Comments by Mike Linksvayer

Mike Linksvayer — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:12:19 PST

Yes, apparently the way to "increase the value" is to no longer allow Creative Commons content to "circulate freely" because it might compete with other business models

That reading isn't obvious to me, but I'm only reading the translation.

Could just as easily mean that cracking down on not-explicitly-permitted noncommercial sharing increases the value of explicit permission, eg public licenses. I don't want to see public licenses value increased in such a manner, but it is a more charitable reading than the implication of preventing circulation of public licensed material.

If the uncharitable reading is correct, and they see a real threat from public licensed works, GREAT! Now to push forward and realize that threat.

compete?

Mike Linksvayer — Mon, 4 Jun 2012 12:53:14 PDT

you must compete with free

Only if your business is selling copies, ie you=publisher (which is indeed what the linked column assumes). But if you=artist or anything else, competing with free isn't a must (though you can) and competing with free is the wrong way to see free. Often you want to, um, leverage free to connect with fans, and give them reasons to buy stuff that complements free. :-)

I guess the last paragraph of this post can be read to say that, but "deal with" still sounds pretty negative -- "leverage" would be the (maybe equally inaccurate) positive spin.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DRM restrictions in CC license?

Mike Linksvayer — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:33:24 PDT

Regarding easily broken, CSS is arguably not an "effective" technical measure, eg https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/05/effective-technological-measures-it-means-what-it-says-says-finnish-court

But the general issue remains, eg with Blu-Ray.

Re: Re: Re: DRM restrictions in CC license?

Mike Linksvayer — Thu, 31 May 2012 10:38:25 PDT

There's two issues: the copyrighted work restricted by DRM, and the DRM system itself. Often the entity that can give permissions around the first doesn't control the second. But I think it is socially responsible to give whatever permissions one can to circumvent DRM given the horrible policy environment. If you look closely at GPLv3 it addresses both cases as best it can (2nd if someone is silly enough to use GPLv3 code in a DRM implementation). See section 3 of https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html ... hopefully CC 4.0 licenses will do something along these lines as well.

Re: Re: Re: Re: DRM restrictions in CC license?

Mike Linksvayer — Thu, 31 May 2012 10:30:28 PDT

You or another AC quoted relevant text above. Regarding whether language implicitly allows parallel distribution, maybe. A lawyer that worked for CC in 2006 gave the following non-opinion on that:

This argument can certainly be
made. CC does not feel that it, as
license steward, should opine on the
likelihood with which a court in any
jurisdiction would uphold this
argument if the issue were litigated.

from first answer in http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/attachments/20060908/da9db6a3/attachment.pdf

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: CC0 ?

Mike Linksvayer — Thu, 31 May 2012 10:25:44 PDT

If those things are not "inherent in copyright," then the copyright holder has no legal basis to impose it as a condition.

Exactly why "impose" is the wrong way to think about it. Permissions can be conditioned on things that aren't inherent in copyright. That's exactly what conditions on no DRM, or requiring source revelation (GPL) do.

If someone thinks they can outright plagiarize a CC0 work, then it's up to people like us to set them straight.

No attribution does not always equal plagiarism, depends on context. Just to set the record straight. :)

Re: Re: Re: Re: CC0 ?

Mike Linksvayer — Thu, 31 May 2012 00:01:27 PDT

Actually I think imposing (more accurately, conditioning permissions upon) restrictions are quite the same thing as granting permissions (successfully or not). Conditions can be things not inherent in copyright. DRM conditions discussed in other comments being an example. A bit more on this at http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2012/01/31/copyleft-regulates/

Also, I look forward to the day when someone uses a work under CC0 without attribution and gets sued by the CC0 licensor/affirmer in Europe. Really, it'll be a curiosity.

(And I realize you're not trying to rag on CC, but don't mind if anyone does, and does so well.)

ps

Mike Linksvayer — Wed, 30 May 2012 23:41:38 PDT

It was launched by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, who indeed was dismissive, even contemptuous, of the potential of fair use to address copyright imbalance.

I'm sorry to hear that.

I've interacted with lots of the people involved in CC and the range of opinions on fair use (and other exceptions & limitations; it is a global project) from respect to fangirlism. Personally, I'm for fair use maximalism. :)

Even people who depend upon CC licenses, such as the makers of open educational resources

CC and other public licenses do loosen policy

Mike Linksvayer — Wed, 30 May 2012 23:15:29 PDT

This makes CC a copyright-light zone rather than copyright-free zone,

It's worth mentioning that CC0 gets as close as legally possible to a copyright-free zone.

and of course it does nothing (and doesn

Re: Re: DRM restrictions in CC license?

Mike Linksvayer — Wed, 30 May 2012 22:56:12 PDT

CC licenses thus far don't permit DRM so long as non-DRM version is included. This is known as a "parallel distribution" option and has been rejected, but there's some small chance could be tweaked in version 4.0 of the licenses which are being developed now, see http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0/Technical_protection_measures

In any case, CC licenses are non-exclusive, so the DVD publisher could get different terms from the copyright holder/licensor.

Re: Re: CC0 ?

Mike Linksvayer — Wed, 30 May 2012 22:51:20 PDT

CC0 does the best it can to waive attribution. It certainly doesn't *impose* attribution. At worst, it doesn't successfully get rid of it. I recommend reading https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

it gets even better...

Mike Linksvayer — Wed, 9 May 2012 11:38:02 PDT

Via the Wikipeida article on SEED, someone wrote about the resulting monoculture 5 years ago http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s

Why was SEED developed in the first place?

South Korean legislation did not allow 40 bit encryption for online transactions (and Bill Clinton did not allow for the export of 128 bit encryption until December 1999) and the demand for 128 bit encryption was so great that the South Korean government funded (via the Korean Information Security Agency) a block cipher called SEED.

Those export controls keep biting.

Mike Linksvayer — Thu, 8 Mar 2012 13:12:41 PST

Why can't people dedicate their entries to the public domain with a Public Domain Mark or a CC0 license, or retain their rights but make the submission freely available?

CC-BY-SA is nonexclusive, so anyone who wants to can also offer other terms. If I were to make a submission, it would additionally be dedicated to the public domain (using CC0; the Public Domain Mark is not relevant, as it is not a license or dedication and is only for marking works already in the public domain). These are just nits that don't fully address your complaint of bias, but then I saw no intention of eliminating bias, of which there are many sources, from the sponsors to the announced judges to the name of the contest.

Mike Linksvayer — Fri, 9 Sep 2011 19:56:10 PDT

How about a business that relies on selling protection from being sued by said business (ie sells copyright or patent licenses)?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Even if "Take it for free!" was written in bold, red letters...

Mike Linksvayer — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:02:32 PDT

In theory. In practice public copyright licenses are accepted constantly, Wikipedia and all open source software being the best known examples. Doubtless there are some parties that require further assurance, but most don't.

Re: Re: Re: Even if "Take it for free!" was written in bold, red letters...

Mike Linksvayer — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 07:51:14 PDT

Creative Commons licenses are perfectly valid copyright licenses.
No, they're not. Creative Commons is a non-profit and has no ties to federal jurisdiction to circumvent copyright law.

CC licenses don't "circumvent" copyright. They are copyright licenses, grants of permission from the copyright holder to the public. Public copyright licenses have been upheld many times around the world. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Law has some relevant links.

https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17422 addresses some previous Techdirt posts on CC.

Re: Re:

Mike Linksvayer — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 14:52:26 PST

No CC license has ever been designed to be more restrictive than default copyright; they only grant permissions. If fair use or other exceptions and limitations apply, one can ignore any CC license offered. If this is not the case for any CC license, it is a severe bug. See

Re: Re: Re: Re: You won't stop until the artists include the first born

Mike Linksvayer — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 12:17:51 PDT

BY-NC-ND permits format shifting. The license says:

"The above rights may be exercised in all media and formats whether now known or hereafter devised. The above rights include the right to make such modifications as are technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and formats, but otherwise you have no rights to make Adaptations."

Still, it is unfortunate that the book is under a restrictive license, though nowhere near as unfortunate/restrictive as default copyright, under which a number of other recent books about copying fall (as noted by Felix Ple

evidence awaits discovery

Mike Linksvayer — Sun, 9 May 2010 21:22:49 PDT

Part of the problem we have with copyright laws today is that there is so little evidence on the actual impact of stronger or weaker copyright laws. It's an area that needs more widespread experimentation with very different models (or no copyright at all) to see what really happens so that there is real evidence.

Amen, but I wonder if the seeming lack of evidence isn't as much due to lack of looking by researchers as it is lack of policy diversity in the world.

Obvious places to look for the impact of different policies include different copyright lengths, exceptions, DMCA-like laws, levels of enforcement of all of these, and especially dates of implementation for each.

There's been lots more policy variation over the ~300 year history of copyright, the impacts of which could be studied.

Public licenses have also introduced variation in levels of copyright restriction that ought be ripe for finding evidence.

Just be sure to evaluate costs as well as benefits -- concentrated and diffuse.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A:

Mike Linksvayer — Sun, 9 Mar 2008 19:55:43 PDT

The copyright holder is a third party to the conversation between someone publishing infringing material and the person downloading the material. The copyright holder wants the state to prevent this conversation, just as a censorious churchlady wants to prevent the conversation between a porn distributor and porn reader. You may think the copyright holder is a just censor.