Comments Elsewhere

Mark,

I think a large part of the popularity of NC licenses derives from an entry-level confusion in principles. People pushing for “free content” still mostly haven’t gotten the distinction between “free speech” and “free beer.” “Noncommercial” restrictions sound like a good idea if you think that the issue is whether the price of obtaining the content is or is not $0.00. They sound like an awful idea if you think the issue is what you can or cannot do with the content once you’ve obtained it. Many people who are choosing free content licenses are aware that big commercialized copy-monopolists are the problem, but make the mistake of identifying the commerce as the problem rather than the monopolistic privileges. Since people who consider themselves culturally and politically progressive tend to be at least suspicious of commercialism anyway, they’re quite likely to miss the more subtle but more important point about the means by which the copy-monopolists have extorted their money. In any case as long as the two different issues aren’t clearly distinguished, there won’t be a clear set of first principles behind “free content” communities.

Kurtiss,

This brings me to what I view as the CC philosophy, which is not “let’s be slightly less evil,” or to be “open source,” but to give the creator a choice! That choice is precisely what’s needed to create a rich ecosystem of commoners that can interact with existing copyright systems.

If CC is not aiming at providing open (free-as-in-speech) content, but rather in giving creative types more control over specifying the permission profile on their works, then they need a less misleading name. They should not be calling themselves “Creative Commons” or talking about “free culture,” if what they mean is “creative control” or “machine-readable general licensing syntax and semantics.” They should decide just what they are promoting (whether this is freeing content, or just minting new data structures for creative types to express the restrictions they do or do not place on licensed use), and then work from the clearer set of first principles.