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

Sat Nov 25 01:43:42 UTC 2006

Ahoy,

Jumping in...

On Saturday 25 November 2006 01:14, Francis Irving wrote:
> OK. So do you:
>
> 1. Agree that if anyone prints your work, they have to give it away
> for no money.
>
> 2. Agree that this makes it unlikely that anyone will print quality,
> book versions of your work in large volumes.
>
> 3. That this means, largely, that you are restricting the audience of
> your work to people who own computers.

No. The whole point of the NC license is that somebody wanting to print 
quality, book versions of a work in large volumes will enter into a separate 
commercial agreement with the copyright holder. Ignoring the many niggles 
with the CC BY-NC-SA license for a moment, it sounds reasonable to say "if 
you're going to make money from my work then I'd like a cut". What you're 
suggesting is that NC licenses rule out any commercial use at all, which is 
simply not true!

The issues are more like:

a) Is it likely that you will make any significant financial gain from 
requiring separate agreements for commercial use? That is, gains that 
couldn't conceivably be made without the NC clause.

b) What are the adverse consequences of your preventing unrestricted 
commercial use of the work?

The current CC BY-NC-SA licenses ladle on a number of adverse consequences 
because the interpretation of "commercial" seems so ludicrously broad, and 
because it's up to the copyright holder to make sure that people can get 
permission for commercial use easily, at a fair rate and under fair 
conditions. Any NC clause would of course restrict the flow of information, 
so the burden of proof for its use is definitely on the copyright holder in 
my opinion.

Regards,
Tom

-- 
The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting
 - Kundera