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Incompatible Licenses

This morning a short question was posed on one of the Creative Commons mailing lists (cc-community).

I have a simple question. Why are all the Creative Commons licenses incompatible with the GPL?

This was an excellent little question and since then the mailing list has been busy sending in responses and thoughts. Since this is an open mailing list it is ok to quote one of the answers which I found very well written and helpful in explaining this important issue. The reply comes from Greg London and is as follows:

(broad brushstrokes follow.
Nit-pickers need not apply)

If you’re talking about converting
content between the CC-SA and GNU-GPL
licenses, then the problem is basically
a side effect of copyleft.

Copyleft licenses keep the content Free
by demanding that the content and any
derivatives are always available under
the same license as the original.

This prevents someone from putting more
restrictions on the work and taking a
version of Free content private.

Almost counter intuitively, copyleft
protects the content by disallowing
someone from removing restrictions on
the work. This could be abused by allowing
someone to first convert the content from
a copyleft license to a public domain license,
and then allowing the person to create
proprietary forks.

So, copyleft keeps the work Free by demanding
that the content and its derivatives must always
be held under the same license as the original.

Which means that if you have two copyleft
licenses, but they have different requirements,
they are incompatible. The GNU-GPL and CC-SA
licenses are both copyleft. But the GNU-GPL has
a source code requirement that the CC-SA does not.

If you took CC-SA content and converted it to
GNU-GPL, you would be adding a source code
requirement to the content that did not exist
before. And if you took GNU-GPL content and
converted it to CC-SA, you’d be removing the
source code requirement.

And since both say you can’t change the requirements,
converting between either license is disallowed.

The idea CC is apparently working on for making
licenses inter-operable is to put language into
the license that allows the content to be licensed
under the original license, or any license that is
deemed to be similar enough, for some fuzzy definition
of “enough”.

They already have something like this that makes sure
that, for example, the different language versions
of CC-SA are compatible with each other. The way I
understand it, they’re are going to try to use the
same approach to expand compatibility outside of the
CC-SA licenses.

Since no CC license has a “source code” requirement,
I don’t think any CC license will ever be directly
interchangable with GNU-GPL. But they are trying to
solve the problem of license proliferation by building
in a mechanism that will allow all the content to be
transferred to licenses that are deemed “close enough”.

I hope this helps.

You can join the list and/or read the archives.

Posted on by mklang

Expression, not Repression

Amnesty is one of those organisations which you know you should support more than you already do. They have also moved into the digital domain and are supporting all kinds of online expression. In an attempt to prevent online censorship they launched their irrepressible campaign.

Part of irrepressible is a technical solution that breaks censored texts into small pieces and maintains them online. Read more about how to help here.

If you cannot do more then at least sign their petition:

I believe the Internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression. People have the right to seek and receive information and to express their peaceful beliefs online without fear or interference.

I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the Internet â?? and on companies to stop helping them do it.

Amnesty International will also be present at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens next week. Again they will be â??â?¦stressing the importance of protecting free expression and privacy onlineâ??

Read their press release here.

Posted on by mklang

Spamhaus Wins

Judge Charles Kocoras wisely and bravely found in favour of Spamhaus in his decision, which marks a clear victory for the spam blacklister. The case was brought by e-mail marketer e360Insight whose purpose for sueing was that Spamhaus had included e360Insight on the Spamhaus‘ blacklist.

If e360insight’s proposed order directing ICANN to suspend the spamhaus.org domain had won the spamlist would have gone down – the list is responsible for stopping over 50 billion spam messages per day.

Judge Kocoras wrote that the relief e360insight sought is “too broad to be warranted in this case” and that suspending the domain name would “cut off all lawful online activities of Spamhaus, not just those that are in contravention” of the default judgment. He also called e360insight’s motion one that “does not correspond to the gravity of the offending conduct.”

(via arstechnica)

Posted on by mklang

Make a Toaster

Some friends and I are kicking around the idea to build a Freedom Toaster. What?, you may ask, is a Freedom Toaster? And why on earth build one? So, first things first.

The Freedom Toaster is like a vending machine. It stands in a central location waiting for customers. But what does it sell? You ask impatiently? Nothing.

The Freedom Toaster is preloaded to dispense free digital products, including software, photography, music and literature. The idea is to bring together a compilation of Free Software based on the GNU/Linux operating system and combine this with music and literature taken either from the public domain or licensed via Creative Commons.

The point is to create a showpiece comprised of an easy to use system which allows users to pick up their own copy of such a CD.

Again, Why?

Well those of us who feel comfortable with Free Software use the Internet as our primary infrastructure of distribution. But to those who are unfamiliar with Free Software finding a site, and deciding which software is needed, downloading it and finally installing it is a process filled with a number of barriers.

The Freedom Toaster is a way to circumvent some of those barriers and will hopefully make people feel more comfortable with the selecting and downloading process. One far reaching goal is to show that Free Software is in the reach of everybody.

Posted on by mklang

Down with DRM video contest

Freeculture are organising a video competition to coincide with the Down with DRM day.

Enter the Down with DRM video contest for a chance to win a Neuros OSD – a portable digital VCR!

Joining in Oct 3rd – Day Against DRM, Free Culture will select the 5 best anti-DRM video entries and award a Neuros OSD to each creator. DefectiveByDesign.org is also looking to air selected anti-DRM videos on their website during the week of October 3rd, and we want to give them a hand.

Here are the official rules to enter Free Culture’s Down with DRM video contest:

  • Deadline for submissions: Sunday, October 1 at 11:59pm EDT
  • Criteria for video:
    • Anti-DRM themed
    • Short
    • Video, animation, or remix
    • Make it catchy â?? we want these videos to be viral
  • Please submit your video to the online video sharing network(s) that you prefer. Here are some examples:
  • Please tag your video with “downwithdrm” and “dbdoct3” so that people can search for it.
  • Preference will be given to submissions under free content licenses such as Creative Commons BY-SA, BY, PD, or the Free Art license.
  • E-mail downwithdrm@freeculture.org with a link to your video by October 1 at 11:59pm EDT.
  • Free Culture will select the top 5 entries and award the winners with a Neuros OSD (one per video)
Posted on by mklang

What is wrong with DRM?

What is wrong with DRM?

Most people tend to steer clear of three letter acronyms that they donâ??t immediately understand. DRM (Digital Rights Management) began as a vision of using technology to ensure that owners of intellectual property could maintain control over their property.  In other words it would be impossible to do that which was illegal. So far so good. Making it impossible to do that which is illegal is good. Frustrating illegal behaviour is right.

The problem is that DRM can also prevent behaviour that is not illegal.

A current example is the media player â??Zuneâ?? from Microsoft.

To maintain control over the music stored in the media player Zune is designed to limit music sharing. If music is shared between friends it can only be played three times or stored for three days.

The problem occurs when the music shared is either (1) not copyrighted, (2) in the public domain, or (3) shared with permission.

Supposing you create a song. Really. Or maybe a you create a snappy little limerick. You send it wirelessly to a friend. After three days. Or your friend plays it three times â?? it is gone. This is because Zune wraps all music which is sent in this way in DRM nomatter the rights you have as a creator or listener.

Therefore Microsoft Zune limits the legitimate rights of the user in an effort to comply with or control intellectual property. This is bad.

But wait â?? it is worse!

In the book 1984, Orwell introduces a method of control through the language called Newspeak. The idea was that by limiting the meaning of words we the party in power would eventually limit the way in which the citizens think. In the book the example given was that the term free would loose all connections with freedom and only be used with the idea to be rid of something. The example in the book is that a dog will be free of lice. But the concept of freedom as liberty will be lost.

This is the most damaging part of DRM systems. By controlling what is physically possible they create amongst the users an illusion of what can be done. A technical limitation to our use becomes a law of nature. Copying becomes bad not because it is illegal but because it is impossible.

Therefore by controlling the physical reality the manufacturers of DRM are slowly changing the way in which we see what is possible and impossible. In extension this will also limit our ability to envision what could be possible.

Posted on by mklang

Late News From Rome: CC is OK

So I am late, again! But in going through some old mails this was particularly interesting. It is relevant to a post I wrote (4 Sept – Call for Copyright Activists):

Rome, August 7th 2006.

For the first time in Italy, Siae (the Italian collecting society), with a non-expiring resolution active from July 25th 2006, (documento protocollato presso l’Ufficio Multimedialità al nr. 1/290/06/FDP) recognizes the opportunity and right for the public playing of ambient music inside a commercial space, without compensation to be paid, thanks to the adoption of copyleft licensing schemes (like CC, Art Libre, Copyzero x, Clausola Copyleft) or in the public domain.

Inside the ice cream shop Fiordiluna, in the heart of the Trastevere district in Rome, there is a multimedia space (32″ lcd monitor and Bose speaker system) managed by a Linux pc with free software on it, through which audio, video and literary works with copyleft-like licenses or in the public domain are publicly played.

This major historical achievement has been made possible by the work of Ermanno Pandoli (Giapster and Quindicino) who is a member of the Liberius digital window of the FrontiereDigitali network and who has represented the Fiordiluna ice-creamery to Siae.

Those interested in exposing their works inside the ice-creamery may inform the relevant groups inside the FrontiereDigitali network. To obtain more information on the legal and logitical procedures to follow it is also possible to contact the Liberius digital window.

English translation by Luigi Canali De Rossi, Master New Media Association.

This is an excellent way of bringing about change in the present copyright regime. By enabling businesses to avoid paying the collecting societies and (as in the case above) making a name for themselves we can see how creativity can make a difference. And how it can work outside the narrowly defined conventional music models.

Posted on by mklang

Broadcast & Podcast Rights

This is straight from Cory Doctrow at Boing Boing – not even going to edit it. Copyright is under fire from almost every angle imagineable. This is about the aweful Broadcast Treaty.

The Broadcast Treaty is an attempt to force the world’s governments to give a new right to broadcasters, a right to control the use of works they don’t own. The Broadcast Right will allow broadcasters to stop you from copying or re-using the programs they transmit, even if those programs are in the public domain, Creative Commons licensed or composed of uncopyrightable facts.

Fair use doesn’t apply to the broadcast right. It will have its own rules for fair use, separate from copyright. You’ll have to pay your lawyer twice, once to make sure you’ve got a fair copyright use, and again to make sure you’ve got a fair broadcast right use. And you might get sued twice — once for violating copyright and again for broadcast right violations.

Worse yet, they want this to apply to the Internet. A few US corporations — Microsoft, Yahoo — have hijacked the US position on the Broadcast Treaty and now the US is using every trick in the book to get the world’s governments (who roundly reject the idea) to create a “webcasting right” at the same time as the broadcast right.

This is deadly to podcasters. The webcasting right will break podcasters’ ability to quote and re-use each others’ work (even CC-licensed works), and other video found on the net. It will allow podcast-hosting companies like Yahoo to tell people how they can use your podcasts, even if you want to permit retransmissions. And it will hurt organizations that are tying to find novel ways to use podcasts, like

The webcasting stuff has been “narrowed” to try to make it apply only to “professional” webcasts and not podcasts, but this is a short-sighted view of the future of podcasting. The term podcasting was only coined 20-some months ago. The idea that we can predict what a podcast will look like tomorrow is ridiculous — it’s like designing a copyright for printed books ten seconds before the photocopier comes along and changes everything.

Luckily, the webcasting stuff is on the ropes. Mark Cuban, who founded Yahoo’s Broadcast.com, has signed onto an open letter from 20 technology organizations that reject the webcasting right. Last week, dozens of companies, libraries and public interest groups signed an open letter rejecting the treaty altogether.

Now it’s the podcasters’ turn. EFF has created an open letter on behalf of podcasters everywhere, rejecting the webcasting right. WIPO is supposed to be making treaties that protect creators. We podcasters are the Internet’s native creators. WIPO has no business trying to break the Internet so that it is better-suited to the business-models of yesterday’s broadcasters.

If you are a podcaster — or better yet, a podcasting organization — sign onto this letter now! It will be presented Monday morning to the WIPO committee that’s creating the Broadcast Treaty in Geneva. This is your best-ever chance to be heard. Link

Posted on by mklang

Non-musical iPod

Admitting that I use my iPod a lot is not really surprising. Many people walk around with different versions of players connected to their ears. Even though I use my iPod every day I rarely listen to music on it. Almost everything I listen to is lectures and the occasional audio book. Sad, isnâ??t it?

Right now I am re-listening to the Garret Faganâ??s course of 48 lectures on the History of Ancient Rome, produced by the Teaching Company – this is a very good lecture series.

The problem with listening to non-fiction audio is that there is not enough free stuff! Thatâ??s why its nice to find sites like LibriVox were volunteers record themselves reading books and the results are posted into the public domain.

A word of caution â?? the rules and traditions for the public domain vary so LibriVox has the following disclaimer:

LibriVox recordings are Public Domain in the USA. If you are not in the USA, please verify the copyright status of these works in your own country before downloading, otherwise you may be violating copyright laws.

LibriVox also has some nice links to other sources of spoken word online. So between the commercial sites, free sites and podcasts I will never have to listen to music on my iPodâ?¦

(via New York Times)

Posted on by mklang