Re: human rights license

This really should be on cc-community. I've cross-posted it.

Quoting phyllostachys nuda <phnuda@...>:

> Who decides what is ethical: Anyone can decide a starting set of 
> rules. Others will expand the list in the future in various other 
> licenses. They can steal ideas from human rights law, such as the 
> Geneva Conventions, etc.

But the UN Declaration of Human Rights is itself complex and requires
interpretation. Piecemeal introduction of ideas from it into another ethical
system will not make that system any more rigorous.

As for anyone deciding a starting set of rules, various extremist 
groups have a
fairly different idea of what is ethical from you or I. Some of them may write
good code (or, to drag this remotely back on list topic, produce good
illustrations or music). They can deny us use of their work because we 
will use
it for ends *they* regard as non-ethical.

Whereas if we make the only freedom the license is concerned with the 
freedom to
create, we are all at least free to create in the pursuit of our own social
ends.

>  Who would use it: Everyone can decide for themselves to use it or 
> not, just like when GPL etc first started out. It doesn't matter if a 
> ton of people don't use it.

Re: [cc-licenses] human rights license

On Thursday 01 December 2005 06:14 am, rob@... wrote:
> This really should be on cc-community. I've cross-posted it.
>
> Quoting phyllostachys nuda <phnuda@...>:
> > Who decides what is ethical: Anyone can decide a starting set of
> > rules. Others will expand the list in the future in various other
> > licenses. They can steal ideas from human rights law, such as the
> > Geneva Conventions, etc.
>
> But the UN Declaration of Human Rights is itself complex and requires
> interpretation. Piecemeal introduction of ideas from it into another
> ethical system will not make that system any more rigorous.
>
> As for anyone deciding a starting set of rules, various extremist
> groups have a
> fairly different idea of what is ethical from you or I. Some of them may
> write good code (or, to drag this remotely back on list topic, produce good
> illustrations or music). They can deny us use of their work because we will
> use
> it for ends *they* regard as non-ethical.
>
> Whereas if we make the only freedom the license is concerned with the
> freedom to
> create, we are all at least free to create in the pursuit of our own social
> ends.
>
> >  Who would use it: Everyone can decide for themselves to use it or
> > not, just like when GPL etc first started out. It doesn't matter if a
> > ton of people don't use it.
>

Re: [cc-licenses] cc-licenses Digest, Vol 33, Issue 1

Quoting phyllostachys nuda <phnuda@...>:

> So, by shipping millions of man hours worth of GPL code to the 
> Chinese government, which it then uses to oppress people and destroy 
> their freedom of speech, you aren't protecting the 'freedom to 
> create' at all. The same is true in many countries in which computer 
> technology is increasingly being used by the powerful against the 
> weak. The nature of computers has often been to favor the wicked.

Prior to them using computers against the weak, the wicked used telegraph
networks, the railways, stagecoach routes, horse riders or fast foot
messengers. The oppressive use of these technologies is the fault of 
oppressive
social forces, not technology.

An Ethical License will have no effect on the wicked. If they are happy 
to kill
and torture people they really, really, really aren't going to be too upset
about disregarding your license. As Greg pointed out some time ago.

If you want to improve the world through technology, volunteer for a social
technology charity or give some money to a third world technology 
group. If you
want to improve the world through law train to be a lawyer and do pro 
bono work
for progressive groups.

But an Ethical License is not going to do the work that you want it to.

- Rob.

Re: [cc-licenses] Case study: Magnatune

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fan fiction in the Creative Commons

I found a few tantalizing references to fan fiction
while searching creativecommons.org, but I've yet to
run across a discussion on what it would take to bring
some of the fan fiction out there legally under a
Creative Commons license.  Would be very interested in
hearing from or working with others on this subject. 
There are two areas where the Creative Commons could
help fan fiction writers make their works more
accessible.    

One would be to provide fan fiction writers with some
way to look up which characters and worlds are in the
public domain or currently accessible to be used in
derivative works under a Creative Commons license. 
This could start with something as simple as a web
site with links to public domain texts on the web and
if writers were allowed to update the site, could grow
as writers added other links or possibly short
descriptions of these available resources.  

The second area would be for the Creative Commons to
help writers bridge the gap between their current and
in the works licenses and the types of licensing a
typical writer might want.  There are two licensing
functions fan fiction writers would potentially be
interested in, distribution and derivation. 
Derivation needs may run the gambit from 'don't use
anything from my work that isn't already public domain
or under a Creative Commons license' to 'use anything
short of plagiarizing'.  Distribution can range from
'copy only for personal use' to 'use it in anything
including for profit works'.  Within this range, there
are several variations that need to be covered.  For
instance, can an online archive display a work without
asking?  Does the author want only some types of
archives to do this?  Maybe the author doesn't want
stories suitable for all ages available at an adult
archive site or vice versa.  Can the work be copied to
other media, such as distributed on CD or paper by
editors putting together collections of stories?  The
licenses available at Creative Commons are a great
resource, but I think, to be easily usable by fan
fiction writers, there'd need to be a way to translate
some of these into concepts more familiar to those
writers.  New types of license options might be needed
as well.

What I'd like to see is a thriving community of fan
fiction writers writing derivative works based on
public domain material and Creative Commons material
that allow derivations.  Fan fiction writers may be
inspired by these works, others authors in the
community and readers to create more new material. 
This would increase the number of new works out there
for readers and the amount of material that can be
used for further derivation by writers.  To that end,
some web pages with information on works that can be
derived from and on the types of licensing that would
be most useful for fan fiction authors could be
immensely helpful.  This would make a good start
towards that goal.

If there are authors, readers, or others on this list
who would like to see a similar goal, I would like to
hear some of your viewpoints.  If there is enough
interest in this, I'd by willing to offer some of my
skills as a web designer/programmer in part of a group
effort to help make this more of a reality.  

Thanks.

		
__________________________________________ 
Yahoo! DSL – Something to write home about. 
Just $16.99/mo. or less. 
dsl.yahoo.com 

The End of Copyright (via Nettime)

Hi everybody,

I'm also a member of the Nettime mailinglist and I saw this post with a 
piece from Ernest Adams (a games industry veteran). I thought that more 
people might be interested in reading this. Enjoy.

grtz,
BjornW

From: rekrutacja <rekrutacja@...>
Subject: <nettime> The End Of Copyright
Date: 2005-11-29 02:47:43 GMT

source:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051128/adams_01.shtml

The End Of Copyright

By Ernest Adams
Gamasutra
November 28, 2005

I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of a major era in world
history. It may take fifty years, it may take a hundred, but the age of copyright
is drawing to a close. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but
it's inevitable. And I say this as the author of two books and over 75 columns
like this one, all copyrighted.

Just 550 years ago this year, a guy named Johann Gutenberg figured out how to make
large quantities of metal type in a hurry. He didn't invent printing -- the
Chinese had been doing that with wooden blocks for centuries -- but he did find a
way to make it fast and efficient. Gutenberg changed the world and helped to bring
on the Renaissance.
	
There were no copyright laws at that point. Before the printing press, books in
Europe were copied by hand, and having someone go to the trouble of copying your
book was about the highest praise an author could get. But with the printing
press, the concept of intellectual property was born. Over the next two centuries
or so, copying books went from being high praise to being a crime. As printing
presses were large and heavy -- i.e. difficult to conceal and difficult to move --
it wasn't all that hard to prosecute the offenders. The smaller and faster they
got, though, the tougher it became.

I'm old enough to remember when photocopiers became commonplace. At first, there
used to be signs in libraries, warning the users against duplicating copyrighted
material -- any copyrighted material, ever. But people did it anyway. They didn't
think they were doing any harm, and they weren't planning to sell the copy, they
just needed it for their own use.

When enough people feel that it's OK to do a thing, that thing ceases to be wrong
in their own cultural context. You can complain about moral relativism all you
like, but the facts are inescapable: that's how people behave. When the
photocopier came along, people simply didn't think it was wrong to copy a few
pages out of a book, even though it was against the law and the authors would have
preferred that they buy the whole book. So eventually, the Fair Use doctrine
evolved with respect to copyright materials. The law changed. It's now OK to
photocopy parts of books for educational, non-commercial use. In effect, the
authors and book publishers had to give some ground in the face of the
overwhelming tide of public opinion.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

On June 27, 2005, the US Supreme Court decided to hold companies that make
file-sharing software responsible for copyright infringements perpetrated by the
software's users. Everyone expected that they would rule as they did when
Universal City Studios sued Sony over the Betamax in 1984: there were legitimate
uses of the technology, and it shouldn't be held responsible simply because it can
be used unlawfully. Instead, however, they ruled that file-sharing software
actively encourages piracy and the makers should be held accountable.

The Supreme Court's action has done the exact opposite of what MGM and the other
content distributors who brought the suit hoped it would.  File-sharing software
will become open-source and public domain.  File-sharing will continue to grow
ever more popular, but now there will be no one to sue. The Supreme Court's ruling
hasn't even delayed the inevitable; it has actually brought it closer.

There's no intrinsic reason why someone should continue to get paid for something
long, long after the labor they expended on it is complete.  Architects don't get
paid every time someone steps into one of their buildings. They're paid to design
the building, and that's that. The ostensible reason we have patent and copyright
law is, as the US Constitution says, "to promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts." But travesties like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act don't
promote the progress of science; they actively discourage it. So do software and
biotechnology patents. The patent system was intended to allow inventors to profit
for a limited time on particular inventions, not to allow huge technology
companies to put a stranglehold on innovation by patenting every tiny advance they
make.

Right now, the music and movie industries are howling and beating their breasts
and doing their best to go after anybody who violates their copyrights on a large
scale. The fury with which they€™re doing it is a measure of their desperation.
The Sony rootkit debacle is a perfect example: in an effort to prevent piracy,
they secretly installed dangerous spyware into people€™s PCs, which itself may
have been a criminal act. This was about the dumbest public-relations move since
Take-Two lied about the Hot Coffee content, and as with Take-Two, it will cost
them vastly more than they could hope to gain from it. Did they really think
nobody would find out?

The lawsuits, the spyware, the DMCA: these are the death struggles of an outdated
business model. It€™s the modern-day equivalent of throwing the Christians to
the lions in an effort to discourage Christianity. It didn€™t work for the
ancient Romans and it won€™t work now.

Part of the issue is related to the question of how much money it took to create a
copyrighted work in the first place. With books and music, the answer is simply,
€œnot that much.€ Forget notions of what their rights may be in law; the
idea that a band or an author should be paid millions upon millions over the next
several decades for something that it cost them at most a few thousand dollars to
make, just feels silly to most people. You€™ll notice that it€™s the
megastars who are fighting the hardest over this in music€”Madonna, Metallica,
and so on. They€™re the ones who stand to lose the most. But the smaller, less
well-known groups are embracing new business models for distributing their music.
They€™re like authors back before the printing press: €œCopy my music and
listen to it! Please!€

Movies and video games are more problematic. They take millions to make in the
first place and a good many of them don't earn back their investment, even with
full copyright protection in place. If we're going to go on making video games,
the publishers have to find a way to make them pay for themselves. One approach is
an advertising model, although I'm reluctant to say it because I hate the idea of
ads in games. Another is to treat games as a service rather than a product. With
broadband distribution, I think this is increasingly likely: you won't ever have a
durable copy of a game, you'll download it every time you play it. Each
instantiation will be unique, personalized for a particular machine and Internet
address; encrypted to discourage hacking; and expires after a few hours. After
that you'll have to download a new copy.

Yet another model is the donor model: somebody who is known for creating great
work can collect up donations in advance; when he has collected enough to fund the
work, he builds it, and releases the game copyright-free when it's finished. The
donors will have paid and everyone else gets it for nothing, but they get it first
and perhaps some special recognition for their contribution. I€™d be happy to
put down $40 two years in advance for a new Sid Meier game, particularly if I knew
it would be released copyright-free when it came out. And I bet a lot of other
fans of Sid's work would say the same.

The donors have to trust that the developer will finish it, of course; but this is
effectively how freeware development works now. Somebody makes a name for
themselves with a piece of freeware; they ask for donations; the donations help to
fund further work on a new version. So far it has only been tried on a small
scale, but -- as the mobile and casual games are showing us -- there's still
plenty of demand for small scale games in the world.

(A variant of this system, pioneered by cyberspace engineer Crosbie Fitch, is
already in place for music, except that people give pledges rather than donations.
When the musician releases the work, she collects all the pledges made towards it.
See www.quidmusic.com for details.  Credit where it's due: I first heard about
this whole idea from Crosbie.)

In short, there are a heck of a lot of ways to recover the development and
marketing costs of video games besides trying to sell individual physical copies
and prevent their duplication. That system is awkward, wasteful, and theft-prone.
It supports too many middlemen and, like Prohibition, puts money in the pockets of
some very nasty gangsters.

Of course, some alternative distribution models still rely on copyright, and
publishers will still be trying to prevent people from redistributing their
content. But sooner or later that model is doomed.  The perceived value of a thing
is inversely proportional to the ease with which it can be duplicated. If the
public simply refuse to acknowledge that copying books or movies or software is
wrong, then in a democracy, it will eventually cease to be wrong. People elect the
legislators, and legislators make the laws.

Does the end of copyright mean that books or music or movies or games will die? Of
course not. The urge to create is too strong in all of us, and consumers will
always be willing to pay for novelty and for excellence. It may mean that nobody
gets mega-wealthy any more. What it does mean for sure is that the giant dinosaurs
that currently dominate the distribution channels had better learn to adapt or
die. There are a lot of fast-moving little mammals in the underbrush eating the
dinosaurs' eggs.

And fifty years from now, kids will be asking, "What does that © symbol mean
in this old book, Grandpa?"

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Re: Human Friendly Licensing of Patents

Michael (at Solaroof) and Drew (at Creative Commons),

Thank you for your replies, which I include below and cross-post.

Drew, yes, we met regarding work I and my lab have done to apply the 
notion of "Public Domain except as noted".  We used the website 
http://www.primarilypublicdomain.org and now we've moved to 
http://www.ethicalpublicdomain.org  "Ethical Public Domain" is the 
phrase which Rick Nelson of Solaroof came up with and I have pursued 
that.  It expresses our need and approach as moral (Ethical, based on 
people's best judgement) rather than legal (depending on going to 
court), positive (YES this is public) rather than negative (NO rights 
reserved), primary (we have a right to share, and a right that people 
presume we are sharing) rather than secondary (less relevant than "some 
rights reserved"), and practical ("except as noted") rather than 
dogmatic ("rights reserved").  It's essential for online social 
networking where organizers need to circulate micro-content using their 
best judgement without asking for permission or tracking licenses AND 
they need to have a moral integrity which means they have to care about 
things (like respecting the law and taking it at face value) that most 
people might not even think about.  Not a lot of people like that, but I 
believe they are the moral foundation that actually makes for real 
change, first of all, personal growth.  Yet most people take as 
authority whatever concept is established.  For example, 
http://www.fluwikie.com (to prepare and respond to a flu pandemic) uses 
the Wikipedia licenses even though it draws heavily on Public Domain 
governmental sources and has the goal of disseminating information as 
readily as possible.  Try to get them to change! (As Lawrence Lessig 
writes, "we all should consider the consequences of our choices").  Yet 
slowly we're pulling together a culture of "Public Domain except as 
noted" with about 100 active and 1,000 supportive participants, 10,000+ 
letters (see http://www.ms.lt), 5,000+ wiki pages 
(http://www.globalvillages.info and others) and more in the Public 
Domain except as noted, which in practice means 99% Public Domain.  And 
we've had genuine reuse, but also about 20 clients, including 
researching chocolate production for fair traders, and an economic 
theory to explain why this works: "An Economy for Giving Everything 
Away" http://www.ms.lt/en/workingopenly/givingaway.html  So we have the 
beginnings of a culture, much as Richard Stallman and his colleagues did 
more than thirty years ago.

I'm finding that in our "global villages" work we engage and attract 
innovators for whom the patent questions are very real.  They would like 
to give freely but why are they hesitant?  I think that they see that 
the world is engineered to abuse their generosity.  This is the nature 
of the legal contraption that we live in.  For example, "fair trade" is 
the noble concept that the family farmers who grow the coffee, tea, 
cocoa etc. that we enjoy should earn a decent minimum for their hard 
work on our behalf (which market competition is designed to squeeze 
out).  So there are products which are "fair trade certified" and for 
about 2,000 euros an inspector will come out and certify a group of 
farmers.  But no matter how such fees are set up, they inevitably favor 
the larger plantations, and the larger organic producers (like Green and 
Black's) and the large companies (like Hersheys) that buy them to have 
access to their supply chain.  The smaller groups of family farmers 
wonder how to participate.  Or I look at Google and I read their terms 
of service and wonder, why are they allowed to scrape and cache all the 
websites in the world, but I'm not allowed to scrape and cache any part 
of theirs?  Isn't that an outrageous abuse?  Aren't they a bully?  I was 
told that such terms of service are written to "cover their xxx" and 
should be understood as such.  But as a moral being, I know that I 
should expose myself to moral responsibility, not try to diminish it or 
escape it.  But this is how the "good guys" operate.  What is the root 
issue?

I believe that the root issue is that we've walked away from morality 
and traded it for legality.  That reduces us to legal contraptions and 
makes us equal to corporations yet their lessers in terms of size, power 
and longevity.  Moral questions are without scope as there are no bounds 
on our responsibility.  The legal contraptions are fine as mechanisms so 
long as they serve us, and not we them.  They need to be kept within 
scope.  Just as copyright is fine so long as it is not the "default". 
If somebody wants to copyright material, they should take the initiative 
to register that, or at the least, to mark it as such.  The problem with 
the law (since the 1970's) is that you don't have to mark your work, the 
default is "copyright".  It's assumed that you want to keep control over 
your work - we have lost the presumption that we are sharing people, and 
that is a slander on our humanity.  People who want to control their 
work should be obliged to mark it as such.  Similarly, people who want 
to control their liability by organizing corporations should operate 
them within a charter, within some scope.  As a minimum, each 
corporation should have a well defined purpose (as an NGO might) and a 
time limit to achieve that purpose (even if it's fifty years).  But in 
our days there seems to be no meaningful scope to corporations that 
would make clear that they cannot pretend to take human moral 
responsibilities and so have no grounds for human rights.

My instinct is that a "human friendly licensing of patents" will make 
clear why humans are superior to these legally grounded fictions. 
Creativity comes in human vessels.  There is no corporation, no "group 
mind", no "collective intelligence" that has any creativity of its own. 
  It simply, at its very best, may magnify and apply the creative spirit 
that speaks through an individual.  So we simply need to allow 
individuals, if they wish, to tax corporations that want to leverage 
that creativity, even while sharing freely with other individuals.  This 
lets us live not as "special" people who are isolated from each other 
and manipulated by our differences, but as "one" person who looks for 
and lives our humanity in every situation that we find ourselves in. 
Yes, it is a discriminatory approach because it favors human reality 
over legal fiction.  I suppose part of this choice has to do with our 
approach to our "personalities" that make us "special" - are they not 
fictions?  Is not the reality that, at heart, we are one person?  When I 
create something profound, worth controlling, do I think that I created 
it?  Or is it not something greater than my limited imagination?  Am I 
not simply an observer?  And is it not intended for all?  And do I not 
believe that ours is a universe that is supportive and protective of 
such gifts?  Yet we live in a tortuous social fiction that abuses our 
generosity for the purpose of confining us within its legal logics. 
Just as Microsoft is happy when people use pirated software, or record 
companies are happy when people share files without permission, because 
it proves that "people are thieves" and lets the system treat us all as 
such.

Yes, I definitely think that we should discriminate against 
corporations.  I imagine it is legal and straightforward, but ask for 
help on how to do it.  Thank you, Michael, for your link to 
http://gangsofamerica.com/index.html  I look forward to exploring that 
and learning.  I believe that this one issue alone - designing human 
friendly patents - will allow individual inventors to flourish and 
support each other around the world - and show how barren the corporate 
world is in comparison, even as it is "depopulating".  When the 
difference becomes apparent, I think that then it will become 
politically possible to restrict corporations as to their missions, so 
that their rights are limited just as their liability is.  Perhaps we 
might look at NGOs and consider, what kinds of charters make for NGOs 
that work well with humans, and what kind don't.  I imagine it's the 
"efficient" NGOs that are problematic, in that their goal is to squeeze 
out human actors rather than to involve them.

I wonder where to find people who might be interested?  Michael, perhaps 
you know of such venues?

Thank you!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 (5) 264 5950
Vilnius, Lithuania

-----------------------------------------------------------------

> Hi Andrius,
> 
> You have offered some really creative, admirable and worthwile ideas here.
> 
> I think you are right on point about corps. They are immortal,
> amoral, soulless entities that almost always wind up being run by
> sociopaths. Sociopathy is another great evil that deserves greater
> exposure as well.
> 
> I would like to give a link to a free downloadable copy of a recent
> book that, I think, goes far to explain the sorry state of affairs we
> find ourselves suffering. This is not a pirated copy. but made
> available by the publisher and author. Check it out. I think you'll
> find it rewarding. If you agree, please share it with anyone and
> everyone you think would benefit.
> 
> http://gangsofamerica.com/index.html
> 
> I would be interested in learning more about what you perceive to be
> the greatest problems with NGO/NPO's. Granted, when they reach a
> certain critcal mass, they can turn into self serving beasts, as can
> any organization. Don't you think protocols could be established to
> protect against such excesses, once they are identified? What do you
> see as the unfair advantage they have over individuals (other then the
> obvious tax free status and tax deductibility of contributions)?
> 
> Anyway, good luck, and carry on.
> 
> 
> Respectfully,
> 
> Michael Ritcher
> 
> PS Feel free to contact me directly if you wish to continue this
> discussion outside the group.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

drew Roberts wrote:
> Andrius,
> 
> I have run into you before and seem to remember posting to your site a while 
> back.
> 
> I find this an interesting approach and it is one I am exploring some as well. 
> (IE. giving advantages to actual human beings.) There are going to be tricky 
> issues to solve though, especially if you give humans the right to combine 
> and build upon these technologies. I will be interested in hearing the 
> thoughts of people more in the know. Would t his be considered 
> descrimination? Or could we do it?
> 
> all the best,
> 
> drew

-----------------------------------------------------------------

> On Wednesday 23 November 2005 03:36 pm, Andrius Kulikauskas wrote:
>>TO: Creative Commons, CC: global villages, working-in-parallel, solaroof
>>
>>Hello to all,
>>
>>I have an online laboratory, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt for
>>independent thinkers.  Some of our participants and allies have genuine
>>innovations in software design and ecological technology.
>>
>>I would like to ask for help from Creative Commons or the Electronic
>>Frontier Foundation to think through legally how to license technology
>>so that human beings could use it without restriction but corporate
>>entities would have to get permission.
>>
>>We have inventors who would like to share their technologies widely for
>>people to use without restriction.  They understand that they will not
>>be hurt, but rather may find ways to benefit from sharing.  However,
>>their sense of fairness is violated if somebody profits inordinately
>>from their work without sharing such profits.
>>
>>I think that distinction between "commercial" and "noncommercial" is not
>>helpful.  If we want people around the world to be "self-sustaining",
>>then we need to encourage commercial application and not tax it with
>>requirements of asking for permission.
>>
>>Instead, I propose to make the distinction between "human" and
>>"non-human" (= corporate entities).  Our economy has evolved to allow
>>for and favor non-human business entities.  The sole purpose of these
>>entities is to limit liability.  The resulting entities have unfair
>>advantages - they have all the rights of humans, but none of the moral
>>responsibilities.  I find it helpful to think of them as the modern
>>equivalent of Biblical "demons" or Islamic "genies".
>>
>>How difficult would it be to define patent licenses such that:
>>* humans could use the patented technology without restriction
>>* corporate entities would have to get permission (and the patent holder
>>may require them to pay a licensing fee)
>>
>>There are some details, but I think the key distinction is the issue of
>>"liability".  Corporations (but also many non-profit organizations) have
>>limited liability.  This is what gives them a competitive advantage over
>>humans.  I think it's fair to assume that they don't have a concept of
>>"a higher vantage point" that goes beyond them, and so it is reasonable
>>that humans make such decisions for them regarding the bigger picture
>>that may be involved.  Whereas one might reasonably choose to believe
>>that other humans should use their own best judgement.  That is why I
>>think this is a helpful place to draw the line regarding asking
>>permissions.
>>
>>For example, the individuals within a corporation would be free to use
>>the technology.  But any time the corporation wants to use it as its own
>>asset (for example, as a tool, or in its products or services) then it
>>would have to make sure that it had permission.
>>
>>The result I expect is that inventors could earn large amounts of money
>>from licenses to corporations while at the same time contribute to a
>>vibrant commons for all individuals.  Also, individuals within a
>>corporation would grow stronger, and the shared technology would help
>>tear down the corporate wall which keeps individual innovators from
>>offering their services.  The human-friendly technologies would open up
>>conversations that could make Cluetrain a reality.  Our "human commons"
>>might circumscribe corporations, make them more livable, and generally
>>"tame" them so that they serve us, rather than we serve them.
>>
>>I think that a proprietorship should be considered an individual because
>>the owner (or owners) has full liability.  I'm not sure, but I would
>>imagine that governments likewise have full liability, and so they would
>>qualify as individuals.
>>
>>In my experience, non-profit organizations are dysfunctional in much the
>>same ways as corporations, and they have unfair advantages compared with
>>personal initiatives.
>>
>>Could you help us work this out legally?  I have discussed this with one
>>inventor who would like us to proceed in this way.
>>
>>I'm also curious if there are others who might like this approach.
>>
>>Thank you!
>>
>>Andrius
>>
>>Andrius Kulikauskas
>>Minciu Sodas
>>http://www.ms.lt
>>ms@...
>>+370 (5) 264 5950
>>Vilnius, Lithuania
>>_______________________________________________
>>cc-community mailing list
>>cc-community@...
>>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
> 
> 

WIPO's Broadcast Treaty

Hello to everyone

I'm deeply concerned about WIPO's Broadcast Treaty,
which would give broadcasters control over any
material they broadcast, including works in the public
domain and under Creative Commons licenses. This
treaty might eventually apply also to "webcasters".
You can read about it at this links:

http://www.public-domain.org/?q=node/47
http://www.ipjustice.org/WIPO/top10reasons.shtml%3Cbr/%3E
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1237374,00.html%3Cbr/%3E

I have searched the Creative Commons website for
information about their response to WIPO's treaty, but
have found nothing. That surprises me, since this
treaty endangers CC's achievements. Could anyone tell
me what is CC's position towards WIPO's Broadcast
Treaty?

Sadiel Cuentas

__________________________________________________
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Fundraising campaign website

To whom it may concern,  The fundraising campaign website 
currently has the following text at the top:   Current status: 
$123,161.79 donated Goal: $225,000 by Dec 31, 2005  Thanks to 
everyone who has contributed to our first fundraising campaign so 
far.  We've already raised 21% of our goal but we still have a 
long way to go and need your help.   This makes it sound as though 
noone is even counting the money.  How about changing the wording 
to say ``We've already raised over half of our goal but we still 
have a long way to go and we need your help.''   Regards,  

--

-- 
Daniel Brockman <daniel@...>

Here's hoping the text formatting of this message doesn't
get all messed up.

Re: Fundraising campaign website

thanks for pointing this out. we've fixed up the offending text.  
trust me, we are definitely counting!!!!.....

On Dec 18, 2005, at 8:44 PM, Daniel Brockman wrote:

> To whom it may concern,  The fundraising campaign website
> currently has the following text at the top:   Current status:
> $123,161.79 donated Goal: $225,000 by Dec 31, 2005  Thanks to
> everyone who has contributed to our first fundraising campaign so
> far.  We've already raised 21% of our goal but we still have a
> long way to go and need your help.   This makes it sound as though
> noone is even counting the money.  How about changing the wording
> to say ``We've already raised over half of our goal but we still
> have a long way to go and we need your help.''   Regards,
>
> -- 
> Daniel Brockman <daniel@...>
>
> Here's hoping the text formatting of this message doesn't
> get all messed up.
>
> _______________________________________________
> cc-community mailing list
> cc-community@...
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community