On 9/24/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
Well, and in the end the fact that people are even trying to use semi-permissive to fully-free licenses in the first place is a major step in the right direction.
I don't... not when the semi-permissive nature of the license is only semi permissive in a way which fails to leave almost any of the permitted actions legally clear. Even the creative commons beloved file trading would easily run afoul of the NC terms...
Don't get me wrong, I think that more liberal terms are better... But the less free CC licenses are not more liberal in a material way... If you are safe under them, then you would usually be safe doing what you are doing with all rights reserved material. .. and of course there are gems like SAMPLING+ which pointlessly reject use which even permitted under fair use in the US.
Stephen Streater above made my point more clearly than I did.. Many people don't care, and the CC branding confusion is causing people who don't care to pick licenses which are unfree. They might be more liberal terms than all rights reserved (although I'd argue that they are effectively not...), but they are simply not free.
It's a real pain, but as the producers of one of the largest and well known repositories of Free Content in the world, we should make it a point of keeping people educated on this matter.
[snip]
That being said, I wish that the ND license in particular carried big warnings about it not actually being free, because I've seen lots of people who clearly mean well use ND licenses because they clearly don't understand what "derivative" means in this context.
Biggest issue I've run into with ND is people who think that ND gives them special protection from fraud. "I don't want someone changing my words and then being able to claim I said the modified statement". ... of course, that isn't the job of a copyright license.... (and ND itself doesn't stop a person with malicious intent).. but people don't know better.