Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com wrote: Then surely you can, as a board member of the Creative Commons, get an official statement on this matter. I am fairly sure I was told otherwise by Lessig some time ago: that the CC-3.0 licenses are designed to increase the ability for authors to enforce their moral rights by making the free license grant contingent on moral rights being honored. Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but I've seen CC criticized by those who believe that free licenses are bad because they allow a creator's work to be used in a manner which is against the creator's wishes. I believed that the words "nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights" were added to '"human readable text" for all of them (including the US form, which lacks the objectionable clause in the license proper) along with the new clause (for non-US) with the explicit intent of ending that criticism. There is a fundamental conflict between the notion of protecting all "moral rights" and distributing under a free content licenses. While the moral right of attribution has no serious interaction with Free Content, all other forms of moral rights do... and in the locations where moral rights are functional they are part of copyright law, and addressed in copyright related contracts. It shouldn't be a shock to find Creative Commons in the center of a dispute between "freedom from the perspective of the public" and "freedom from the perspective of a content creator", since their alignment on that front has brought them under fire many times over again. When we say "free license" we are specifically talking about a work which has been so freed by an author that he can't stop your use even if he finds it distasteful. To accept any less would be leaving a great liability in the hands of reusers: they can only use the "free" work until the author demands otherwise, and then they must either stop or spend a lot of time and money in court. Frankly, that sounds a lot like the situation around the use of most unlicensed works today (free to use until you're told NO) ... and it doesn't sound like free content at all. At a minimum, I think Creative Commons needs to make an official statement clarifying its intentions. However, this isn't sufficient. The intent of the license author is going to have minimal sway in court; what will be material is the *exact text*, the understanding of the licensee, and the understanding of the licensor. A really good free content license would clearly state that it is the intention of the licensor to release the work under conditions which allow recipients to reuse it without fear of a legal attack from the licensor just because he has found the reuse personally or politically distasteful. In other words, to the greatest extent possible the license should express a general intention to release "moral rights"-related restrictions which conflict with the explicit goals of free content. I don't think that we need to demand that our accepted licenses all be ideal ones. A license which failed to mention this sort of intent explicitly would be neutral from this perspective. But cc-by-sa-3.0's language is worse than neutral. It explicitly brings up these "moral rights" restrictions. The full purpose of bringing them up is unclear, but it is clearly not intended to release anyone from anything. At best this term has no effect, but at worst it compromises the free status of the license. Our ability to be confident in the freedom of a work is actually more important than the freedom itself. People who can't be found, who have nothing to lose, who employ many attorneys, or for whom a copyright battle would be good PR are already fully ignoring copyright law today. They don't need free licenses, much less good ones. But the rest of the world does. We are one of the largest repositories of liberally-licensed content in the world. We are almost certainly the largest repository of content which is Free Content in the strong sense (enabling derivatives, no discrimination against natures of use), and we are a budding content creation powerhouse. As such, we have a *social responsibility* to make sure that our mission is effective, that freedom is provided, and that the licenses are done right. The -3.0 licenses clearly have problems. Even if I am incorrect about the extent to which a court would conclude that they impose moral rights, they do inarguably have a significant confidence-damaging problem with their clarity. Jimmy, I have a lot of trust in your judgment, but I think I need to specifically ask you to sit back and consider this subject carefully under each of the several hats you wear. You are visionary about the importance of content which isn't merely no-cost but which provides freedom. You are a board member for the Wikimedia Foundation, responsible for its long term well-being. You are an internet entrepreneur whose companies profit from content creation communities. You are a board member for Creative Commons with the expected responsibilities. And you are the father to a child who will inherit the social and informational legacy we are all creating. It's my view that the only benefit from anything less than a slow and careful handling of these license matters is a minor increase the short-term popularity of the Creative Commons brand. I don't think that haste on the subject of licensing is beneficial in any of the hats you wear. Cheers. Greg.