[okfn-discuss] More on the non-commercial issue: discussions with playshakespeare.com

Fri Nov 24 06:23:15 UTC 2006

<quote who="Rufus Pollock" date="Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 01:36:27PM +0000">
> The main point to come out was they want to restrict non-commerical
> use (there is some confusion here as they plan to use both CC by-sa-nc
> and the much more open/free Free Art license but from discussion it is
> clear that their intent is to restrict commercial use).
> 
> This seems rather unfortunate for several reasons (e.g. it will
> prevent openshakespeare being able to use the text they produce). But
> of more importance it illustrates the way in which the non-commercial
> option gets (mis)used and why it is (mistakenly IMO) seen as
> attractive.

I have on many occasions had conversations with artists who were using,
and swearing by, non-commercial use clauses. In several cases, the
licensors were under the impression that that the NC clause was serving
the purpose of copyleft (e.g., "isn't that like the GPL?"). When they
realized exactly what the copyleft/ShareAlike provisions did, they were
happy to drop the NC clause in favor of SA. In a few cases, they were
actually quite suprised when the realized the scope of activities
blocked by an NC license.

It's frusterating to have to have this conversation over and over with
creators -- especially since it's not sure when someone really does feel
strongly about an NC license and when they just have not thought it
through yet. At the moment though, it seems that it's the best thing we
can do.

Regards,
Mako

-- 
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako at atdot.cc
http://mako.cc/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so
far as society is free to use the results. --RMS