[okfn-discuss] Re: okfn-discuss Digest, Vol 14, Issue 10

[Francis Irving]

On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 09:26:55AM -0800, Ron Severdia wrote:
> 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!

Does the Creative Commons definition of "Non-Commercial" mean that
it would be breaking the license to print on paper a copy of the work,
and sell that paper copy?

I can't tell for sure, but it looks to be the case to me.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/legalcode

If so, this means that nobody can ever ever print your work on paper
and distribute it to lots of people, unless they are rich enough to
fund the printing themselves and give away the physical copies.

Therefore in your situation where "all the books are free" under a
"Non-Commercial" license, there would be absolutely no paper copies.
This would be problematic for literacy in areas where computers are
not available.

Francis