OSS Watch : Creative Commons and Open Source, Prodromos Tsiavos
Will talk about the creative commons licenses and how they're used. Prodromos is a lawyer, so this will have a grounding in law. Will look at the regulatory structures and how they evolve.
Lecture notes follow
Lecture Notes
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CC was founded in 2001, but only got going late 2002. Was a response to changes in copyright law and the results of the Eldred case which sought to limit the ongoing expansion of copyright control.
CC tries to bring a middleground between no copyright and full copyright. The intention is to provide user friendly interfaces to licenses that are human readable. These licenses should become a global standard, less fragmented than the existing copyright laws. This goal has been partially achieved in that the licenses are interoperable across countries so a single CC deed will have different legal texts in different countries.
Basic idea is that you assert only some of your rights under copyright legislation.
[ Long evolution of CC licenses in the UK ] In England and Wales a licence was agreed in 2004 which adequately reflected the US one. Took until July 2004 to get a human readable version. There was then some work to align things with the BBC's creative archive license and then work to address the different legal jurisdictions in the UK... In April 2006 there will be UK license 2.5
Very interesting section on both CC and the FSF as agents of change within society who do not work through 'revolutionary' methods, but by providing alternatives and routes out of various legal boxes. Followed by another interesting section on the stages of computing - but I didn't get the name of the model being used.
Goes on to look at the ways the GPL breaks down the traditional relationship whereby a developer transfers their rights to an organisation, and an organisation licenses those rights to an end user.
Once you have an easy to tool to manipulate your licensing rights you are likely to use it. It changes the way you think of things and it starts to result in more engagement in the political process. CC and the FSF have been instrumental in debates about things like patent law, which previously attracted almost no interest from the public.
"We do not produce licenses, we produce communities debating about licenses"
[Podromos is winning the award for most stylish use of ppt today...]