and recopyright them, then turn around and sue anyone reproducing the original Public Domain work. This, as you've noticed, is a bad thing, and preventing it is why Richard Stallman originally created the concept of Copyleft.
CC-BY (Attribution) means that anyone can reproduce the work but MUST attribute the original author (this requirement in itself can get tricky when there are a huge number of authors, but at the moment quoting a definitive reference URL seems to be sufficient).
CC-BY-SA (Attribution plus ShareAlike) means that any "derivative works" must fall under the same copyright terms. This closes the "what if someone makes small modifications and recopyrights them commercially thus making the work nonfree" loophole. Just like with a standard commercial copyright, they simply can't legally do this; they can make the modifications, but the copyright terms must allow others to reshare the work. (Of course, whether you want or have the time/money to prosecute a CC violation is another matter.)
So basically, we already have the licence you want. It's not Public Domain, it's CC-BY-SA, which grants maximum rights to the audience.
But if you really do want to have your cake and eat it - write a hit, perform it, distribute it widely to the world, assume sole responsibilty and authority for distributing it over computer networks that you don't control, get money for every time it's distributed over those networks, get the entire world singing it in their head, and then turn around and claim that you still "own" every single copy of that work playing in people's heads... with all the implications that involves, such that you want to claim ownership to a piece off everyone in the world's brain, and claim the right to restrict absolutely what everyone in the world does with that piece of brain... then you'll probably need to use standard commercial copyright to get that result. And it'll do that just fine.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
"The work as a whole has to be distributed as GPL" or, in other words, it's viral.
The point of my original post in this thread is that the GGGGP post is confused in thinking that the CC licenses might be viral in nature, because only the GPL has a restriction like this. With a CC license, you can incorportate parts of something into your web page without the license applying to your entire web page.
Say whatever one may, no-one - maybe not even the author - can "improve" on a specific artistic creation
That's an interesting stance to try to defend. Do you realise that taking that idea literally would make entire genres of art impossible?
* Music videos - they take an artist's music and add a director's images
* Books derived from folktales - a modern author desecrates ancient stories
* Translations of books - words are put into a language they were never meant to be heard in.
* Theatrical adaptations of books - a completely unrelated playright mangles the original author's words into script
* Theatrical performances of plays - then an unrelated director "interprets" that play
* Film adaptations of stage plays - and then an unrelated director translates that play onto the screen! Moving pictures! Madness!
* DVD commentary tracks - What, some other guy then talks over the movie? MAKE IT STOP.
* Lolcats or any image memes - it's a corruption of the original photographer's vision and must be censored
* Documentaries - they regularly mash up images taken from one source with a commentary from another
* Poetry set to music
* Any use of sampling in music
* Any performance of classical music with modern instruments
* Prints of artworks - go visit the Louvre if you want to see the Venus de Milo, barbarian!
Good luck with your future art prospects.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
> So, if dropping NC and ND results in a single work being relicensed under a free license, this would be a benefit.
Even if thousands of equally skillfully crafted works were no longer released under any CC license and kept proprietory because the NC or ND clause was deemed too important?
Yes. See, here's the thing - with the NC/ND clause they are still proprietary. They're very strict "look, but don't touch" licences, which grant no ownership rights to the viewer. That is proprietary in every sense except the very restricted one of "you can look at this in certain approved contexts - but you can't talk about it in any works of your own". Heck, you can't even crop an ND photo! No way I want to touch that legal minefield with a bargepole.
What we're trying to create with the Open Culture movement is a movement away from the "billions of passive couch potatoes, a few thousand skilled/inspired Creators" model towards a recognition that everyone can add value to culture by remixing it and passing it on.
Whether you support this idea probably has a lot to do with your view of humanity. Do you think of the world as a giant seething cesspool full of scary leeching zombies who you, one of the few heroic noble Creators, must struggle against every second of your life, and fight a constant war to prevent the dark hordes from leeching off your beautiful Ideas? Or do you think of it as full of lots of creative people just like you, brimming with bright ideas and potential of their own, all of whom can add wonderful things you never thought of to an idea if you drop the threat of suing them if they try?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Do you know what the "SA" in "CC-BY-SA" means? It means "sharealike": any derivative work must be licensed under the same terms as the original. Since your scenario already has a company willing to violate the "sharealike" clause of a free license, what makes you think that they'll respect the "noncommercial" clause of your license?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Say whatever one may, no-one - maybe not even the author - can "improve" on a specific artistic creation
That's an interesting stance to try to defend. Do you realise that taking that idea literally would make entire genres of art impossible?
By doing whatever you want from the list above, you are at best transforming the original art (if not plainly deconstructing it and reusing parts of it). Now transforming:
1. is not similar with improving
2. may be allowed by the original creator (in most of the cases),
but I don't think the exclusion of NC/ND needs to be make a law that doesn't admit exceptions - that is, I don't think the exclusion of NC/ND will make a better context for creative efforts resulting in works to be released under CC.
I already admitted that NC/ND are not offering the entire liberty/freedom one may want, but asking that a work be "fully free or not a Creative Commons work" sounds a bit like extremist - a NC/ND work is offered "as it is" to the commons, even if it is offered "as it is only".
Eliminating NC/ND from CC coms with the risk of the authors (that would still want them) to adopt the position like if you don't want my creation to be called CC because I don't allow the full freedom, go f*** yourself and take your licence with you: I'll create a license on my own. As an author, I have the right to do it and I consider my art more important than your extremist license.
Just who has anything to win from this?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I doubt I've ever kissed my wife in public except at the wedding ceremony itself. I haven't really seen it happen much elsewhere either, at least in the community where I live at the moment. Hand holding, yes, and some hugging between obvious family members or very good friends (often of the same gender and has nothing to do with sexual orientation).
Again, it depends on your cultural background, but if that is your standard, it seems like it is pushing boundaries beyond just ordinary public displays of affection.
I think often you see things just because you are self conscious of them.
Somebody pointed this out to me once: When you buy a new car, you suddenly notice how many people are driving the same make and model that you are driving and it seems very common (unless it really is unique like a Tesla Roadster or McLaren F1). It isn't that the number of those kind of cars has changed but rather that you've suddenly become aware that they are there.
There is something in many people who want to try and conform to the community in some way, so they notice things that others are doing... particularly if it is something that they want to do themselves as a way to rationalize behavior.
what makes you say church performance use is noncommercial? maybe it is, maybe it isn't, nobody knows.
free for amateurs: to do what exactly? if you ask your lawyer, probably the same as regular copyright
free for charities: nope, and that has been proven in court. for charities it's the same as for everyone else.
free for pros to sing at their kitchen table: same as copyright
but not free if you're going to sell it: or do anything else outside of copyright allowed things
> Heck, you can't even crop an ND photo!
You can sometimes crop a cast-iron-copyrighted photo just with your Fair Use rights.
If you take the intersection of the anti-NC and anti-ND arguments, you end up with a basis so broad it could be turned into an anti-BY argument and an anti-SA argument too. Can you not see that BY maintains some elements of proprietoriness?
I think the ultimate freedom is "let the creators decide what they want to let others do with their work", and for that you need the full gamut of licences.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Hi there,
I finally did an update to the Webp logo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP
I have to say that C.C 3.0 share-a-like worked well for me.