Creative Commons License Revisions Face Opposition

[mandy]

A basic concern in the revisions of the CCL has been to improve the existing language. Clarity and simplicity have always been major concerns of Creative Commons, and are likely a major reason for the success of the license. In the changes to the license available online, those interested can see where ambiguities and unnecessary language have been removed and clarifications added.

Another concern has been to address the growing popularity of the CCL outside the United States. To address this issue, the former generic license is now specifically the American license. In its place, a new generic license has been written. Garlick explains that this new generic version "is based on the language of international Intellectual Property treaties and takes effect according to the national implementation of those treaties." This new generic license includes a recognition of moral rights for jurisdictions in which the concept exists, and tries to balance them against the right to produce derivative works. Because it is not specific to the United States, the new generic license should make adaptations of the CCL in other countries easier...

For now, whether everyone can reach a consensus is impossible to predict. Considering the similarities in the troubles faced by the GPL and the CCL, observers might wonder if the free copyright communities have grown too large and too diverse to agree on anything so detailed as a license unless it is one with which they are long familiar. The choice seems to be to delay the release of the licenses, gambling that consensus will emerge from continued discussion, or to ignore the concerns of some stakeholders and proceed despite enormous blows to each license's prestige and credibility.

full article: http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?s...25/1915236&from=rss

[mandy]

Update: the new Creative Commons v3.0 license is here.

The latest version of the Creative Commons licenses — Version 3.0 — are now available. To briefly recap what is different in this version of the licenses:

Separating the “generic” from the US license

As part of Version 3.0, we have spun off the “generic” license to be the CC US license and created a new generic license, now known as the “unported” license. For more information about this change, see this more detailed explanation.

Harmonizing the treatment of moral rights & collecting society royalties

In Version 3.0, we are ensuring that all CC jurisdiction licenses and the CC unported license have consistent, express treatment of the issues of moral rights and collecting society royalties (subject to national differences). For more information about these changes, see this explanation of the moral rights harmonization and this explanation of the collecting society harmonization.

No Endorsement Language

That a person may not misuse the attribution requirement of a CC license to improperly assert or imply an association or relationship with the licensor or author, has been implicit in our licenses from the start. We have now decided to make this explicit in both the Legal Code and the Commons Deed to ensure that — as our licenses continue to grow and attract a large number of more prominent artists and companies — there will be no confusion for either the licensor or licensee about this issue. For a more detailed explanation, see here.

BY-SA — Compatibility Structure Now Included

The CC BY-SA 3.0 licenses will now include the ability for derivatives to be relicensed under a “Creative Commons Compatible License,” which will be listed here. This structure realizes CC’s long-held objective of ensuring that there are no legal barriers to people being able to remix creativity in the way that flexible licenses are intended to enable. More information about this is provided here.

Clarifications Negotiated With Debian & MIT

Finally, Version 3.0 of the licenses include minor clarifications to the language of the licenses to take account of the concerns of Debian (more details here) and MIT (more details here).

As part of discussions with Debian, it was proposed to allow the release of CC-licensed works under DRM by licensees on certain conditions — what was known as the “parallel distribution language” but this has not been included as part of Version 3.0 of the CC licenses.

full announcement: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7249