[okfn-discuss] Greek root for knowledge?

Tue Feb 5 01:08:43 UTC 2013

"I don't want some random multi-national to use my photos in an advertising
campaign without my permission."

I don't want to get this off track, but this is one of the main misguided
ideas of NC-advocates. It would be WONDERFUL if some multi-national you
don't like used your CC-BY-SA photos. There is no better way for you to
have access and le.gal ability to do whatever you like with their ad! You
could criticize it and get much more press for "the photographer from that
ad disapproves of this business!" than for "some random person disapproves
of this business".

Seriously, the SA is the copyleft part and it is more than adequate here.
Exxon doesn't want to license their ads with CC-BY-SA. They aren't going to
use your SA photos anyway. It would be wonderful if they did because it
would give you more power, but they won't. Instead, they'll make just as
good an ad with someone else's photo. You choosing NC does absolutely
nothing to stop them and their ads.

On the other hand, if you choose NC, you DO stop ME from doing completely
non-commercial work where I make creative educational videos using
Wikimedia content and other photos. I would like to use your photos maybe.
The NC license stops me even though I'm not doing *anything* commercial. In
other words, what you intend from the license is not working; the NC
license is failing to achieve what you want. It doesn't stop anything you
want to stop and it only hurts people you don't want to hurt. And it is a
perfect example of the sort of restriction that seems benign but actually
destroys the not-yet-named thing that Peter is talking about.

Here's my popular non-commercial video:
http://blog.wolftune.com/2011/07/brain-parts-song-video.html
Is it good that I had to skip all sorts of nice photos when making this? NC
was not helpful, it made my project harder. I am grateful for all the
people who realized the value of sticking to just CC-BY or CC-BY-SA,
otherwise this project would not have been possible.

What I'm trying to get at is this: don't just defend a license because you
like the intent. Licenses aren't just about intention. A well-intended
license can be effectively failing, and that's the case with NC. It matters
not that NC *sounds* like what feels right to you, it matters that it
doesn't do what you want. The fact that we also might disagree about
commercial uses and whether they are ok or not is a side issue.

Respectfully,
Aaron

--
Aaron Wolf
wolftune.com

On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 7:39 PM, Harry Halpin <hhalpin at ibiblio.org> wrote:

> Sophia is "wisdom" but also "sophists" were those that in contrast to
> "philosophers" who loved wisdom, simply pretended to be able to possess it
> and teach it. Thus, super-sophisticity could be misinterpreted. You may
> want to look at "noesis", which is similar to "mental acts" or
> "dianoeisis". Supernoesis?
>
> Although maybe super-sophistry is the right world :) For example,  I
> disagree with removal of non-commercial licensing from Creative Commons.
> Essentially by "speeding" up the production of knowledge but not allowing a
> copy-left like mechanism that prevents commercial exploitation without
> recompensation, you essentially are providing an ever-larger set of data
> produced by individuals and public sector bodies (both under severe strain
> due to the crisis) for commercial companies to exploit without any
> re-compensation for the actual production of such data. So, I'm happy to
> share my photos with a non-commercial license. I don't want some random
> multi-national to use my photos in an advertising campaign without my
> permission. In Marxist terms, that's primitive accumulation - sort of
> similar to the looting of Africa and other countries during the colonial
> period, but this time done on the level of data.  I think there's some
> thoroughly discredited neoliberal ideology at work in some of the "open
> data" rhetoric, but then most people involved in open data, while doing it
> for the right reasons, aren't actually thinking in terms of political
> economy and thus are quite naive. I think open data can change the world,
> but find the "removal of any barriers" deeply problematic and
> short-sighted. Instead, we should produce the kinds of incentive structures
> necessary to align with the ethics of a community, which I would prefer to
> be democracy and mass empowerment.
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 12:37 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>wrote:
>
>> I want to create a neologism for the infinitely fast flow of knowledge
>> when there are no barriers and am looking for a (probably) Greek root.
>>
>> The metaphor is superconductivity and superfluidity. A superconducting
>> magnet can support trains, run for ever, etc. Any impedance destroys it. I
>> want to argue that only Open Knowledge (a la OKD) is fit for the modern age
>> - that licences, logins, etc completely destroy the flow of knowledge.
>>
>> So, analogous with superconductivity and superfluidity do we have a word
>> for knowledge?
>>
>> supersophicity? (sophos = wisdom)
>> supergnosis? supergnosicity? (but conflation with Christian theology)
>>
>> or ???
>>
>>
>> P.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Peter Murray-Rust
>> Reader in Molecular Informatics
>> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
>> University of Cambridge
>> CB2 1EW, UK
>> +44-1223-763069
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>
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