[LINK] Creative Commons

[Richard Chirgwin]

On 3/07/11 7:50 PM, Roger Clarke wrote:
>> On 3/07/11 6:50 PM, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>>>   Why Creative Commons ..
>>>     <http://thepowerofopen.org>
> At 18:55 +1000 3/7/11, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
>> I really dislike it when organisations I might agree with (broadly; I
> retain some objections to the CC license not relevant here) resort to
> promotional techniques I don't agree with ...
>> The "success stories" approach to PR is fundamentally dishonest no
>> matter who is employing it. It ignores the people for whom a particular
>> approach might *not* work, for some reason; it glosses over problems and
>> difficulties; it deliberately paints a one-sided view.
> If the *book* glosses over the complexities, I'd be concerned too.
>
> But when you're giving new impetus to a movement, in 1 page of A4,
> you have to focus on the key points, and hence can give little space
> to the all of the other aspects of the matter.
>
> And this para. does (quietly) acknowledge that liberal licensing
> isn't, and doesn't need to be, the whole answer:
>>>   As we look ahead, the field of openness is approaching a critical mass of
>>>   adoption that could result in sharing becoming **a default standard**
>>>   for the many works that were previously made available only under
>>>   the all-rights-reserved framework.  [Emphasis added]
> Declaration:  A big majority of my material is available under the
> *least* liberal of the CC licences (the least liberal precisely
> because of those complexities);  and my consultancy reports are
> either never subject to such a licence or not for some time after
> they've been completed.
>
> P.S.  Richard, if your concerns about the set of CC licences revolve
> around how a freelance journo / stringer / reputed blogger (or, say,
> sports photographer) can make a living from their work, I reckon link
> is exactly the right list to float what's wrong, and what might be
> done to create an appropriate CC (or other) licence that addresses
> those needs.
Roger,

Accepting that my complaint about the book may be unfair ...

No, getting paid isn't my worry. I'm fortunate: there always seems to be 
someone willing to pay me to do something. I don't always know exactly 
why, but I never question it!

My complaint is kind of like the strict vegetarian who says that even 
fake vinyl is bad, because it buys into the "leather thing" (credit here 
to Ben Elton). If the problem is bad copyright law, then good copyright 
law is the answer. If I accept the CC license, I have to first approve 
that the individual one-on-one licensing of works is acceptable. After 
that, it's the detail of the license (old joke, "we already established 
what kind of woman you are, now we're just haggling over the price"). If 
CC has the right to impose a good license to access a work, someone else 
has the right to impose a bad license.

The problem of "bad" licenses pre-existed the emergence of CC: many 
professional books (the Dummies series comes to mind) already tried to 
apply new and more restrictive conditions on the buyer than existed in 
copyright law. In trying to solve the problem of bad copyright law, the 
CC endorses the use of licensing as the means by which the author 
decides the conditions attached to the work. From there, any author can 
impose any set of license conditions, which has the effect of greatly 
restricting access to knowledge.

The other downside of universally governing these interactions by 
license is that there's no guarantee of equality between licenses: the 
license granted to Richard may not be the same as the license granted to 
Roger. The CC is only one of the possible licenses.

So in my opinion, it would be better to continue the longer road of 
agitating for better copyright, than to try and circumvent copyright by 
habituating people to a new form of interaction, via license, that opens 
the door to unintended consequences like these.

Cheers,
RC