[open-science] SPARC author addendum uses CC-NC licence and now all hybrid publishers have followed

Tue Dec 13 11:59:52 UTC 2011

On 12 Dec 2011, at 12:27, "Heather Morrison" <heatherm at eln.bc.ca> wrote:

> How is this commercial use? If this is commercial use under CC-NC, then CC-NC needs work.
> 
> If CC licensing is this complicated, would we be better off not using CC licenses at all?

The problem is not with CC licenses per we as I understand it but with the legal definition of non commercial which is complex and differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In fact it is the friction that this creates that is one of my personal reasons of steering clear of NC. And it's not just restricted to NC terms, trying to exclude specific uses in a licence is always fraught with difficulties. Indeed I often come across this desire and my argument against it is as follows. ou think wht you are doing is maintaining some control over your work. In fact by using a licence, a legal tool, to try and express your wishes you are actually handing complete control over the lawyers and judges, almost the exact opposite of what you want. 

To be honest we are in a bit of mess because we have this mixture of CC as legal instrument and in addition it's widespread use as a social signalling tool. The two get mixed up. My argument would be that in the case of ccby it's not such an issue because the two uses are large congruent (there are few cases that would lead you to sue over misuse of material that was released as ccby or ccZero) but they start to drift as legal and social definitions of NC and SA get mixed up. I note that some people like Pawel disagree with this assessment because of the potential issues of how attribution is supposed into be done can in principle break interoperability but I am less worried about that. Thats a risk assessment tho, not a firm position.

Cheers

Cameron-- 
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