[Clipart] Free Cultural Works definition & buttons

[Erik Moeller]

On 2/21/07, Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org> wrote:

> CC prefers the links to go to the deeds for licenses, as I'm sure you
> have been made aware on the cc-community list.

We can recommend a combination of button to freedomdefined.org + rel
="license" text link directly to the deed. This would avoid the
problem with metadata spidering while not needlessly emphasizing
Creative Commons.

> Also, it is a violation
> of trademark and policy I believe to not use the CC logo and trademark
> without clearing with CC.

Yeah, we're careful about that. We want the whole buttons to be public
domain and unrestricted -- another reason to make them (e.g. if you
want your whole work to be free, you may not be comfortable using
non-free means of identification).

> In another note, I wonder why you all want to create yet another license
> button? I think it would be better to just create another button that
> could supplement the current cc licenses and that could link to your
> definition.

I think Creative Commons is a great organization when it comes to
making legally sound licenses for many different jurisdictions. It is
not, however, a movement for free culture; if anything, it is a
movement for giving copyright holders more choices (including some
very non-free ones such as CC-BY-NC-ND or the Developing Nations
license).

freedomdefined.org and the groups around it, on the other hand, is an
effort to create free culture, with a clear standard of freedom that
all members of the movement subscribe to. We want to not only tell
people "This work is freely licensed", but also talk to them about why
freedom is important. We do this through our website, where we provide
a definition of freedom, a list of free licenses, a unique logo to
identify free works, and so on. I'm also working on a free license
chooser.

Unlike CC, each license explanation we host will enumerate the core
freedoms as explained in the definition, and invite visitors to learn
more about freedom, to use free licenses for their own works. Unlike
CC, freedomdefined.org explicitly criticizes the various problems with
licenses such as CC-BY-NC.

If creativecommons.org changes and begins to emphasize freedom, then
we will be happy to integrate our effort with theirs. For the time
being, from a memetic perspective, the Creative Commons meme of
"choice" is conflicting with the freedomdefined.org meme of "freedom";
we do not want people to be mislead into thinking that, just because
you put a work under a CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license, you endorse the
Creative Commons notion of choice, or that you are part of a "Creative
Commons movement", which follows no standard of freedom and has
created many licenses that we consider explicitly harmful.

In a way, it is like the difference between freeware/shareware and
free software. One is about giving software makers more choice to
reach their audience; the other is about giving software users core
freedoms (which are roughly identical in both the Free Software
Definition and the Open Source Definition). Creative Commons conflates
both notions.

So, while openclipart.org puts its images in the public domain and the
website under CC-BY (a very thoughtful decision), openfontlibrary.org
inexplicably uses CC-BY-NC for its website. The Freesound project
began by using the weird Sampling+ license, a decision which it is now
reconsidering. The conflation of ideas by CC clearly confuses people
into making bad licensing decisions.

> The Open Font Library www.openfontlibrary.org and Create Project
> (http://create.freedesktop.org).

Create is an interesting aggregator; thanks for the link.

> Is this effort coordinated with the www.freeculturefoundation.org and
> other similar threads of trying to be placed as the larger org. to
> encompass all free and open source culture?

We've actively reached out to the Free Culture Student Movement
(freeculture.org); Elizabeth Stark is one of our moderators. I've not
been in touch with the FCF folks yet, but I'm aware of them.
-- 
Peace & Love,
Erik

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