[Foundation-l] What's wrong with CC-BY-SA?

[Milos Rancic]

And to be more honest: CC doesn't have anything with freedom, but with
lawyers' promotion and cooperation. Sorry, but, no. It shouldn't
contaminate our projects.

On 12/2/07, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gregory, thanks for explaining what do others think.
>
> I DON'T BELIEVE to Creative Commons (to Lessig, and if Jimmy continue
> to argue for CC licenses, I'll stop to trust to him, too) and I don't
> want to "share" may work under the terms which may help only to a big
> companies and which would prevent other people to use it.
>
> The only usable CC license is CC-BY. At least, it doesn't prohibit anything.
>
> So, if WMF wants to switch from GFDL/SGFDL to CC-BY-SA, I would start
> to think how to move GFDL work into another project as well as I will
> try to forget for WMF projects.
>
> On 12/1/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Dec 1, 2007 3:03 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > What problem do you have with CC-BY-SA?
> >
> > My reasons for deciding not to use the CC-By-Sa licenses are fairly
> > long and complicated.  I don't have the time right now to really dive
> > into it as I'm rather busy.  For the purpose of the Foundation's
> > announcement it was enough to say that I have explicitly rejected
> > those terms.
> >
> > Your question is interesting and deserves a response. So I will
> > provide some quick examples now, but by no means is this my complete
> > position on the reasons I have decided to not use those licenses for
> > my work.
> >
> > 1)  Laurence Lessig has posted multiple times claiming that it is
> > acceptable to take illustrations licensed under CC-By-SA and produce
> > combined works which are not freely licensed. For example, if I wrote
> > a since instruction book and created illustrations on how to safely
> > use a bunsen burner a commercial textbook publisher could use my
> > illustrations in their textbook without giving anything back the the
> > world of free content.
> >
> > I use a copyleft license for my content because copyleft licenses
> > create an incentive to release works under a free license. I see this
> > both as the 'payment' for my works and a way of ensuring that my
> > contribution stays free and isn't captured for the sole profit of
> > another party. With my works copylefted someone creating a new work
> > could choose to purchase commercial stock photography, or they could
> > choose to freely license their work and build off mine.
> >
> > When someone is really unwilling or unable to freely license their
> > derivative I am willing to license my rates under typical commercial
> > stock photography rates. This provides me with, well, lets just say
> > that I make enough doing this that I report it to the IRS.
> >
> > Some people are happy with using very liberal licenses (e.g. releasing
> > their work as 'public domain') for all their work and I support their
> > decision, but I've seen first hand how the small friction of copyleft
> > increases the pool of content that is freely available for all, and I
> > wouldn't want to lose that for my illustrations. (For my own works of
> > trivial merit, I 'PD' them because I don't expect any copyleft gains)
> >
> > Mr. Lessig's position on "share alike" and illustrations isn't well
> > supported by the text of the license, but his position naturally
> > carries a lot of weight.
> >
> > 2) The Creative Commons licenses come with misleading front cover
> > text. If I released my work under these licenses I would be at
> > constant risk of suffering disputes resulting from reusers
> > misunderstanding their rights and obligations.   We've experienced the
> > reverse of that  numerous times at Wikimedia when people using CC-By-*
> > expect to be able to exactly stipulate how attribution is provided.
> >
> > 3) Speaking of 'attribution', the Creative Commons cc-by and by-sa
> > licenses at version 2.5 and beyond contain a serious issue with their
> > attribution.  The attribution clauses in these licenses reads, in
> > part,
> >
> > "If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly
> > digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective
> > Works, You must (...) provide, reasonable to the medium or means You
> > are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (...), and/or (ii)
> > if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or
> > parties" (...) (through) terms of service or by other reasonable
> > means"
> >
> > So these by-attribution licenses don't actually provide attribution if
> > a service provider specifies  so in their terms of service.  Jamesday
> > (en User:Jamesday), a Wikimedian old-schooler, wrote a lot about this
> > back when these terms came out.
> >
> > Obviously the issue of attribution for collective works in a space
> > limited medium is important, but it can be addressed without giving
> > service providers the ability to take attribution for  all freely
> > licensed content distributed through their systems.
> >
> > The exact implications of that text aren't entirely clear: If the
> > clause only takes effect at the first point of submission it breaks
> > the right to fork, and fails to resolve the collective attribution
> > problem (i.e. you end up with "This article contains material by
> > Wikia(tm), WikiHow(tm), Wikipedia(tm), GregPedia, Planet Math ...").
> > Or, alternatively, if any down stream service provider can invoke it
> > .. it allows anyone who could claim to be a service provider to remove
> > attribution at any time... which many consider to be morally
> > offensive, and which present practical problems for people trying to
> > keep works free.
> >
> > Years ago when these terms were first released I was seriously
> > concerned with the implications of giving an author's service provider
> > a special rights in free content licenses. In these days of real
> > concern over net-neutrality my worries on these matter are even
> > greater.
> >
> > And from here, we could go into the issues with the Creative Commons
> > branding,  which many people feel is exploitative, and which Creates
> > Confusion with respect to the licenses. ... which is a matter of great
> > concern to anyone who thinks Free Content should be more than
> > CC-NC-ND.... but I've run out of time.
> >
> > Thanks for enduring my verbosity,
> > Greg.
> >
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> > > Personally, I like the basic
> > > concept (do what you want as long as you attribute others, derivatives
> > > must be under the same license), but I'm not familiar with the
> > > nitty-gritty details.  There were some complaints in particular with
> > > the newer versions of CC-BY-SA, which I don't recall, but which
> > > possibly could be addressed before the compatibility is put into
> > > place.
> > >
> > > But, in order to have any chance of this, we need to get a list of
> > > complaints.  What problems do people have with CC-BY-SA?  I'm asking
> > > this of everyone on the list.
> > >
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