The free and non-free Creative Commons licenses

• Some Creative Commons licenses are ‘free’ in the sense that open source software is free.
• Other Creative Commons licenses are ‘not free’ in the sense that they restrict use of the material in ways that is counter to ‘freedom’ as defined by the Free Software Foundation or the Open Source Initiative, to draw a parallel with software licenses.

In this article I just wanted to clarify the difference for those using a CC license, so that they are not inadvertently preventing others from using their work with an unnecessarily restrictive license.

Thankfully, the creativecommons.org website now has a useful “Approved for Free Cultural Works” icon and colour scheme, to help you tell them apart.  For example:

• This Attribution Share-Alike Generic 2.5 license is green and has the icon, so you know it is a ‘free’ license.
• This Attribution Non-Commercial Generic 2.5 license is yellow and does not have the icon, so it is not a ‘free’ (as in freedom) license.

Defining freedom

Creativecommons.org has chosen to adopt the meaning of ‘freedom’ as defined by Freedomdefined.org, a definition which is basically equivalent to that used for open source software.  It states that for a work to be considered a free cultural work, it must have the following four freedoms:

• The freedom to use the work and enjoy the benefits of using it
• The freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it
• The freedom to make and redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expression
• The freedom to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative works

Freedom applies to everyone

For these freedoms to be valid, they must  be unconditional and apply to everyone, regardless of who they are or what they intend to use the work for.  This means that any license with a non-commercial clause is not free in the sense that any business wanting to use the work commercially would have to make a separate arrangement with the author.  One of the basic rules of open source software is that businesses are allowed to use it in order to profit from it; if what they could do with it was restricted, open source software would be avoided by commercial enterprises.  Companies wouldn’t be installing Linux on their clients’ systems, for example.

The same applies to non-software cultural works: allowing anyone the freedom to use the work, regardless of whether they intend to profit, enables businesses to assist the proliferation of the work.

Freedom includes freedom to make changes

These freedoms also include the freedom to make changes and improvements.  If a license does not allow derivative works, it is another example of restricting users’ ability to do whatever they like with the work.  The ability to modify the work is seen as advantageous for the community because it allows the work to be improved by others, without a separate arrangement being made with the original author.  To draw a comparison with open source software again, if businesses were not allowed to modify Linux and provide their own version of it, many businesses would not be able to exist, and the behaviour of Linux would be entirely under the control of a single entity.  Allowing others to modify your work allows businesses to exist that support the work through improving it.

Some restrictions are still acceptable

Requiring copyright notices to be preserved, or requiring any derivative works to be given the same license (a share-alike clause) are still considered acceptable restrictions by the free software movement and free cultural works.  It’s just that any restrictions beyond this, such as preventing commercial uses and preventing any modifications, are not.

Quick guide to choosing a Creative Commons license

There is nothing wrong with choosing a non-free license for your work: It is the creator’s right not to license their work, or to apply any restrictions they desire.  If you are considering releasing something under a Creative Commons license, you should consider which rights you want to retain.  One reason for retaining a right would be if you want to make money from it.

So, here’s a quick guide on how to choose between the licenses:

• Including a non-commercial clause allows you to retain the sole right to make money from distributing the work.  If allowing others freedom to use the work is more important to you than making money, then don’t include a non-commercial clause.
• Not allowing derivative works allows you to retain the sole right to alter the work, which allows you to reserve the right to charge money for or prevent alterations.  If allowing others to use and improve the work is more important to you that making money from or preventing alterations, then make sure you allow derivative works.
• If you do not care about money, or controlling who is allowed to do what with the work (save put a copyright notice on it), but you do care that the work is free for all to use and modify how they see fit, then make sure the Creative Commons license you choose is a green one, with the ‘Approved for Free Cultural Works’ icon.  This will ensure that your work receives the best chance of being re-used and shared by as many people as possible.

When tech companies team with repressive governments

New legislation may impose penalties for U.S. companies that help foreign governments to commit human rights abuses, according to this report at ZDnet.  It says that representatives from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco were recently ‘drilled’ by congress for ’several hours’ on their cooperation with the Chinese government.

In a high profile case, Yahoo has previously come under fire from its shareholders for providing the Chinese government with the identities of pro-democracy dissidents, leading to their ‘arrest’.

One of the bits I don’t like about human rights abuse is the part where people are arrested and taken from their homes and locked up for no good reason and with no fair trial.  I’m also not a fan of torture, or of seizing people’s homes without fair compensation.  Anything that ends in humans suffering.  One would have thought that helping a foreign government do this sort of thing to its citizens, either by providing intelligence or with funding, would be against the law – whether you’re a spy for the Chinese government or a technology company like Yahoo.

When human suffering is involved, providing information to foreign governments goes beyond being an ethical compromise and becomes a world problem.

The other way to be anonymous online

Ever been embarrassed by the sorts of things people could find out about you just by using Google?  I guess I had thought it was a problem affecting most people who use the web a bit, or whose friends do, until it occurred to me that for some particular people this isn’t a problem.

These are the people with names so common that it is impossible to tell them from the thousands of other web kiddies with the same name.  My name, my real name, is fairly unique.

What if you have a really unusual name?  Well, you could use a psuedonym that’s really innane, like James Connor.  Or Peter Smith.   Or you could anglicise your name: use the more common English name that is similar to yours.

Being overseas

I’m keeping an eye on you guys, the other day 63 of you viewed a page on this blog, or rather one of you viewed 63 pages. That’s a lot more than the one or two page views per day I usually get.

I’ve gone on my first ever overseas trip – New Zealand. It’s an appropriate first step, and I consider it the very first journey of many. It’s not too far away, and people speak the same language here, and practically even the same accent, with some amusing exceptions.

I gotta go and eat and look at museums and sights.

Addictive personality

I’ve noticed two separate meanings for the term addictive personality.

1. A person with such a great personality you could become addicted to spending time with them
2. A person who is susceptible to developing addictions

The second one doesn’t seem right.  The words (adjective-noun) indicate to me that the personality is addictive, not that the personality is attracted to other things that are addictive.

My guess is that the first meaning is the original and the second is a misunderstanding of the first one which seems to have become common, sort of like how people say ‘chomping at the bit’ or ‘could care less’ (‘champing’ and ‘couldn’t').