[okfn-discuss] [open-science] Fwd: "Open Access" publications under CC-NC licences

Sat Dec 10 15:05:33 UTC 2011

On 10/12/11 10:29, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
> 
> If - as Heather suggests - we have OA advocates arguing that the third
> world should use CC-NC to protect the value of their contributions it
> will even further damage the re-use of information. 

Creative Commons created and later deprecated a third world licence
(CC-DevNations). Nobody used it, it was morally and economically broken.

BY does indeed not guarantee downstream Open Access. BY-SA is better
than BY for this, as it guarantees downstream access and return of value
to upstream contributors. I personally would rather OA and OER were BY-SA.

But adding NC to BY-SA in order to create barriers to access breaks open
access both by definition and in practice. We cannot claim that Open
Access is protected by *preventing* open access.

So NC is certainly not better than BY or SA for guaranteeing downstream
access. And those OA advocates promoting it are wrong to do so.

- Rob.