Kurtiss,

As far as the phrase “Free Culture” goes, while it’s true that Lawrence Lessig in particular is not identical with Creative Commons as an organization, I think it’s still the case that, given his extremely influential role with CC, the rhetoric he likes to employ in speech, writing, and titles — for example, “Free Culture” — can be fairly associated with the general temper of Creative Commons’ rhetoric and self-descriptions.

In any case, I don’t think you’ve answered my point. Giving your project a name such as “Creative Commons” conveys a particular impression of what your project is about. To wit, building a creative commons. To have a creative commons you actually need to make works available freely for common use (i.e. not limited to the proprietary control of the creator or copyright-holder). Many Creative Commons licenses — and NC licenses in particular — do not do that. Replying that CC actually aims at giving creators more precise control over the permission profiles on their works, rather than on making works freely available, does not answer the objection. If CC wants to focus on helping creators express precisely what sorts of general permissions they want to grant, and what sorts of control they want to exercise, then they can go right ahead and do that. But they ought to pick a less misleading name. Perhaps “Creative Control” or “The Content License Repository” or somesuch would do. “Creative Commons” does not, because it dilutes the idea of a commons and conflates it with restrictionist licenses (such as NC, or Founder’s Copyright), which do not actually put works in the commons. (They only “enclose” a smaller “plot,” or enclose it for a shorter time, than conventional copyright arrangements do.)

I just think the best way to get there is by opening up choice and creating an efficient market, not promoting a single ideal. Why? Because I very well could be wrong. Only the market can tell.

Just to be clear, I don’t think that any form of unilateral copyright restrictions (as a form of State-enforced monopoly) are compatible with free markets, efficient markets, or market choice. (Cf. [1] and [2] for the whys and hows). But the point of my remarks does not actually depend on that claim. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not I think that *-NC licenses (for example) are a good idea, or legitimate from the standpoint of individual rights. The point is, rather, that it’s misleading to pass yourself off as advocates for a Creative Commons if you’re also promoting licenses that restrict Freedom 0. If that’s part of what they want to promote, fine, but it’s not a commons, and they ought to reconsider how they’re trying to brand themselves.

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.