On 09/10/11 09:59, Raj Mathur (राज माथुर) wrote:
On Sunday 09 Oct 2011, Guru गुरु wrote:
CC attribution non commercial allows free distribution for non
commercial purposes. In this specific case, the content is primarily
for educational purposes and there are arguments for keeping
educational resource creation/sharing as a non-commercial activity.
Doubtless you have your reasons to argue why even restricting
commercial use is a restriction and against freedom, but is it not
too extreme a statement to say that the content isn't free?
I understand your concern, and would like to reiterate that when many of
us talk about free it's in the context of freedom, and not of cost.
Enabling commercial redistribution is one freedom that both the FSF and
the OSI agree on as required for a software to be truly open and free.
E.g.:
From the Open Source Definition:http://www.opensource.org/osd.html
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away
the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution
containing programs from several different sources. The license
shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
Rationale: By constraining the license to require free
redistribution, we eliminate the temptation to throw away many
long-term gains in order to make a few short-term sales dollars. If
we didn't do this, there would be lots of pressure for cooperators
to defect.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program
in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict
the program from being used in a business, or from being used for
genetic research.
Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license
traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want
commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.
Agreed that content is not software and identical rules do not apply.
However, the principles for defining freedom and openness do not vary
between software and content, and the freedom to redistribute and to use
for commercial purposes is a necessary quality for either to be termed
free/open. No FOSS licence, whether defined by FSF, Debian or OSI,
prevents commercial use of the software.
Some licences do prevent you from making your work into a proprietary
work -- they work to ensure that whatever has been produced as open
remains open for perpetuity. In software these licences are termed
"copyleft" licences; a prime example of a copyleft licence is the GNU
General Public Licence (GPL). Once you release a software under the
GPL, no one can make proprietary changes -- any changed versions that
are released must be accompanied by the corresponding source code so
that others can continue to build upon what has been created so far.
For content, the best-known equivalent copyleft licences are the GFDL
and CC-SA and its variants. Any work released under these licences may
be freely redistributed (commercially or non-commercially) but may not
be turned into a proprietary work. So, for example, if you take a 12-
minute video training that has been released under CC-SA and add a 3-
minute cartoon clip that visually demonstrates the concept being
discussed, you are free to then sell the result to me. However, you
cannot prevent me from reselling or even freely redistributing your
enhanced work, and anyone I pass the work on to has the same rights,
privileges and duties. This ensures that the work can never be made
proprietary, while still permitting free redistribution in any context
(commercial or non-commercial).
In any case, the non-commercial clause is terribly ambiguous and
mutable, and I'd strongly advocate against its use. To take just a
couple of examples, what happens if you aggregate a number of these
videos on a CD and offer to send it to anyone for, say, Rs 100 to cover
media and shipping costs? That is technically a commercial
redistribution and as such verboten under CC-NC. How about if you
incorporate 5 works from the site into a 20-day training that you are
running commercially? Is the mere aggregation of the content, or is
that commercial use, specially if you explicitly provide the CC modules
as a free add-on to your core training?
In summary, my recommendation is to stay away from NC-type licences that
do not provide any clear benefit and needlessly encumber content that
could otherwise have a much larger scope.
Raj
Thanks for giving such a detailed explanation, it clarifies quite a few
issues.
There are different components of the cc licensing and primarily here we
are discussing the restriction on commercial use. (Otherwise all other
rights are given - to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
and to make derivative works). You have given good examples to
demonstrate the complexities associated with this restriction,
The distinction between a for-profit and a not for profit institution is
understood and accepted. By and large for profit institutions work for
maximising net profits/shareholder value, while non profit institutions
work for larger public good (or its subsets) and this distinction, even
if complex and appearing arbitrary at times, may be difficult to
completely ignore. However, in the case of digital goods, which are non
rivalrous, it is possible to argue that any restriction is harmful
(except of course the right to make it proprietary).
thanks,
Guru
Regards,
-- Raj
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