Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Mon, 2005-04-25 at 17:32 -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: ... and the fact that they refuse to fix such a simple thing bodes very ill for getting more serious problems fixed ... The Debian Creative Commons Workgroup has been talking to CC for about a month now. We've had some pretty successful interchanges, and I think we're moving forward nicely. So: don't count out the possibility of DFSG-compatible CC licenses in the near future. ~Evan -- Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Matthew Garrett wrote: I'm not convinced by the trademark argument - I think it's pretty clear from the HTML that it's not intended to be part of the license. Yes, it would be better if that was made clearer, but: a) CC appear to have said that it's not part of the license, and: This one falls, for me, under the since it's so easy to fix, why exactly aren't they fixing it? category. I did agree, once I found the HTML comment, that the current status does not render the license non-free. I sent a polite message many months ago asking them to fix the confusing web page -- which should be easy, as it doesn't involve changing the license -- but they did not respond. That began to make me wonder whether they actually had some reason for rendering the web page confusing, such as wanting the trademark terms to be binding. :-( -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 05:08:08PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: Matthew Garrett wrote: I'm not convinced by the trademark argument - I think it's pretty clear from the HTML that it's not intended to be part of the license. Yes, it would be better if that was made clearer, but: a) CC appear to have said that it's not part of the license, and: This one falls, for me, under the since it's so easy to fix, why exactly aren't they fixing it? category. ... and the fact that they refuse to fix such a simple thing bodes very ill for getting more serious problems fixed ... -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think we need to stay focused somewhere in the middle. A good metric is to be suspicious of any language that appears non-free, absent other information. In other words, err on the conservative side. I'd tend to agree, though I'm not sure that that's being desperately conservative. Down to brass tacks: if you think that there are parts of the Creative Commons summary where we are leaning over backwards to see a problem where none exists, please let me know. We _do_ need to bring it into a final form sooner rather than later. I'm not convinced by the trademark argument - I think it's pretty clear from the HTML that it's not intended to be part of the license. Yes, it would be better if that was made clearer, but: a) CC appear to have said that it's not part of the license, and: b) CC are the people who would care about us using their trademark It's /possible/ that a copyright holder could claim that we're infringing their license because we use the phrase Creative Commons somewhere within the distribution, but I don't think it's likely and I'm not convinced that they'd have any significant legal leg to stand on. So, while it would be great if they'd clarify things, I don't think it's enough to make it non-free. I tend to agree with the other issues, with more concern over the DRM and removal of credits than the authorship credit - I'm not sure how well we've got our act together on forming a firm opinion on that. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 09:22:32PM -0400, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: I reject your attempt to make me decide without extra data. What extra data do you need? So far we've had apparently-expert opinions in both directions about how this situation would be viewed by courts. I feel I need some reason to value a particular expert above others. It may be that I've missed some relevant post in the volume. Then again, that's unnecessary work if CC follow WCAG better. We can ask SPI's lawyer for an opinion if you think that would help. Given the international nature of this stuff, you'd need a whole herd of lawyers to come to any practical conclusion. I doubt SPI's lawyer would be much help with the mismatched mess of contract and licensing laws in the EU countries, for example (the EU has made some efforts to harmonise them, but it's a mammoth task and will likely take decades to complete, assuming it can be done at all; existing directives are mostly fairly vague statements of principles). I would not be at all surprised to discover that the answer is yes in some of them, no in some of them, and unpredictable in some of them, for most questions on this topic. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Francesco Poli wrote: yep, sorry ;-) Please, do not reply to me directly Cc:ing the list, as I didn't ask it. Better reply to the list only, instead: I'm a subscriber and would rather not receive replies twice. Thanks. [...] On the contrary! :) I think you should go on reading this useful document: I asked just to make sure you knew about its existence! ;-) Yep, and starting to understand your point of view on freedom and software, without agreeing in all the cases; but at least I'm starting to understand the different vocabulary between dfsg and CC. Ok, but as others think different (see my opinion on this point above), do you mind would it be possible to respect the pluralism in the concept of freedom and of what exactly software is? Mine was just a reminder of what I mean when I say software. I'm not at all trying to impose the same linguistic choices on you! It's just to clarify. Of curse, I was doing the same, maybe without choosing the better words, but as you know, I am not an English speaker ;-) As to the matter of freedom: we believe that the same freedoms are as important for non-programs as they are for programs. YMMV, but, if you feel differently, do not complain when we call non-free something you would call free, open source, open content or whatever... I think that one of the biggest differences between CC and dfsg is the meaning and the value we give to the word software. Remember that the goal of CC is to give tools (licenses) that allow the author to use the copyright not in its default version, but in a creative way. That's the reason why CC has a set of licenses, which go from the most restrictives (BY-ND-NC) to the most free (BY-SH). On the second category are we focusing to find out some dfsg compliance ;-) But to get this is necessary to fix the software-different-meaning-issue. thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 03:27 +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: So in summary, I think that 10 million is pure fiction. Does it really matter? We don't have access to the Creative Commons Web logs nor their referrer count for the Some Rights Reserved image (which is what they use for counting), so we can't audit this number. I don't see why we have to. I'm going to modify the cc summary to say many. Can we all agree to many? I know that we have more than 5000 articles and images on Wikitravel alone, and I'd say that's more than enough to call them many. ~Evan -- Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sat, 2005-04-02 at 11:52 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: You're just wrong here. The fact that a license /can/ be interpreted in a way that would result in it being non-free does not mean that all material under that license should be considered non-free. I think that there is a spectrum of interpretation here. At one extreme is assuming that even obviously non-free wording (You may not make modifications or distribute copies) could somehow be considered free (They wouldn't mind if /we/ did it, I'm sure). At the other end is the assumption that even obviously free wording is non-free. I think we need to stay focused somewhere in the middle. A good metric is to be suspicious of any language that appears non-free, absent other information. In other words, err on the conservative side. I think that leaning the other way is unfair to Debian users. Especially where licenses have not been crafted to be DFSG-free, we can't make the assumption that unclear language is free. Down to brass tacks: if you think that there are parts of the Creative Commons summary where we are leaning over backwards to see a problem where none exists, please let me know. We _do_ need to bring it into a final form sooner rather than later. ~Evan -- Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 08:31:20AM -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote: On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 03:27 +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: So in summary, I think that 10 million is pure fiction. Does it really matter? Not particularly, but there's no reason to spread the meme. I'm going to modify the cc summary to say many. That sounds sensible (I'd forgotten that was quoted in the summary). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Wed, 2005-03-23 at 19:50 +0100, francois schnell wrote: As both a Debian-Ubuntu and Creative Commons (CC) supporter, I really hope that what you're doing here will work ! Me too! It looks like there are at least 10 millions works realeased under Creative Commons (according to Yahoo a month ago). There was some confusion on this question, so I just said there are many works. It's not really crucial to the summary document to determine exactly or even approximately how many CC-licensed works there are, so I think it's OK to just punt on this issue. Thanks a lot, ~Evan -- Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, 2005-03-27 at 15:31 -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: I haven't talked to Greg Pomerantz (SPI's lawyer) yet (he's on vacation) but I'd like to bring him in and probably onto the group that talks to Lessig. I think this sounds excellent but might be complicated. If you can pass along a request to review the summary and/or participate in the workgroup, that'd be great. Or if you give me his contact info, I can ask, too. I figure commentary, conference, and consequence is probably going to be about 4-8 hours of work for him at the outside. I don't know if there's a formal way to request this kind of expense from SPI; advice requested. I also don't think his participation is a make-or-break thing. It'd be nice, but not 100% necessary. ~Evan -- Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 08:31:20 -0400 Evan Prodromou wrote: So in summary, I think that 10 million is pure fiction. Maybe or maybe not. I'm not saying that those data should be trusted, nor am I saying that they shouldn't. /According/ to that statistical results, we can say that... Does it really matter? We don't have access to the Creative Commons Web logs nor their referrer count for the Some Rights Reserved image (which is what they use for counting), so we can't audit this number. I don't see why we have to. We don't have to, actually. What I was saying was simply something like If those data can be trusted, we can draw the following conclusions: ... I'm going to modify the cc summary to say many. Can we all agree to many? I know that we have more than 5000 articles and images on Wikitravel alone, and I'd say that's more than enough to call them many. This sounds like a good idea: it even enhances the summary longevity (it will be true in the foreseeable future, as well as now). -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpsHCkWrRJZR.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sat, 2 Apr 2005 20:13:09 -0500 Glenn Maynard wrote: On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 12:43:35AM +, MJ Ray wrote: [...] No-one has posted a good definition of documentation which doesn't include some programs, for example. Agreed. ... and nobody has posted solid rationale explaining why Debian *should* permit restrictions on documentation that it does not permit for programs, even if such a boundary can be unambiguously drawn. (The FSF's documentation has such restrictions, so we should allow them is not solid rationale; it's merely an agenda.) Agreed entirely. I think that inability is because it's not possible, but I might be proved wrong. The fact that some software is both program and documentation (eg. PostScript) seems to be simple proof that you're right. :) You can't draw a strict boundary between overlapping sets. Indeed. -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpUvgpVakL7X.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
quote who=MJ Ray date=2005-03-31 20:01:27 + Benj. Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quote who=3DMJ Ray date=3D2005-03-30 22:15:15 + [...] I'm not sure about the situation when they just link to the ambiguous page which has had clarifications issued in obscure places by CC (along with statements relying on the US view of fair use IIRC). Great. The latter case is by far the most common. If you go to the CC website, it instructs people to license their works through linking. That's why they don't provide a copy suitable for inclusion with a work. Do they even recommend licensing non-software works through linking, JOOI? Apparently, yes. I reject your attempt to make me decide without extra data. What extra data do you need? So far we've had apparently-expert opinions in both directions about how this situation would be viewed by courts. I feel I need some reason to value a particular expert above others. It may be that I've missed some relevant post in the volume. Then again, that's unnecessary work if CC follow WCAG better. We can ask SPI's lawyer for an opinion if you think that would help. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.yukidoke.org/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 12:16:54PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: No we don't. There's huge chunks of X under licenses like that without us having obtained any clarification. I doubt the accuracy of that, but regardless, if there are, it's just because we haven't got around to them yet. http://www.google.com/search?hl=enlr=safe=offc2coff=1q=+site%3Apackages.debian.org+%22permission+to+use%2C+copy%2C+modify+and+distribute%22btnG=Search - that ought to keep you going for a while. We assume that they're free unless the copyright holder claims otherwise. You might like that to be changed, but what you're claiming is simply untrue - current practice is not to read licenses in the worst possible light. By your logic, current practice is not to fix RC bugs, because there exist RC bugs which have not been fixed. If the majority of developers were not fixing RC bugs, then common practice would be that we didn't fix RC bugs. But they do. Most people believe that a license with some ambiguity is acceptable if there's no indication that the copyright holder interprets it oddly. You're just wrong here. The fact that a license /can/ be interpreted in a way that would result in it being non-free does not mean that all material under that license should be considered non-free. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Francesco Poli wrote: Hi Thomas! ciao Franceso I suppose you are reading Barak Pearlmutter's DFSG FAQ (http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html), right? yes, it is a faq in debian.org, although in a personal page. Should I not consider that faq? [...] The main point you seem to miss is that DFSG are indeed directed to software, but with the term software in its widest meaning. In other words, if, by software you mean programs only, then, no, DFSG are not directed to software only, but to both programs *and* other (non-program) works. [...] I hope to have clarified a little... we are going in this direction ;-) My understanding of software is not only programs. But, for my (and others) point of view software is a genus, which includes programs and non programs information as two *different* species. I understand perfectly that this is not the opinion of this list, and I am not here to try to convince you of the opposite. What I see with expectation (as some of you, as far as I understand it correctly) is to create a kind of compatibility between the the BY and BY-SA and the dfsg. This shouldn't be so hard, because, IMHO, your proposal to modify ccpl regards secondary aspects. Let me clarify: secondary in the meaning of not the most important liberties are regarded. More, I already pointed out the the two point regarding trademark license and DRM clause may improve the ccpl. [...] Well, as a matter of fact, authors always have absolute freedom to choose the license they like for their own works. Let me be more clear: I write a text titled legal aspects of copyleft. I want to release it under the terms of BY-SA, 'cause this license is up to me. I want that my text be distributed as wide as possible, and of curse into a Debian package regarding documentation (let's suppose). This would not be possible because of incompatibility of license (*not of the main rights*). Am I (the author) free in deciding the license? Hope to be more clear on this issue that I want to point out. I think it's quite important, and hope it will make any sense for you, too. ;-) Users, on the other hand, can never choose which license they receive a given work under... I agree. I think that the point is giving freedom to people that are *not* copyright holders for the work, since the copyright holder already has absolute power over his/her own work. understand and agree. [...] Keep in mind that, in these arguments, when I say software I'm not speaking of programs only: software is programs, documentation, images, sounds, animations, literature, ... Ok, but as others think different (see my opinion on this point above), do you mind would it be possible to respect the pluralism in the concept of freedom and of what exactly software is? I'm going to develop this point. You know that CC officially recommends gpl for programs, while offers a set of licenses for other works. This means that cc is endorsing a different view. However, is not prohibited use ccpl for programs. Shouldn't we recognize a kind of pluralism in the concept of what exactly are programs and software and how should they be treated, as far as these different view reflect in licenses that are compatible with secondary modifications? I think this last point determine if we should keep developing this discussion or not. My opinion is, of curse, yes. I repeat: This is the reason because I hope that this project will go further. But, as I said, it's just my personal view. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suppose you are reading Barak Pearlmutter's DFSG FAQ (http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html), right? yes, it is a faq in debian.org, although in a personal page. Should I not consider that faq? You should consider it as the opinion of a debian-legal contributor, and in no way representative of the official position of Debian. -- ciao, Marco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 08:22:29PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suppose you are reading Barak Pearlmutter's DFSG FAQ (http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html), right? yes, it is a faq in debian.org, although in a personal page. Should I not consider that faq? You should consider it as the opinion of a debian-legal contributor, and in no way representative of the official position of Debian. You should note, Thomas, that Marco is an established troll who takes every opportunity he can find to attack d-legal in order to advance his goal of low standards of freedom in Debian, being among that group of people who apparently despise the fact that the Social Contract applies to everything, even *his* pet non-free software. Don't be too surprised if few people waste time arguing with him anymore. -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suppose you are reading Barak Pearlmutter's DFSG FAQ (http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html), right? yes, it is a faq in debian.org, although in a personal page. Should I not consider that faq? You should consider it as the opinion of a debian-legal contributor, and in no way representative of the official position of Debian. You understate it again. It includes the opinions of at least twelve contributors, although only one of them has definitely agreed to include them all. It is the most popularly cited FAQ about the DFSG. That is easy to see. Marco d'Itri doesn't like it and chip-chip-chips away at it by pointing out it's not been pushed through a GR. IIRC, Marco d'Itri has criticised policy statement GRs. On the other, things are attacked for not having been passed by GR. What a contradiction! Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Read the FAQ but realise that not everyone agrees fully and some criticise destructively rather than constructively. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
I cover the FAQ question in reply to Marco d'Itri. Other questions: Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Francesco Poli wrote: [...] Well, as a matter of fact, authors always have absolute freedom to choose the license they like for their own works. [...example...] Am I (the author) free in deciding the license? [...] Yes. Are we (a packager and distributor) free in not working with it if we decide it does not follow our published guidelines? Keep in mind that, in these arguments, when I say software I'm not speaking of programs only: software is programs, documentation, images, sounds, animations, literature, ... Ok, but as others think different (see my opinion on this point above), do you mind would it be possible to respect the pluralism in the concept of freedom and of what exactly software is? [...] I am confused by this. I am not telling you what you must mean by software. I will tell you what I think debian means by software. I will try to persuade other constituents of debian that my view should be accepted. If by respect the pluralism you mean generally accept non-free software into debian on the grounds that it isn't software to which the DFSG applies, then I probably never will condone that. It's just too extreme for me: mutable files holding bitstreams yet somehow the files aren't software? Very rare. Do you claim that Creative Commons draws some distinction between software and programs? I think that would be another case of CC failing to say what they believe, weakening that project, cutting up the commons between different beliefs. Really, they should be called the Creative Commonses project. See news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Shouldn't we recognize a kind of pluralism in the concept of what exactly are programs and software and how should they be treated, as far as these different view reflect in licenses that are compatible with secondary modifications? No. I believe the same freedoms which I have been persuaded to give over my programs are valuable for all software. We should treat all software equally. I also consider that to be the view of debian, expressed through the social contract and DFSG. To change those would require a strong General Resolution: I have a vote and today would argue for the current situation, based on solid pragmatic reasons. Compromise opportunity: I would want a pretty unambiguous description of when to use anything weaker than the DFSG. At least, it should avoid letting any programs which don't follow DFSG into main. No-one has posted a good definition of documentation which doesn't include some programs, for example. I think that inability is because it's not possible, but I might be proved wrong. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 12:43:35AM +, MJ Ray wrote: Compromise opportunity: I would want a pretty unambiguous description of when to use anything weaker than the DFSG. At least, it should avoid letting any programs which don't follow DFSG into main. No-one has posted a good definition of documentation which doesn't include some programs, for example. ... and nobody has posted solid rationale explaining why Debian *should* permit restrictions on documentation that it does not permit for programs, even if such a boundary can be unambiguously drawn. (The FSF's documentation has such restrictions, so we should allow them is not solid rationale; it's merely an agenda.) I think that inability is because it's not possible, but I might be proved wrong. The fact that some software is both program and documentation (eg. PostScript) seems to be simple proof that you're right. :) You can't draw a strict boundary between overlapping sets. -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
I see nothing other than an appeal to a silent majority. Do you really want me to post the lurker song? You're getting awfully close. Anyway, no points to answer; my previous mail stands. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 07:34:15PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote: According to http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5293 there are already at least 10 million works published under a CC license. I'm really suspicious of their numbers. According to http://people.debian.org/~jgb/debian-counting/ there are at least 55 million works published under a DFSG-free license in potato, for a sufficiently abtrust definition of work. As best I can make out, their guesstimate is based on the number of web pages linking to their site (because obviously everybody who links to the site releases precisely one work under their license). I don't know where they got their numbers though, because google comes up with about 20k references. So in summary, I think that 10 million is pure fiction. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 03:10:24AM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: I see nothing other than an appeal to a silent majority. Do you really want me to post the lurker song? You're getting awfully close. Anyway, no points to answer; my previous mail stands. Evading Matthew's counterarguments doesn't convince anyone but yourself. You're claiming, as far as I can tell, that any license that can be twisted in a non-free way is categorically non-free. Since that's possible with just about every license, that claim is obviously false. Unless the BSD license is non-free, since one might claim that redistribution and use means both, not either, so you must redistribute the work to be allowed to use it; the MIT license is non-free, claiming that supporting documentation applies to documentation for the work that's created and distributed independently by a third party; that GPL#6 impose further restrictions forbids me from writing code in an obscure, hard-to-read coding style (eg. GNU's), since the ability to modify a work is reduced as a result. None of these licenses mean any of these things, but the words can be twisted and people could claim it. That doesn't make the licenses non-free, it doesn't mean the licenses need to be changed (it won't help), and it doesn't necessarily mean that obviously bogus interpretations would stand in court-- that's one of the big reasons we strongly recommend using well-established licenses (such as the above three). -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 09:41:55PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 03:10:24AM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: I see nothing other than an appeal to a silent majority. Do you really want me to post the lurker song? You're getting awfully close. Anyway, no points to answer; my previous mail stands. Evading Matthew's counterarguments doesn't convince anyone but yourself. He didn't *make* any counterarguments. His mail approximated I'm right, you're wrong, nyah nyah nyah. There's no practical response to that. You're claiming, as far as I can tell, that any license that can be twisted in a non-free way is categorically non-free. No. http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20050324.html -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 04:00:46AM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: You're claiming, as far as I can tell, that any license that can be twisted in a non-free way is categorically non-free. No. http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20050324.html You can't just say no. When you find people don't understand your position, either explain your position more clearly, or stop wasting our time. Anyhow, you've made it blindingly clear that you have nothing of real substance to offer to this list; anything you might have to offer is deafened by your continual snide derision, your complete (and obviously entirely deliberate) inability to discuss anything at all civilly. Even the subject of a certain Drinking Game a while back has a much better track record than you lately. *plonk* -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 06:26:22PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: The same phrase appears in several other licenses that we consider free. Your argument appears to be that we should consider those licenses non-free because the words can be interpreted in a non-free manner. Whenever such licenses appear, we either get them fixed or explicitly clarified by the author. That is what we are trying to do here, despite the best efforts of some people to obstruct the process. No we don't. There's huge chunks of X under licenses like that without us having obtained any clarification. We assume that they're free unless the copyright holder claims otherwise. You might like that to be changed, but what you're claiming is simply untrue - current practice is not to read licenses in the worst possible light. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 12:16:54PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 06:26:22PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: The same phrase appears in several other licenses that we consider free. Your argument appears to be that we should consider those licenses non-free because the words can be interpreted in a non-free manner. Whenever such licenses appear, we either get them fixed or explicitly clarified by the author. That is what we are trying to do here, despite the best efforts of some people to obstruct the process. No we don't. There's huge chunks of X under licenses like that without us having obtained any clarification. I doubt the accuracy of that, but regardless, if there are, it's just because we haven't got around to them yet. We assume that they're free unless the copyright holder claims otherwise. You might like that to be changed, but what you're claiming is simply untrue - current practice is not to read licenses in the worst possible light. By your logic, current practice is not to fix RC bugs, because there exist RC bugs which have not been fixed. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then we should still ask CC to make reasonable adjustments to stop encouraging them, or to actually enforce the trademark and stop people describing these licences as CC-by (or whatever) instead of leaving it to us to mop up. It's not that hard to Sure, I see nothing wrong with asking CC to do this. But still, it does not make the CC license non-free. -- ciao, Marco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm following this thread -and some other- but is not so easy to understand it completely - right now I am studying the desert island test...;-) There are better ways to spend you time, these tests are not based on the DFSG and so are not much relevant. I don't know if cc.org will be happy to change their licenses to make them (or at least some) dfsg free. You should also note that it's not at all obvious that the CC-BY and CC-BY-SA licenses are not DFSG-free, notwithstanding the objections from a few vocal debian-legal posters. -- ciao, Marco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
quote who=MJ Ray date=2005-03-30 22:15:15 + Benj. Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, if we treat this as a freedom issue in situations where the licensor has created a new version that does not include the comment/bounding box and/or where we have reason to believe the licensor feels that this is in fact part of the license, but do not treat this as a freeodm issue when documents are licensed in the normal way with a hyperlink to this page, would it be alright with you? I apologize if I misunderstood. It's clearly not a freedom issue when the licensor includes the licence on their pages without the trademark terms. I'm not sure about the situation when they just link to the ambiguous page which has had clarifications issued in obscure places by CC (along with statements relying on the US view of fair use IIRC). Great. The latter case is by far the most common. If you go to the CC website, it instructs people to license their works through linking. That's why they don't provide a copy suitable for inclusion with a work. I reject your attempt to make me decide without extra data. What extra data do you need? In another view: I'd not complain to the licensor nor object to stuff going in debian if that was the only problem, but it's not and I'm not going to endorse WCAG-busting practice. Nobody's asking you to like it or endorse it. I'm just trying to get us all to seperate freedom issues from accessibility issues, or less-than-ideal wording issues, or any other non-freedom issue. Of course, in any situation, we should lobby to have this changed. I'm just trying to divide the must-have freedom issues from the it can and should be changed issues. So what's the practical difference? For example, would you give this matter time at a scheduled meeting with CC people? Absolutely! A good way to run these sorts of meetings is to separate the essential freedom issues from the confusing text issues and sort of work down an agenda that way make it clear what we think are the high priority issues and the less high priority issues with a clear freedom/need-to-have line drawn where appropriate. Of course, we should make a case for everything we want to change. Not all bugs in the license are equal and it's important to know what would keep the license non-free and what would make it free so we any negotiating committee can focus the energy most effectively. This is something that was lacking in the GFDL discussions and that has caused a lot of time, thinking, and discussion that I think could have been avoided. I'd like to head this off at the pass now and do it openly and transparently. :) If you're really wondering about the priorities for fixing, I'd say: author name purge, anti-DRM, comparable credit, trademark licence presentation. However, I suspect the fixes in easiest-first order are: presentation, purge, credit, anti-DRM. Good to know. I think I'd personally put anti-DRM below comparable credit and draw the freedom line between those two but I'm willing to defer to the majority opinion of course. :) I am not going to speculate on which will be easiest but your list sounds as sane as any. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.yukidoke.org/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This not a theory. This is practical experience. This is why pine is not free. The awkward phrase in the pine license is: Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee to the University of Washington is hereby granted The same phrase appears in several other licenses that we consider free. Your argument appears to be that we should consider those licenses non-free because the words can be interpreted in a non-free manner. I think this argument is crack. It is entirely possible that some licensor could go to court and say I used the CC licenses in the belief that this was prohibited, and with the intent to prohibit it. There is nothing to use in defence against this. They could do that with any number of pieces of software we already distribute. If the University of Washington had a case, so do a vast number of other people. That's not a situation we can work with, so instead we assume that licensors aren't hostile unless proven otherwise. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm following this thread -and some other- but is not so easy to understand it completely - right now I am studying the desert island test...;-) There are better ways to spend you time, these tests are not based on the DFSG and so are not much relevant. I think that's overstating it. Those tests look DFSG-based, but there doesn't seem to be good current documentation on how they relate to them. I don't know if cc.org will be happy to change their licenses to make them (or at least some) dfsg free. You should also note that it's not at all obvious that the CC-BY and CC-BY-SA licenses are not DFSG-free, notwithstanding the objections from a few vocal debian-legal posters. DFSG-free is not the default choice. There seems to be problems and I'm not yet convinced the licences follow DFSG. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Benj. Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quote who=3DMJ Ray date=3D2005-03-30 22:15:15 + [...] I'm not sure about the situation when they just link to the ambiguous page which has had clarifications issued in obscure places by CC (along with statements relying on the US view of fair use IIRC). Great. The latter case is by far the most common. If you go to the CC website, it instructs people to license their works through linking. That's why they don't provide a copy suitable for inclusion with a work. Do they even recommend licensing non-software works through linking, JOOI? I reject your attempt to make me decide without extra data. What extra data do you need? So far we've had apparently-expert opinions in both directions about how this situation would be viewed by courts. I feel I need some reason to value a particular expert above others. It may be that I've missed some relevant post in the volume. Then again, that's unnecessary work if CC follow WCAG better. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 02:22:13 +0200 Thomas wrote: I've been recently contacted by two people belonging to Creative Commons Italy staff, regarding your draft summary. Hi, I am one of those guys, thomas of curse Hi Thomas! We began a three-party discussion (in italian): I was hoping to talk about debian-legal's proposed license fixes, but, so far, our conversation has been drifting more and more towards life, universe and everything... that's the reason why I stop posting. Yeah, I suspected that... First thing I did was proposing to them to involve debian-legal itself in the discussion, since the summary was born here, and thus any comment is best addressed here. Unfortunately, it seems that this proposal was not accepted, since we went on talking (in italian) without Cc:ing debian-legal... I'm following this thread -and some other- but is not so easy to understand it completely - right now I am studying the desert island test...;-) I suppose you are reading Barak Pearlmutter's DFSG FAQ (http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html), right? [...] I don't know if cc.org will be happy to change their licenses to make them (or at least some) dfsg free. We hope so, even though, so far, not much encouraging feedback has reached us... [...] The point -at least for me- is to figure out if others agree. Some of the main opinion against this point are that dfsg are directed to software and cc are not. So, if a software license must be free, a multimedia (I use this term to understand us, it could be not the correct one) license has to be open content. The main point you seem to miss is that DFSG are indeed directed to software, but with the term software in its widest meaning. In other words, if, by software you mean programs only, then, no, DFSG are not directed to software only, but to both programs *and* other (non-program) works. Otherwise, if by software, you mean (essentially) non-hardware, as many do here, then, yes, DFSG are directed to software. And so does Creative Commons! :) I hope to have clarified a little... [...] I think that one of the most important aspects of free/dfsg/opencontent/... is to create freedom. Freedom for authors and for users. And a very important freedom is that they (both) can decide which license to use. Well, as a matter of fact, authors always have absolute freedom to choose the license they like for their own works. Users, on the other hand, can never choose which license they receive a given work under... I think that the point is giving freedom to people that are *not* copyright holders for the work, since the copyright holder already has absolute power over his/her own work. And, in order to give freedom to the public, the license must be permissive enough: the DFSG are a set of criteria to be checked when you want to find out whether a work gives enough freedoms. Debian users count on having those freedoms on each package that the Debian project distributes in the main section of its archive (see http://www.debian.org/social_contract). If they are not free in doing that, because if they release their images with BY-SA, these images can't stay in debian main distribution, than something is wrong. Well, let me try to clarify. Every author is permitted to choose the license as (s)he likes. Every user is permitted to choose the software as (s)he likes. Free software enthusiasts avoid non-free (that is, too restrictive) software. Debian has promised to not distribute non-free software in main. Many free software enthusiasts like Debian for precisely this reason (among other ones, of course): Debian helps them to avoid non-free software and to find useful free software. Keep in mind that, in these arguments, when I say software I'm not speaking of programs only: software is programs, documentation, images, sounds, animations, literature, ... This is the reason because I hope that this project will go further. But, as I said, it's just my personal view. We hope to solve this issue, too. Hope to be useful to the discussion I think you are. -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpdnNxvowDes.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On 31 Mar 2005 00:56:10 GMT MJ Ray wrote: Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The point -at least for me- is to figure out if others agree. Some of the main opinion against this point are that dfsg are directed to software and cc are not. I'm not familiar with Italian, but at least in some other languages, this opinion has been motivated by confusing the words software and program. I think there's nothing special with Italian, in this case. Many people in Italy use the term software in its strictest meaning (that is, programs only). Other people use it in its widest meaning (that is, to summarize, information suitable for automatic processing). It seems that the same situation applies to English-speaking environments (and even other linguistic contexts), at least judging from the long lasting discussions about What is software? that sprang up during the neverending GFDL story... -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpqJn5dbdz6B.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, but if it's included in the licence by a licensor who considers it part of the licence, clearly your we all know is false. Then this licensor is using a different license which is not a CC license. It's not that hard. -- ciao, Marco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, but if it's included in the licence by a licensor who considers it part of the licence, clearly your we all know is false. Then this licensor is using a different license which is not a CC license. It's not that hard. Then we should still ask CC to make reasonable adjustments to stop encouraging them, or to actually enforce the trademark and stop people describing these licences as CC-by (or whatever) instead of leaving it to us to mop up. It's not that hard to see that these CC-based licences are a PITA. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
quote who=MJ Ray date=2005-03-29 19:07:01 + If the licensor includes that term in the copyright conditions for the work, I don't think that CC's opinion matters much, unless they are granting an unrestricted royalty-free trademark permission. After all, the copyright licensor could include something really daft like you must not use the word 'the' as an extra condition should they wish. So, if we treat this as a freedom issue in situations where the licensor has created a new version that does not include the comment/bounding box and/or where we have reason to believe the licensor feels that this is in fact part of the license, but do not treat this as a freeodm issue when documents are licensed in the normal way with a hyperlink to this page, would it be alright with you? I apologize if I misunderstood. Of course, in any situation, we should lobby to have this changed. I'm just trying to divide the must-have freedom issues from the it can and should be changed issues. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.yukidoke.org/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Benj. Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, if we treat this as a freedom issue in situations where the licensor has created a new version that does not include the comment/bounding box and/or where we have reason to believe the licensor feels that this is in fact part of the license, but do not treat this as a freeodm issue when documents are licensed in the normal way with a hyperlink to this page, would it be alright with you? I apologize if I misunderstood. It's clearly not a freedom issue when the licensor includes the licence on their pages without the trademark terms. I'm not sure about the situation when they just link to the ambiguous page which has had clarifications issued in obscure places by CC (along with statements relying on the US view of fair use IIRC). I reject your attempt to make me decide without extra data. In another view: I'd not complain to the licensor nor object to stuff going in debian if that was the only problem, but it's not and I'm not going to endorse WCAG-busting practice. Of course, in any situation, we should lobby to have this changed. I'm just trying to divide the must-have freedom issues from the it can and should be changed issues. So what's the practical difference? For example, would you give this matter time at a scheduled meeting with CC people? If you're really wondering about the priorities for fixing, I'd say: author name purge, anti-DRM, comparable credit, trademark licence presentation. However, I suspect the fixes in easiest-first order are: presentation, purge, credit, anti-DRM. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The point -at least for me- is to figure out if others agree. Some of the main opinion against this point are that dfsg are directed to software and cc are not. I'm not familiar with Italian, but at least in some other languages, this opinion has been motivated by confusing the words software and program. I can accept that CC are not directed towards programs, although they may cover them just like any other literary work, but I find it hard to believe that CC is not directed towards software, as it seems to be used to cover software more than anything else. So, if a software license must be free, a multimedia (I use this term to understand us, it could be not the correct one) license has to be open content. Please let's avoid the term open content here. (I think open source is meaningless and want to avoid inflicting that pain on other fields. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/writing/ambigopen.html Learn from programmers' errors.) The difference lies in the rights granted in relation to the nature and to the function of the information protected. [...] Maybe. The Fields of Endeavour DFSG is usually taken as not allowing the licensor to restrict the function, as I understand it. So, if you want to limit function, it's hard to follow DFSG. I think that one of the most important aspects of free/dfsg/opencontent/... is to create freedom. Freedom for authors and for users. And a very important freedom is that they (both) can decide which license to use. If they are not free in doing that, because if they release their images with BY-SA, these images can't stay in debian main distribution, than something is wrong. [...] At this time, no CC-licensed work follows DFSG, in my opinion. I think I agree with you: it looks like it should be possible. I hope that you can encourage CC to work with willing developers. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Mon, Mar 28, 2005 at 02:09:58PM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: quote who=doug jensen date=2005-03-28 05:42:49 -0700 On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 03:31:01PM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: quote who=[EMAIL PROTECTED] date=2005-03-27 13:37:20 -0500 Now, agreed, stuff that's not part of the license shouldn't matter. But it's really, really difficult to tell that the overreaching language in the trademark restrictions is ignorable. I mean, it's RIGHT THERE, on the same page as the license text. Please, take a moment to look at it in a graphical Web browser: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode I've seen it. I looked at it before I wrote my first message. It's in a separated, bounded, and different colored box and its in a different tone and outside of the organizational structure of license. The last paragraphs in the license located at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode look like this in a text browser: I know what it looks like it text browser. That's a bug in the presentation/stylesheet of the page and perhaps a limitations of your text browser for not making an important visual queue for understanding the page visible. People make webpages that include essential information in markup and images that cannot be shown in a text browser. This is something that anybody who uses a text browser knows. Can Creative Commons fix the confusing parts of the license? Why leave things in a confusing state if it can be fixed? I think I've said this in every message I've sent to this list: This should be fixed. It is more confusing than it needs to be. I'm saying that I don't think non-license text affects the freedom of the license. I don't think it is quite good enough that Creative Commons understands what they mean, if the users of the license don't understand as well. It is explicit in the source of the page and it's explicit (although not necessary universally unambiguous) in the graphical visualization that 99+% of people reading the page see. CC has explained clearly their position and we know that they are not trying to pull one on us. This is sloppiness, not non-freeness. The first definition of 'explicit' at Dictionary.com is: Fully and clearly expressed; leaving nothing implied. So I don't think that it is explicit at all, refer to the parts of my prior post that you didn't quote for the reason. Can you show me a reference that suggests that it is generally accepted that putting a box around text and changing the background color implies that the text in that box is then explicitly not intended to be related to the remainder of the text? The text about the trademark limits the freedom of use of the CC trademark more than would be generally accepted without that text. Wouldn't you agree that it grants CC additional options at the expense of the license users? If not, then my next question would be please explain why? Are you really arguing that a piece of text that we all know is not a part of the license renders the license itself non-free? I think that we all needs to be extended to all potential users of the license. From that perspective, I don't think they all know that the piece of text isn't part of the license. I also think that others could use the layout of the page as a model for derivative licenses and I don't think that would be good. I do like the basic concept of the CC licenses though, meaning the freedom of choice. It would be helpful if the page was explicit, not leaving anything implied. Keeping the users in mind is important isn't it? -- Doug Jensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Benj. Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is ALLCAPS NOT A PART OF THE LICENSE, ...in an HTML comment... Only because it's graphically separated, by color and inside a box, when the HTML is rendered. The HTML comment is trying to make explicit in the source what is already explicit in the rendered document. It's not explicit. Using colouring and borders as the only marking for important information is discouraged by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and others. I believe most cases where this is included in a licence are probably someone doing lynx -dump on the page or similar. Yes, we can get most of them fixed, but we could get all of them fixed without further effort if CC would follow WCAG. I think the overreaching language is the main freedom issue. The response from CC when it's been pointed out has been, But that section is not a part of the license. The license users aren't bound by it. They think it's obvious visually, in the HTML source, and from comments that they've made to clarify it and doesn't need to be fixed. I agree that's it's more ambiguous than it should be but I also thank that they've things clear enough that it's not a freedom issue. I mean, they've said this in so many words (including in the text of the page) and quite honestly, their argument is really the only one that matters as licensors are not able to speak for Creative Commons about their trademark. If the licensor includes that term in the copyright conditions for the work, I don't think that CC's opinion matters much, unless they are granting an unrestricted royalty-free trademark permission. After all, the copyright licensor could include something really daft like you must not use the word 'the' as an extra condition should they wish. Finally, I'm worried that Marco d'Itri thinks you have sanity. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Subscribed to this list. No need to Cc, thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Benj. Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [CC trademark clause] It is explicit in the source of the page and it's explicit (although not necessary universally unambiguous) in the graphical visualization that 99+% of people reading the page see. CC has explained clearly their position and we know that they are not trying to pull one on us. This is sloppiness, not non-freeness. A CC representative has equally clearly explained that they are unwilling to fix this problem. So, we end up trying to fix symptoms not problems and the hype around CC means that there are *lots* of symptoms. CC is being inconsiderate, in my opinion. Are you really arguing that a piece of text that we all know is not a part of the license renders the license itself non-free? No, but if it's included in the licence by a licensor who considers it part of the licence, clearly your we all know is false. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Subscribed to this list. No need to Cc, thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 03:31:01PM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: quote who=[EMAIL PROTECTED] date=2005-03-27 13:37:20 -0500 Now, agreed, stuff that's not part of the license shouldn't matter. But it's really, really difficult to tell that the overreaching language in the trademark restrictions is ignorable. I mean, it's RIGHT THERE, on the same page as the license text. Please, take a moment to look at it in a graphical Web browser: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode I've seen it. I looked at it before I wrote my first message. It's in a separated, bounded, and different colored box and its in a different tone and outside of the organizational structure of license. The last paragraphs in the license located at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode look like this in a text browser: quoting from the page Creative Commons is not a party to this License, and makes no warranty whatsoever in connection with the Work. Creative Commons will not be liable to You or any party on any legal theory for any damages whatsoever, including without limitation any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising in connection to this license. Notwithstanding the foregoing two (2) sentences, if Creative Commons has expressly identified itself as the Licensor hereunder, it shall have all rights and obligations of Licensor. Except for the limited purpose of indicating to the public that the Work is licensed under the CCPL, neither party will use the trademark Creative Commons or any related trademark or logo of Creative Commons without the prior written consent of Creative Commons. Any permitted use will be in compliance with Creative Commons' then-current trademark usage guidelines, as may be published on its website or otherwise made available upon request from time to time. Creative Commons may be contacted at http://creativecommons.org/. end of quote I cannot see anything indicating that the Creative Commons trademark paragraph is not part of the license, when looking at it in a text browser[1]. In a graphical browser the entire section quoted above has a box around it. My first thought was that that section was being highlited as importatnt, and the part stating ... as the Licensor hereunder, it shall have all rights and obligations of Licensor., would lead me to believe that the entire section is part of the license. When I read on this mailing list that Creative Commons has stated that the boxed portion is not part of the license, then it seamed more confusing. How can the term hereunder not be considered part of the license? If that part is part of the license why wouldn't the next paragraph be considered part of the license? Can Creative Commons fix the confusing parts of the license? Why leave things in a confusing state if it can be fixed? I agree that sometimes d-legal has been a bit picky, but there also is good reason to be careful. I don't think it is quite good enough that Creative Commons understands what they mean, if the users of the license don't understand as well. == Doug Jensen [1] I like text browsers for several reasons, and have read comments by others expressing the same. Disclaimer: I am not a DD or a lawyer. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
doug jensen wrote: I cannot see anything indicating that the Creative Commons trademark paragraph is not part of the license, when looking at it in a text browser[1]. In a graphical browser the entire section quoted above has a box around it. My first thought was that that section was being highlited as importatnt, and the part stating ... as the Licensor hereunder, it shall have all rights and obligations of Licensor., would lead me to believe that the entire section is part of the license. I am pretty sure that any Brazilian judge would deem this part of the license, because of the Licensor/Licensee wording. HTH, Massa -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can Creative Commons fix the confusing parts of the license? No, because no matter how much some people pretend to be confused, the trademark stuff is still *not part of the license*! Now, a more useful question would be can creative commons fix the license web page?, and the answer would probably be yes, as long as the request is supported by sane arguments. -- ciao, Marco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Benj. Mako Hill wrote: quote who=doug jensen date=2005-03-28 05:42:49 -0700 On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 03:31:01PM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: I don't think it is quite good enough that Creative Commons understands what they mean, if the users of the license don't understand as well. It is explicit in the source of the page and it's explicit (although not necessary universally unambiguous) in the graphical visualization that 99+% of people reading the page see. CC has explained clearly their position and we know that they are not trying to pull one on us. This is sloppiness, not non-freeness. Are you really arguing that a piece of text that we all know is not a part of the license renders the license itself non-free? I'd argue that this is the case for works where the whole page has just been copied verbatim into a large blob of text and declared as being the license. (Several examples of such mis-licensed works can be found by googling a sentence from the suspect paragraph. The first example I found[1] copied the whole page, removed the colour, and kept the box around the two paragraphs. In the case of this PDF there is no 'NOT A PART OF THE LICENSE' comment, and the formatting suggests that the two paragraphs are not only part of the license, but an important part worthy of a larger font and a box). This may have been discussed before (in which case, please forgive my ignorance), but if, as the HTML comment claims, the two paragraphs are not part of the license: 1) who are the parties that 'neither party will use the trademark Creative Commons... ' refers to? They're not defined at any point in the two 'not part of the license' paragraphs. This paragraph makes no sense (to me) when considered in isolation of the license. 2) what is the point of it being on the license page, when (not being part of the license) it is not binding to either the licensor or the licensee? 3) why are so many people copying them into their copyright notices? [1] - http://www.moxon.net/downloads/pdfs/travels_in_burkina_faso.pdf -- Lewis Jardine IANAL, IANADD -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
[I am continually amazed by the amount of effort that people will exert to avoid fixing bugs, even when that effort exceeds the amount required to fix the bug] On Sat, Mar 26, 2005 at 05:27:57PM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: There are two areas where I think the write-up is a little more harsh/extreme than it should be (this is a critique that has been passed to me through SPI's lawyer and others who have looked at an earlier draft). In this situation and in general, I think legal needs to give a little more credit to reasonable expectations and expressed intent of licensors and license authors. Both are important concepts in private ordering and contract law and that this write-up seems to ignore or dismiss these at certain points in a way that I think might make conversations and negotiations more difficult. We can only accept these in specific cases. For the general case of a license which is intended to be applied to works by *other people* (such that Creative Commons is *not* the licensor), we have to assume the worst, because there will exist at least one licensor who *does* mean the worst. This not a theory. This is practical experience. This is why pine is not free. It is entirely possible that some licensor could go to court and say I used the CC licenses in the belief that this was prohibited, and with the intent to prohibit it. There is nothing to use in defence against this. We certainly can and do give credit to expressed intent of licensors - but for the CC licenses to be free in that manner, we would need each licensor to express their intent. That means getting clarifications from everybody. I believe it is currently possible to upgrade the CC licenses to free licenses in this manner, but it would be horrible. The intent of the license author is not very interesting here, since they have no formal relationship with the licensor and this is not legal advice. Furthermore, they would be obliged to say when questioned in court that This was not our intent, but we were aware of the existence of an alternative interpretation and we did nothing to correct it. I wouldn't expect that to be very convincing. Note that the HTML source code for the Web page includes a comment that the trademark restrictions are NOT A PART OF THE LICENSE. In a graphical Web browser, the text for the trademark restrictions are visually distinct from the license text. Creative Commons representatives have stated that the trademark restrictions are not part of the license. Finally, the same block of text states, Creative Commons is not a party to this License, [...]. However, debian-legal feels that the visual distinctions are not sufficiently clear to indicate that the trademark restrictions are not part of the license, and some instances of the license found in the wild include the trademark restrictions. The relation of the trademark restrictions to the license proper is sufficiently ambiguous to make it difficult for licensees to comply. Is ALLCAPS NOT A PART OF THE LICENSE, plus statements from the authors, plus a graphical distinction and a explicit statement that CC is not party to the license in the same block of text *really* sufficiently ambiguous enough to make this a freedom issue? Given the existence of licensors who have included it, in plain text, as if it were part of the license? Yes, I would say that is sufficiently ambiguous, since not even the licensors can understand it's supposed to be disjoint. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
quote who=Evan Prodromou date=2005-03-27 12:01:55 -0500 There are two areas where I think the write-up is a little more harsh/extreme than it should be (this is a critique that has been passed to me through SPI's lawyer and others who have looked at an earlier draft). I'm surprised by this. If, in the future, you review a document I wrote with someone, I'd like the feedback passed along to me sooner rather than later. Please also tell the people you've spoken to that I'd love to hear their comments directly. My email address is [EMAIL PROTECTED], and I can also be reached by phone at 514-525-0620 (Montreal) if they're not comfortable with email. When I said I was apologizing for jumping in at a late stage, I actually meant it. :) It really annoys me when people are given the opportunity to participate in a discussion and then complain after the fact and to a lesser extent at the last minute. The truth of the matter is that I don't follow legal except when pointed to particular threads or issues. I basically thought I'd missed the boat on the CC issues months ago and wasn't going to bring it up. I only did so now because you re-raised the issue in this thread. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.yukidoke.org/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In general we should distinguish the types of problems we have with the license and separate them into a few categories: Good work. Thank you for trying to add some sanity. -- ciao, Marco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
quote who=[EMAIL PROTECTED] date=2005-03-27 13:37:20 -0500 On Sat, Mar 26, 2005 at 05:27:57PM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: In general we should distinguish the types of problems we have with the license and separate them into a few categories: - Real limitations on freedom that seem to by by design; - Wording that says something other than what they mean and creates a serious limitation on freedom; - Wording that is less than ideal and potentially confusing; I'm not sure that's necessary. I think we only bother with the first two types of problems. Problems that are built in to the purpose of the license we pretty much dismiss out of hand (i.e., the NonCommercial and NoDerivatives license elements). I don't think there's a reason to consider these very closely or to make recommendations (Please change your NonCommercial license element to allow commercial use). In the CC licenses, this is basically correct but CC is a collection of licenses with different levels of freedom and its AFAIK unique in this way. In the GFDL discussion, this was/is an important type of distinction that wasn't really part of the way the position statement was structured. In that case, we did want to convince the authors to change and I think that making a case for a free license even when it is designed to be non-free can make sense in many other cases as well. That all said, if you'd like to label the problems in the summary with some kind of ranking (1, 2, 3) or something, I can add text that passes along these distinctions. I'm not sure about the format format but I think we can do something like this. As a start, I think all of the problems with the Attribution license are of the second sort, and the problems with the NonCommercial and NoDerivatives licenses are of the first sort. I agree. Also, we should distinguish between the types of solutions we want to suggest: - Fixes that can be made by clarifying their position; - Fixes that can be made by changing or removing text; Again, given that CC is not a party to the license, I'm not sure what clarifying their position will accomplish. If _we_ can be confused about parts of the license, licensors and licensees will be, too. In fairness, folks on -legal are going out of their way to find ways to be confused. That's part of the process here. In many senses, this is a useful excercise but in other cases we can cross the line of what a judge would think is a reasonable interpretation. The absolutely best way to clarify a position is to clarify the text. I think any out-of-band clarification is a vrry distant second. Of course. But it's sometimes a reality we need to deal with. Approaching license authors with the possibility of extra-textual clarification can raise the possibility of successful license fixing and be more effective than many folks give credit for. It's not clear which if any technological measures would be consistent with the terms of the license. Because of this vagueness, we have to take a worst-case view and consider that there are *no* such measures that are allowed. I believe that CC will dismissive of this critique -- at least as long as it's leveled in this fashion. The wording is clumsy but if CC wanted to block private distribution, they would have said that. I really have a hard time with this one. I think assuming that DRM is inconsistent, but encryption, firewalls, and VPNs are not, is incredibly sloppy thinking. Why is it so inconsistent when that is the obvious and expressed intent of the passage? Do you really think that a licensor could sanely and *convincingly* argue that the text meant that they could block private distribution? Has anyone other than people -legal suggested that this is how they are interpreting the license? Again, I think this clumsy, not maybe not non-free. I agree 100% with Lewis Jardine on this one. Well said, Lewis! I'm still formulating my thoughts on this. :) Would a more desirable fix be my suggestion with an or must include a transparent/editable/redistributable/unencumbered copy? Is ALLCAPS NOT A PART OF THE LICENSE, ...in an HTML comment... Only because it's graphically separated, by color and inside a box, when the HTML is rendered. The HTML comment is trying to make explicit in the source what is already explicit in the rendered document. plus statements from the authors, plus a graphical distinction and a explicit statement that CC is not party to the license in the same block of text *really* sufficiently ambiguous enough to make this a freedom issue? I think the overreaching language is the main freedom issue. The response from CC when it's been pointed out has been, But that section is not a part of the license. The license users aren't bound by it. They think it's obvious visually, in the HTML source, and from comments that they've made to clarify it and doesn't need to
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 02:13:46 +0100 Lewis Jardine wrote: Francesco Poli wrote: On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:27:57 -0500 Benj. Mako Hill wrote: [anti-DRM clause] In terms of suggesting a textual fix, how about: You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work by those to whom they are distributed, displayed, or performed in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. Would this clarify things? I think it would. Note that this would ban the distribution of DRMed versions entirely, even if a transparent copy is provided. This would not permit (for example) the distribution of a CC book in .lit format (as there is no known way to edit one), even if there was a clean copy (or even the original sourcecode) in the same archive. You are right. Actually, while commenting Benjamin's proposed fix, I was (wrongly) considering it as if the unless... part was there. But it wasn't. Maybe this is better: | You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or | publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures | that control access or use of the Work by those to whom they are | distributed, displayed, or performed in a manner inconsistent with the | terms of this License Agreement, unless you also simultaneously | distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally | perform the Work to the same recipients without such measures. -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpEJDP0JdYvz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Henri Sivonen wrote: You do not have to provide a copy of the Work or the Derivative Work to everyone, but when you do provide a copy to someone, you must not take measures the circumvention of which would be both illegal in the supported jurisdictions and required for exercising the rights given by the license, unless you also simultaneously provide a copy without such measures. I agree entirely with this proposed text; it clearly states both the problem the clause is trying to prevent, and a solution that requires the distributor to provide only what is needed to avoid that problem. - Josh Triplett signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 12:30:20PM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: It is entirely possible that some licensor could go to court and say I used the CC licenses in the belief that this was prohibited, and with the intent to prohibit it. There is nothing to use in defence against this. Absolutely. And I think that if their argument involved the DRM clause or the trademark bit in the CC license, they would lose because the defendant would be able to bring in Larry Lessig, the rest of the CC board to say they that isn't what they meant and that they didn't think that was a reasonable interpretation, and because, at the end of the day, the judge is going to determine whether their reading is reasonable himself or if the licensee's reasonable expectations were valid. The CC board are disqualified from commenting on 'reasonable expecations' because they wrote the license. That's a matter of law everywhere I know of that actually has a 'reasonable expectation' concept (not everywhere does). None of the parties to a contract are qualified to judge 'reasonable expecations'. Courts routinely accept fairly absurd notions of 'reasonable expectation'; there are typically a wide range of reasonable expectations, but only one of them is the actual license. I would not bet on the outcome of a lawsuit founded upon such a claim, and any lawyer providing you with formal legal advice should tell you the same thing (or you'd better check their malpractice insurance is up to date). Nor is there any reason why we should have to. It is simple enough to fix the clause. Furthermore, the 'reasonable expectation' thing does not apply if the licensee can be shown to have had actual knowledge of the (possible) interpretation of the relevant clause when they accepted the license. This thread constitutes evidence of actual knowledge. So it cannot apply here. We cannot dismiss this interpretation after giving it serious consideration and then turn around later and claim we didn't think it was reasonable. If we want to reject it, we are obliged to renegotiate the license to eliminate it. All this stuff about 'intent' and 'expectations' is designed to stop parties from being tricked into clauses they would not otherwise have agreed to. As such, it isn't going to apply to stuff that you've discussed in advance. Notably, whenever you challenge a clause in a contract or license, and the opposing party says that your objection does not matter because of something along these lines, they are lying, because your challenge just voided it. If you now proceed to accept the clause as written, you have just implicitly accepted the objectionable interpretation that you raised; the best you could do was try to show that they were negotiating in bad faith (because they just lied to you, but they only need plausible deniability to get out of it). The only reasonable way to proceed is to rewrite the clause in a form where both parties agree on the interpretation. [The above paragraph does not apply to all EU countries; contract law gets a bit funny in some of them, and the details tend to be incomprehensible when translated badly into English. This stuff is notoriously twisty in an international setting] In summary: it is obvious that this interpretation would be considered reasonable - we did. We just don't like it. Is ALLCAPS NOT A PART OF THE LICENSE, plus statements from the authors, plus a graphical distinction and a explicit statement that CC is not party to the license in the same block of text *really* sufficiently ambiguous enough to make this a freedom issue? Given the existence of licensors who have included it, in plain text, as if it were part of the license? Yes, I would say that is sufficiently ambiguous, since not even the licensors can understand it's supposed to be disjoint. I'm not sure that the least common denominator is the best way to making the decision on whether this is a freedom issue in the license. The existence of one idiot implies the existence of N broken copies, where all of them copied the file written by the idiot. License errors propagate like flies. It eliminates the possibility of us being able to say anything under this license is free. We have already established that the trademark clause does not always render a package non-free. That's not an interesting observation. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sun, 2005-03-20 at 12:21 +0200, Henri Sivonen wrote: I think it is in the spirit of the Creative Commons licenses not to require a transparent copy for editing. That's true. However, for a work to be DFSG-free, source code must be supplied. Therefore, I think it would be wrong to fix the Creative Commons licenses by smuggling in a requirement for transparent copy in a license update. I think in general I'd prefer we go with the minimal changes necessary to make the licenses DFSG-free. ~Evan -- Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Scripsit Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sun, 2005-03-20 at 12:21 +0200, Henri Sivonen wrote: I think it is in the spirit of the Creative Commons licenses not to require a transparent copy for editing. That's true. However, for a work to be DFSG-free, source code must be supplied. Sure. But that doesn't mean that the *license* has to require it. For a work to be free, it is enough that we *have* source code; the license itself does not need to demand source code, once in actual fact we have it. The alternative would be that BSD-style licenses (and donations to the public domain) were not DFSG-free, which is clearly absurd. -- Henning MakholmDetta, sade de, vore rena sanningen; ty de kunde tala sanning lika väl som någon annan, när de bara visste vad det tjänade til.
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
I apologize to be jumping in this at such a late stage. :) quote who=Evan Prodromou date=2005-03-18 14:28:24 -0500 Hi, everyone. At long last, I've made some final revisions to the draft summary of the Creative Commons 2.0 licenses. The main changes have been: * Additional phrasing changes due to MJ Ray * Additional phrasing changes due to Francesco Poli * Clear textual recommendations for Creative Commons * Recommendations for trademark restrictions Evan thanks so much for the summary. The additions in the last round are all steps in the right direction IMHO and I think that the work done here is fantastic. Who is organizing discussions with the CC folks? I've actually gone over an earlier draft of this text with a representative of CC and have been having conversations on and off about potential fixes to the licenses. I'd love to have some part in the discussions. That said, having spent a lot of time on this in the GFDL negotiations, I think I can offer some some advice for the recommendations part of this that will help in discussion this with Creative Commons folks. To prefix things, I think that in most places, this license does all of these things -- better than any other one I've seen from legal yet. I also think there is a little room for improvement. In general we should distinguish the types of problems we have with the license and separate them into a few categories: - Real limitations on freedom that seem to by by design; - Wording that says something other than what they mean and creates a serious limitation on freedom; - Wording that is less than ideal and potentially confusing; Also, we should distinguish between the types of solutions we want to suggest: - Fixes that can be made by clarifying their position; - Fixes that can be made by changing or removing text; There are two areas where I think the write-up is a little more harsh/extreme than it should be (this is a critique that has been passed to me through SPI's lawyer and others who have looked at an earlier draft). In this situation and in general, I think legal needs to give a little more credit to reasonable expectations and expressed intent of licensors and license authors. Both are important concepts in private ordering and contract law and that this write-up seems to ignore or dismiss these at certain points in a way that I think might make conversations and negotiations more difficult. In particular: Section 4a says, in part, You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. It's not clear which if any technological measures would be consistent with the terms of the license. Because of this vagueness, we have to take a worst-case view and consider that there are *no* such measures that are allowed. I believe that CC will dismissive of this critique -- at least as long as it's leveled in this fashion. The wording is clumsy but if CC wanted to block private distribution, they would have said that. It's clear (and explicit through many other channels and context and through public statements made by the licenses authors) what this is trying to do (block DRM) and what it is not trying to do (block private distribution). There is clear intent and reasonable expectations that we're ignoring here. As such, I'm not convinced this needs to be a freedom issue. I still think this can and should be fixed but claiming that they are clearly blocking private distribution is not necessary the right way to pitch this. In terms of suggesting a textual fix, how about: You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work by those to whom they are distributed, displayed, or performed in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. Would this clarify things? I'm also a little worried about the critique of the trademark sections. Note that the HTML source code for the Web page includes a comment that the trademark restrictions are NOT A PART OF THE LICENSE. In a graphical Web browser, the text for the trademark restrictions are visually distinct from the license text. Creative Commons representatives have stated that the trademark restrictions are not part of the license. Finally, the same block of text states, Creative Commons is not a party to this License, [...]. However, debian-legal feels that the visual distinctions are not sufficiently clear to indicate that the trademark restrictions are not part of the license, and some instances of the license found in the wild include the trademark restrictions. The relation of the trademark restrictions to the license proper is sufficiently ambiguous to
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:27:57 -0500 Benj. Mako Hill wrote: [anti-DRM clause] In terms of suggesting a textual fix, how about: You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work by those to whom they are distributed, displayed, or performed in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. Would this clarify things? I think it would. -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpV4HtheReiP.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Francesco Poli wrote: On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:27:57 -0500 Benj. Mako Hill wrote: [anti-DRM clause] In terms of suggesting a textual fix, how about: You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work by those to whom they are distributed, displayed, or performed in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. Would this clarify things? I think it would. Note that this would ban the distribution of DRMed versions entirely, even if a transparent copy is provided. This would not permit (for example) the distribution of a CC book in .lit format (as there is no known way to edit one), even if there was a clean copy (or even the original sourcecode) in the same archive. Is the DRM clause intended to ensure that despite the existence of DRM, licensees can still exercise their rights, or is it intended to make CC incompatible with DRM, in an attempt to dissuade people from using it? If the intent is the former, the clause may need revision. IMO, if the intent is the latter, this forbids certain forms of modification and is thus non-free. -- Lewis Jardine IANAL, IANADD -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Fri, Mar 18, 2005 at 02:28:24PM -0500, Evan Prodromou wrote: Hi, everyone. At long last, I've made some final revisions to the draft summary of the Creative Commons 2.0 licenses. The main changes have been: Thanks for doing this. I read it carefully and it's a very nice document. I think it reflects very well on you and the other contributors, in stark contrast to some of the incredibly snarky and spiteful things that have been said about its authors on -vote and a few other places lately. This kind of document, which spells out our concerns while being -- in my view -- perfectly respectful of the upstream promulgators of the licenses, is a good reflection on debian-legal and by extension the entire project. Good work. Don't let the -legal haters get you down. -- G. Branden Robinson| Psychology is really biology. Debian GNU/Linux | Biology is really chemistry. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Chemistry is really physics. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | Physics is really math. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Hello everybody :-) I won't interfere long here since I don't normaly post on this list and legal issues are not my strong point anyway (fortunately your here). As both a Debian-Ubuntu and Creative Commons (CC) supporter, I really hope that what you're doing here will work ! I just wanted to mention an evolution in the number of Creative Commons works you mentionned: ...there are already over 1 million works realeased under a Creative Commons license. ... It looks like there are at least 10 millions works realeased under Creative Commons (according to Yahoo a month ago). The link below give you also the repartition of the differents flavours of Creative Commons licences (the one I like the most is CC-BY-SA) http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5293 If you consider there are often more than one work by CC HTML tag on a website, you can imagine there is already more than 10 millions CC works out there ... The weather is beautifull here in France... If you have a mobile music player and want to take fresh air (or less romantic just commuting from work), I found the following talk interesting the comedy of the commons from Lawrence Lessig: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail349.html Thanks Francois -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Mar 20, 2005, at 00:58, Per Eric Rosén wrote: Could it be like this: if you give someone the work in a form (not preferred for editing|not allowing you to exec your rights in this licence), you shall also give them the unrestricted work, or a written offer valid for at least 3 years? I mean; isn't this very analogous to the situation of binary (crippled form) vs. source, that GPL already adresses? Could a similiar language help perhaps? I think it is in the spirit of the Creative Commons licenses not to require a transparent copy for editing. This non-requirement makes it easy to apply a Creative Commons license to any work. Suppose a hobbyist distributes his/her musical work online as an MP3 file. Having to provide the tracks as separate uncompressed audio channels would be a serious deterrent for publishing under a CC license at all. Therefore, I think it would be wrong to fix the Creative Commons licenses by smuggling in a requirement for transparent copy in a license update. However, I think it would make sense to introduce a new license element called Source or src that could be appended to any license that contains the ShareAlike element (eg. CC-by-sa-src). I think the crux of the anti-DRM clause is the *legality* of exercising the right given by the license--not the technical ease. That is, as long as a possessing and operating a photocopier or a scanner and a piece of OCR software is not as such illegal, it should be permissible to provide someone with only a printed copy of a literary work licensed under Creative Commons license. On the other hand, providing someone with only a CSS-scrambled DVD of a Creative Commons-licensed work should not be OK. To give an even more glaring example: Distributing a literary work as a PDF where all the text has been converted to vector graphics should be permissible, but distributing the literary work as a PDF where all the /ToUnicode tables are in place but the do not print and do not extract text the flags have been set should not be permitted. In the latter case, extracting the text is technically easier. That is not the point. The point is that misguided legislation could ban the possession of software that does not of honor the DRM flags. I think the anti-DRM (or rather anti-anti-circumvention) clause should make the point that: You do not have to provide a copy of the Work or the Derivative Work to everyone, but when you do provide a copy to someone, you must not take measures the circumvention of which would be both illegal in the supported jurisdictions and required for exercising the rights given by the license, unless you also simultaneously provide a copy without such measures. There is no politically correct way of defining supported jurisdictions, but it should include the jurisdictions with iCommons licenses and should probably not include North Korea. -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 With the exception of the proposed fix for the DRM language (my problems with it have been pointed out by others), I support this summary and strongly encourage Creative Commons to resolve these issues. Subject: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3) From: Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 14:28:24 -0500 Message-Id: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Signature on the original message: Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQBCOyvYUKpwFah29YERAp1+AJ9O1uPldSqgUpno8EWpZEtxHVJ2cwCglYrX lCCenk1v2vNX1FIgPHFokL0= =WGbs -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCPcPO+z+IwlXqWf4RAkmhAJ9QwJXxw+OZ99tgioSFXMkLHkvypACdFnI2 SjWRQbuzgUms6/D8dFUydG4= =m7Tj -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
Scripsit Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] 4. **Allow distribution of rights-restricted copies of works if unrestricted copies are also made available.** The following modified version of the anti-DRM clause in section 4a may be a good starting point. You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement, *unless you also simultaneously distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work to the same recipients without such measures.* I'm not happy about this replacement either. It seems to say that if I distribute the Work on a LAN behind a firewall I must also distribute the Work once again to the same recipient, but this time on a non-firewalled LAN. -- Henning Makholm I Guds Faders namn, och Sonens, och den Helige Andes! Bevara oss från djävulens verk och från Muhammeds, den förbannades, illfundigheter! Med dig är det värre än med någon annan, ty att lyssna till Muhammed är det värsta av allt.
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
IANDD, but: Could it be like this: if you give someone the work in a form (not preferred for editing|not allowing you to exec your rights in this licence), you shall also give them the unrestricted work, or a written offer valid for at least 3 years? I mean; isn't this very analogous to the situation of binary (crippled form) vs. source, that GPL already adresses? Could a similiar language help perhaps? /Per Eric -- ^): Per Eric Rosén http://rosnix.net/~per/ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG 7A7A BD68 ADC0 01E1 F560 79FD 33D1 1EC3 1EBB 7311 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
