Creative Commons 2.0 license suite

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi Evan,

On Jul 22, 2004, at 4:54 PM, Evan Prodromou wrote:
>
> 	http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary
>
> The two licenses that seem to be aimed at DFSG-freedom (Attribution 
> and Attribution-ShareAlike) have some minor vagueness that are making 
> it difficult for Debian to use them.
>
> Anyways, I thought people on this list might be interested. Comments 
> or criticisms welcome.

Very interested, thanks.   I particularly found your summary of 
recommendations (below) of the most interest, as I felt they captured 
in minimal form the issues hindering "DFSG-freedom." As you note, these 
seem to more be excessive vagueness than explicit impropriety.

I'm curious as to whether:

a) you've communicated these concerns/suggestions to Larry et al, and 
if so how they've responded

b) people think these factors would also create OSD non-conformance

-- Ernie P.


Recommendations for Creative Commons
====================================

debian-legal contributors believe that problems with the Creative 
Commons
licenses that include the NoDerivs or NonCommercial license elements 
cannot
be fixed without changing the apparent purpose of the licenses.

The Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike licenses, however, seem to be
intended to make works Free in a way compatible with the DFSG. For this
reason, we make the following suggestions for future versions of the
Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike licenses that, barring other 
changes,
should make the licenses compatible with the DFSG.

1. *Limit scope of requests to remove references*. The intention of the
    clause for removing references to a licensor seems to be that
    _authorship_credits_ should be removed. This should be specified, 
rather
    than "any reference".

2. *Waive attribution after request to remove references*. It should be 
made
    explicit that if the Licensor requires that references to them be 
removed,
    this excuses the licensee from the requirements for attribution.

3. *Allow access-controlled private distribution*. The anti-DRM clause
    should be changed to make it clear that the licensee can't prevent 
others
    receiving the work from exercising the same rights that the licensee 
has.

4. *Allow distribution of rights-restricted copies of works if 
unrestricted
    copies are also made available.*

5. *Require "credit for comparable authorship".* This makes it clear 
that
    the Licensor should be credited in proportion to their contribution,
    rather than equally to all other authors.

6. *Specify "other credit".* Licensors should receive _some_ credit, but
    adding their name wherever _any_ credit is made is excessive and
    inaccurate.

Note that new versions will be evaluated on their own, and problems
introduced in the new version or that weren't covered in this summary 
may
still make the licenses incompatible with the DFSG. In other words, 
these
suggestions come with no guarantees.