An "additional permissions" framework [was Re: Time limited CC licenses for version 4.0?]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 10:01 AM, Diane Peters
<diane@...> wrote:
> A reminder that we've posted the time-limited suggestions to the 4.0 wiki:
>  http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/Sandbox#Time-based_switch_to_more_freedom
>
> Feel free to add more specifics and pros/cons on the wiki page.

I think the idea of relaxing restrictions at pre-determined future
times is a good one, but I think it's a specific case of a more
general issue: the occasional need to draft and attach additional
permissions.

The GPL community discovered this problem during the late 90s and
early 00s, when it became somewhat common to draft "exceptions" that
were then essentially attached as riders to the license. GPL v3
formalizes this:

=======
“Additional permissions” are terms that supplement the terms of this
License by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions.
Additional permissions that are applicable to the entire Program shall
be treated as though they were included in this License, to the extent
that they are valid under applicable law. If additional permissions
apply only to part of the Program, that part may be used separately
under those permissions, but the entire Program remains governed by
this License without regard to the additional permissions.

When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option
remove any additional permissions from that copy, or from any part of
it. (Additional permissions may be written to require their own

Please move GPL related converstations to cc-community list for now

Hi all,

I'm glad there's so much discussion about GPL compatibility in 4.0 going
on... I do think it's an important issue and deserves careful
discussion.  However, see Mike's recent email about what's appropriate
for CC-Licenses and CC-Community:

  http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/2012-January/006611.html
  http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/2012-January/006733.html

I think this kind of back and forth conversation that has been going on
qualifies as discussion that should be happening on CC Community, per
the above.  So please continue relevant conversations there.

Thanks!
 - Christopher Allan Webber
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Re: Use cases for cc by-sa compatibility with GPL

On Saturday 21 January 2012 22:31:33 Anthony wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:28 PM, drew Roberts <zotz@...> wrote:
> > gpl music -in-≥ movie => does movie have to be gpl? make the case if you
> > say yes.
>
> Music in a movie is clearly a use for which a license is needed, at
> least under US law (see "synchronization rights" if you're not
> familiar with this).
>
> The only place I could see the GPL possibly permitting this would be
> under the "aggregation" clause.  But that would require that the music
> and moving picture are "separate and independent works" - they'd have
> to be written completely separately from each other, without the
> author of either having the other in mind, and would have to be
> synchronized haphazardly (for a three minute song, pick a random 3
> minute segment of the moving picture to play it in).  Even then I
> think you're stretching it.

Does everyone agree that a gpl cong used in a movie would require the movie to 
be gpl?

So what about (also from that post):

gpl or by-sa photograph -in-≥ book => book does not have to be gpl or by-sa

all the best,

drew

_______________________________________________

awareness of the TPM/DRM clauses [was Re: DRM]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Tim Cas <darkuranium@...> wrote:
> I'd wager that the vast majority of CC-BY-* users do not
> know about this clause,

As a data point for future discussion of this issue, I've never met a
single user of *any* CC license who knows about this clause when I
bring it up. The only exception is people who work in licensing
full-time, and even many of them don't know about the clause. Granted,
this is more anecdote than data (a couple dozen data points across the
years, at most?) but it's consistent.

This lack of awareness shouldn't be surprising:

1) It's not in the human-readable deeds.
2) In the legal code, it's deeply buried rather than being a separate section.
3) It's not mentioned anywhere in the license chooser.
4) It is pretty hard to find anywhere on the website that mentions the
anti-DRM clause. (It gets one mention in the FAQ, plus a handful of
blog posts.)
5) It has never been enforced, as far as I can find.
6) Modern TPMs have become subtle and pervasive enough that many users
aren't even aware that TPMs are in effect (see, e.g., HDMI, Apple Fair
Play), so even those who are aware of the general problems around TPMs
may not be aware of when they are being influenced by TPMs.

All those factors probably explain Tim and I's anecdotes.

Without weighing in in this thread on the question of whether or not
this clause should be kept, I would propose that if it is kept, CC
should take steps to improve awareness of the clause; e.g., certainly

Suggested improvements for Attribution-Share Alike 4.0+ section 3.e.:

Suggested improvements for Attribution-Share Alike 4.0+ section 3.e.:

Was:

For the avoidance of doubt:

1.	Non-waivable Compulsory License Schemes. In those jurisdictions in which 
the right to collect royalties through any statutory or compulsory licensing 
scheme cannot be waived, the Licensor reserves the exclusive right to collect 
such royalties for any exercise by You of the rights granted under this 
License;

2.	Waivable Compulsory License Schemes. In those jurisdictions in which the 
right to collect royalties through any statutory or compulsory licensing 
scheme can be waived, the Licensor waives the exclusive right to collect such 
royalties for any exercise by You of the rights granted under this License; 
and,

3.	Voluntary License Schemes. The Licensor waives the right to collect 
royalties, whether individually or, in the event that the Licensor is a 
member of a collecting society that administers voluntary licensing schemes, 
via that society, from any exercise by You of the rights granted under this 
License.

Suggested improvements:

For the avoidance of doubt:

1.	Non-waivable Compulsory License Schemes. In those jurisdictions in which 
the right to collect royalties through any statutory or compulsory licensing 

Attempt to restate my ideas for a stronger copyleft for BY-SA 4.0+ in alternate language

Attempt to restate my ideas for a stronger copyleft for BY-SA 4.0+ in 
alternate language

I am doing this because once again, in a recent discussion or two, just as I 
felt we might be making progress towards clarifying what I am trying to get 
at, the discussion ended for no reason that I could discern.

See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

4. Restrictions. The license granted in Section 3 above is expressly made 
subject to and limited by the following restrictions:

a. ...
b. ...
c. ...
d. ...

Add e below:

e. You do not have any of the rights granted in 3 above if you have any legal 
means to restrict the Licensor's rights to deal with any resulting works in 
the manner in which you deal with them and do not license those rights freely 
to any and everyone. Or if anyone else has any legal means to restrict the 
Licensor's rights to deal with any resulting works in the manner in which 
they deal with them and do not license those rights freely to any and 
everyone.

Practically speaking, this means that any adaptations have to be BY-SA and and 
collections have to be Free works and all parts of collections have to be 
Free works as if they are not, you do not have a license to make the 

CC licenses and applicable law

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Distortion and mutilation: what is permitted should be clearer

Hello,
another clause that needs to be clarified or improved in CC-v4.0
licenses is the following one, found in CC-by-v3.0 (a nearly identical
one is found in CC-by-sa-v3.0 and in other CC-v3.0 licenses):

[...]
|  c. Except as otherwise agreed in writing by the Licensor or as may
|     be otherwise permitted by applicable law, if You Reproduce,
|     Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work either by itself or as
|     part of any Adaptations or Collections, You must not distort,
|     mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to
|     the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's
|     honor or reputation. Licensor agrees that in those jurisdictions
|     (e.g. Japan), in which any exercise of the right granted in
|     Section 3(b) of this License (the right to make Adaptations)
|     would be deemed to be a distortion, mutilation, modification or
|     other derogatory action prejudicial to the Original Author's
|     honor and reputation, the Licensor will waive or not assert, as
|     appropriate, this Section, to the fullest extent permitted by the
|     applicable national law, to enable You to reasonably exercise
|     Your right under Section 3(b) of this License (right to make
|     Adaptations) but not otherwise.
[...]

I cannot understand the effect of this section: it seems to enforce
moral rights through economic rights (because it restates moral rights
in a copyright license), which sounds awkward anyway.

But it seems to carefully avoid extending or strengthening moral rights
in jurisdictions where they are weak or almost absent, since it says
"Except [...] as may be otherwise permitted by applicable law [...] You
must not distort [...]".

Consequently: if it's a no-op, why has it been included in the license?
If it has some effect, I cannot see which (apart from a possible
chilling effect on people willing to create adaptations in order to
criticize the original work or author, which is not good at all...).

If its sole purpose is to prevent excessively strong moral rights (as
the Japanese ones, it seems) from forbidding any kind of modification
allowed by the license, then I think the clause should be rephrased in
order to more explicitly and clearly achieve its purpose, without
confusing the reader (and thus creating legal uncertainty about the
actual effect of the clause).

I hope this suggestion may help in improving CC-v4.0 licenses.

--

-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt
 New GnuPG key, see the transition document!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE

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Attribution: licenses should not require excessive credit

Hi all,
another clause that should be improved in CC-v4.0 licenses is the
following one, found in CC-by-v3.0, in CC-by-sa-v3.0 (and in other
CC-v3.0 licenses):

[...]
|     in
|     the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit
|     will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the
|     Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits
|     and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the
|     other contributing authors.
[...]

If "a credit for all contributing authors [...] appears", credit for
the licensor must be "at least as prominent as the credits for the
other contributing authors".
Even when the licensor's contribution is *not* comparable to others!
I think that this restriction is excessive and fails to meet the Debian
Free Software Guidelines.

See my previous comments[1] if you need to read a more detailed
analysis.

[1]
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/2006-November/004474.html

In summary, suppose a novel is written by three co-authors who
respectively write, say, 21 chapters, 25 chapters, and N chapters,
where N is enough to grant the third co-author the author status, but
still non-negligibly smaller than 21 (maybe N is 1, or 2, or something
like that...). In this scenario, if a credit for all contributing
authors appears, the third co-author must be credited as prominently as
the other two, which does *not* seem to be reasonable.

I think that requiring *excessive* credit is a non-free restriction and
that crediting in proportion to the contribution (rather than
necessarily in a manner equal to every other credit) should be possible.

I think that this clause should be amended so that it says "at least as
prominent as the credits for the authors of other *comparable*
contributions".

I hope this recommendation may be followed, while drafting CC-v4.0
licenses.

--

-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt
 New GnuPG key, see the transition document!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE

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Attribution: accurate credit should not be forbidden

Hi all,
a clause that should be improved in CC-v4.0 licenses is the following
one, found in CC-by-v3.0:

[...]
|     If You create a Collection, upon notice
|     from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove
|     from the Collection any credit as required by Section 4(b), as
|     requested. If You create an Adaptation, upon notice from any
|     Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the
|     Adaptation any credit as required by Section 4(b), as requested.
[...]

A nearly identical clause is found in CC-by-sa-v3.0 (and in other
CC-v3.0 licenses).

I'm not convinced that this clause meets the Debian Free Software
Guidelines. See my previous comments[1] if you need to read a more
detailed analysis.

[1]
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/2006-November/004474.html

In summary, I don't think that a license can (allow a licensor to)
forbid an accurate credit and meet the DFSG at the same time. I think
that stating "This Adaptation is based on the Work _foo_ by James O.
Hacker" is an accurate credit, as long as it's true. Allowing James O.
Hacker to force me to purge such a credit seems to significantly
restrict my ability of modifying the work (see DFSG#3).
Why? Because it forbids me to state a true fact in a modified version
of the work, namely that the modified version is based on the original
work by the original author.

Many licenses require that *accurate* credits be kept. This seems to
be fine and acceptable (that is to say it's DFSG-free). On the other
hand, if a license required *inaccurate* credit, I think it would be
considered non-free. If this is the case, how can forbidding
*accurate* credit be considered acceptable?

Please note that I'm *not* advocating misattribution: stating the true
origin of a work (and explicitly clarifying that the original author
wrote the original work, while someone else based the adaptation on it)
is *not* misattribution.

Moreover, I'm *not* advocating the permission to hurt the reputation of
the original author: I believe that no reputation is being hurt, as
long as it's clear that the original author just created the original
work, and that the modified version was created by someone else by
modifying the original work.

I think that this clause should be dropped entirely from CC-v4.0
licenses, or, at least, amended so that it says "remove from the
Collection any *inaccurate* credit".

I hope this suggestion may be implemented.

--

-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt
 New GnuPG key, see the transition document!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE

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4.0 NonCommercial

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