On 20 Jul 2005, at 08:16, Ryan S. Dancey wrote:
My other complaint is that none of the CC license varients allow an
easy mixture of open and closed content within a readable scope of
work. They all depend on chapters, segments or appendices to
segregate open and non-open content. Obviously, that would not
have worked for gaming.
I also think the CC project has the same failings as many "open"
licensing projects, (and again an echo of Dvorak) - way too much
effort spent differentiating between "commercial" and
"noncommercial" use. On this issue, I'm with Stallman. If
"Freedom"(*) is your objective, then make your stuff Free. Don't
screw around with half measures.
I so agree.
I looked at using one of the CC licenses for publishing a download
album, and came to the conclusion that they're overly complex in
their structure and for practical purposes not worth the pixels
they're rendered on. I think the underlying desire to make
potentially copyrighted material available to others for reuse in
derivative or related works is a good one, but the focus on whether
that use is commercial or not is ridiculous. Sure if someone takes
your work verbatim and makes a fortune reselling it you have a
justifiable right to be angry and sue, which under current copyright
laws in Europe and the US you could do quite successfully. But that's
the point, current copyright laws already protect your works from
unauthorised commercial exploitation.
I personally believe the OGL to be a far fairer licensing model
because it allows an author to protect the aspect of their work that
genuinely is valuable, the product identity. Whenever any of us
create something what makes it special and interesting is that small
percentage that is genuinely personal to us, the element of
invention. This is an area that the CC licenses poorly capture, but
that OGL is very well tailored for.
It took me ages to get comfy with the OGL, because part of my mind
kept looking for the hidden sting. At first glance it looks like a
slick marketing idea, and in a way it is because the more OGL-based
systems on the shelves, the more useful cross-over material there is
to feed the voracious appetite of gamers and that must feed back into
sales of D20 products as well. But it also happens to be an
incredibly clear mechanism for differentiating between product
identity and the superstructure on which that identity depends if its
to be useful. Given the attraction of gaming for rules lawyers,
perhaps its no wonder that the OGL is so good at what it does: who
among us hasn't had their fair share of arguments over the minutiae
of rule interpretation?
The success of the OGL proves that there is space for licenses of
similar intent to the CC licenses, in that many of us who produce
creative works are happy to have people use elements of them -
whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes - without the fear
of litigation. In fact there are many aspects of any published work
that in and of themselves are so derivative of our respective
cultures that they shouldn't even be copyrighted at all, and whilst
framing fair laws to represent this fact may be impossible the
existence of appropriate licenses that can be used by those who
recognise this element of their own works must surely be beneficial
to society as a whole. For anyone who hasn't read Richard Stallman's
definitive essay on the philosophy behind the free software movement
(which is in many ways analogous to OGL) take a look at:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html
For many years I was opposed to the GNU licenses on the grounds that
works can be put in the public domain, but mulling on the points that
Stallman makes I've come to be a slightly-reluctant supporter of the
system. In an ideal world we could expect people to play nicely where
these issues are concerned, but it's not a nice world and there are
people out there for whom money alone is the point of all creative
activity.
Eleanor
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