[okfn-discuss] Re: okfn-discuss Digest, Vol 14, Issue 10
Ron Severdia
william at playshakespeare.com
Fri Nov 24 17:26:55 UTC 2006
Thanks for the response Mako. I wish Rufus had included my responses
to his points because they present our POV more clearly than in just
one summarizing sentence.
Firstly, I'm not one of the people confused by the CC NC license. I'm
also very familiar with the GNU GPL and the French Free Art License.
It was a careful and intentional choice to choose the Creative
Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license. We chose the
French Art License (even though it's different that the NC license)
for geographic reasons. We're in the US and the FAL doesn't carry
much weight here, but it's a good, fairly pervasive license in Europe
where we're not as concerned about any commercial aspect. The CC
licenses are here and more easily enforceable.
Secondly, the idea behind PlayShakespeare.com has been to provide a
free version of the works of Shakespeare that is a much better
quality than the alternatives currently available. This free version
would always remain accessible for studying or performance use. If
someone is selling a copy of our text, it goes against the idea of
free (here's where the GPL-ers usually scream...). The average person
can go online today and get the entire works of Shakespeare for free.
So why would he go to the bookstore and purchase a copy for any
price? People do every day, especially since his plays are more
popular now than ever before. Why would someone pay $100 for a
Complete Works when it's free? Because price is not the only factor
which drives a free market; one aspect of which is freedom of choice.
Publishers make a worthy profit otherwise they wouldn't bother
printing the books in the first place. I shudder at the thought of
some publisher making even one dollar off of a project that was
founded with the sole purpose of being free (meaning both freely
accessible as well as cost-free). I've seen CDs full of GPL software
for sale in stores and it's sad to see people buy them mainly because
they aren't aware of being able to download everything for free.
That's taking advantage of someone who doesn't know any better.
One way around that fact, which made me consider the GNU FDL, is the
ability to customize the title page if someone decide to publish a
printed version of your works. I'd publish something along the lines
of "Texts freely available from PlayShakespeare.com" (the 5-word
limit!) which would hopefully inform the user that such an option
exists. That way they could make an informed purchasing decision and
may discourage this form of distribution altogether. Unfortunately,
this creator's "right to define the title page" is lost if it's a
derivative work.
We really want "free" to mean "free" in every sense for the consumer/
user and corporate profit takes a back seat to that. The GPL and CC
Commercial licenses allow corporations the opportunity to make a
profit off of free labor and somebody else's ideas. There are
different types of "free" and the freedom to make a profit is
understandable, but not in good conscience. If all the books were
free, imagine how the literacy rate would increase!
This is a fairly new project (we don't even have all the plays up yet
until 1Q 2007) and I'm always open to additional discussion about
licensing. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts and ideas of other
people on this list.
Thanks!
Ron Severdia
PlayShakespeare.com
On Nov 24, 2006, at 4:00 AM, okfn-discuss-request at lists.okfn.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. More on the non-commercial issue: discussions with
> playshakespeare.com (Rufus Pollock)
> 2. Re: More on the non-commercial issue: discussions with
> playshakespeare.com (Benj. Mako Hill)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 13:36:27 +0000
> From: Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
> Subject: [okfn-discuss] More on the non-commercial issue: discussions
> with playshakespeare.com
> To: okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> Message-ID: <4565A3DB.6080303 at okfn.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Over the last week or so I've had quite a bit of discussion with Ron
> Severdia of playshakespeare.com who contacted me after seeing the
> article on newsforge about open shakespeare (I cc'd my initial
> response
> to Ron to the list).
>
> playshakespeare.com aim is to produce a very high quality 'free'
> edition
> of shakespeare that is suitable for performance and among various
> other
> things we discussed the question of the licensing came up. In
> particular
> what specific license did they plan to use for their final work. 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.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rufus
>
> [Excerpted from the most recent email. The original writer is Ron and
> the most recent comments are from me]
>>>>>> ideas from each an include many of our own to come up with
>>>>>> editions that we feel are the best quality. And it's all done
>>>>>> with the idea of creating a new, free collection of
>>>>>> Shakespeare's
>>>>>> works.
>>>>>
>>>>> That sounds great. What license are you going to make the
>>>>> material
>>>>> available under?
>>>>
>>>> *The Free Art License and the Creative Commons Attribution No-
>>>> Commercial Share-Alike License.*
>>>> *
>>>> *http://www.playshakespeare.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=172*
>>>
>>> Why use CC non-commercial share-alike rather than just CC-
>>> attribution? If i understand correctly you are planning to dual-
>>> license and the Free Art License is, in essence, equivalent to CC-
>>> attribution. In that case as a licensor one would always use the
>>> Free
>>> Art license and not the CC one.
>>
>> The Free Art License is a French initiative, which carries very
>> little
>> weight in the U.S. (where I am). Creative Commons is far more
>> pervasive.
>
> Sure.
>
>> The two differences between the license I set up and the license you
>> suggest are:
>>
>> 1. Nobody is allowed take the text and sell it in any format.
>> 2. If someone else takes the texts and alters it (or improves it in
>> their eyes), they can't sell it. They have to give credit that
>> the text
>> they started with is from our site.
>
> Have I misunderstood the Free Art License then? For it states (quoting
> from your link above):
>
> 2.1 FREEDOM TO COPY (OR OF REPRODUCTION)
>
> You have the right to copy this work of art for your personal use, for
> your friends or for any other person, by employing whatever technique
> you choose.
>
> 2.2 FREEDOM TO DISTRIBUTE, TO INTERPRET (OR OF REPRESENTATION)
>
> You can freely distribute the copies of these works, modified or not,
> whatever their medium, wherever you wish, for a fee or for free, if
> you
> observe all the following conditions:
> - attach this license, in its entirety, to the copies or indicate
> precisely where the license can be found,
> - specify to the recipient the name of the author of the originals,
> - specify to the recipient where he will be able to access the
> originals
> (original and subsequent). The author of the original may, if he
> wishes,
> give you the right to broadcast/distribute the original under the same
> conditions as the copies.
>
> Note the '... for a fee or for free ...' in section 2.2
>
>> It would be inappropriate for us to put all this work into a free
>> version of the plays to turn around and have someone take
>> advantage of
>> that by printing up a copy and selling it. We won't sell it (if we
>> did, it'd still always be free on the site anyway). So why should we
>> allow someone else to make money off of something we intended to be
>> free and accessible?
>
> I'm not it would be inappropriate. After all preparing a proper
> printed
> edition costs money (paper, binding etc is not zero-cost) so it
> needs to
> be sold for some price. Furthermore in a situation where the
> underlying
> text can be used freely both for commercial and non-commercial use
> competition among printers would serve to prevent anyone extracting
> any
> 'undeserved' profit. Thus I don't see any reason to prevent
> 'commercial'
> publication given that one is ensuring the continuing freedom of the
> underlying text.
>
>>> Furthermore I should mention that we don't consider the CC non-
>>> commercial licenses as being 'open' licenses (see the open
>>> knowledge
>>> definition at http://okd.okfn.org/ for more details) so if the work
>>> was only available under CC-non-commercial we wouldn't be able
>>> to use
>>> it.
>>
>>
>> I'm not sure I wholly understand the purpose behind this statute. If
>> you're the creator of a works intended to be freely accessible by
>> all,
>> why would you allow someone to reproduce and charge people money for
>> it? Doesn't that go against the original intention? If that's a
>> deal-breaker for you, then I'm sorry. Free means free (and free of
>> charge), not "free only if you have access to the internet."
>
> The simple answer is that they are *still* freely accessible if some
> individual wants to try charging -- and frankly how far would someone
> get charging for an online edition when there is one which is 'free'
> just as easily available. Free means freedom to access,
> redistribute and
> reuse not necessarily free of cost. As I have already pointed out a
> physical book costs money to make so if you require that any book made
> using your text is distributed for free I don't see how anyone would
> make one. That said the whole point is that if a work is free it will
> not be possible for anyone to overcharge for the work because of free
> competition -- if you suddenly start charging your version for $100
> i'm
> free to offer mine for $10 or even $0.
>
> I'd also point out that the Free/Open Source Software community have
> been following this line for many years and seem to have done fine
> (the
> Open Knowledge Definition is a straight port of the Open Source
> Definition). In particular I'd point out that the Open Source
> Definition
> specifically prohibits open source licenses from restricting
> commercial use.
>
> To reiterate: requiring zero-cost distribution does not increase
> freedom/opennes it reduces it. Furthermore the very provision of an
> free/open version of the text combined with the operation of
> competition
> is enough to guard against the 'being taken advantage' that you
> mention.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rufus
>
> [snip]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 01:23:15 -0500
> From: "Benj. Mako Hill" <mako at atdot.cc>
> Subject: Re: [okfn-discuss] More on the non-commercial issue:
> discussions with playshakespeare.com
> To: Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
> Cc: okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> Message-ID: <20061124062315.GB1440 at yukidoke.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> <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
>
>
>
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> End of okfn-discuss Digest, Vol 14, Issue 10
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