In this article, I was sharing my concern about two questions that are somehow key-issues for Free Culture :
1. Is the "non-commercial" option of Creative Commons Licences a potentially against-productive option?
2. Is the CC system of customized Licences productive in long term, for a common vision of the Freedom in contents sharing for the 21st century ?
The article had as first title "is the CC liberticide" ?
It was the political and social vision that I wanted to feel behind the CC licence, with more details and within a global scope.
I was giving some arguments explaining that I had doubt on the real freedom such initiative could bring to living culture in long terme. I gave some example of concerns that some promoters of Freedom in E-culture where sharing online. As I couldn't find any URL with debates on these 2 issues, I asked "where are the debates about these 2 questions", and what answer can you give.
The article created very quickly some kind of a starting of a flame war, including within our own Ynternet.org team. I didn't wanted this debate to lose sense by becoming more form-centered (like most flamewars) and less content-centered (like most peacefull discussion about long-term visions).
After speaking with some Ynternet.org board members in july 2004 (mostly Myriam and Claude), they suggested me to write first directly to Mr. Lessig and his close colleagues, and then only to share these concerns with the entire community of Freeculture promoters, only if these questions stay unsolved.
This procedure might be more respectful of the existing CC community then directly writing an open letter without canalising the energy on the good initial argument for and against long-term potentialities of common good in CC dynamic.
This is why I simplified the content of this article, took off my open critic at this time (june 2004), letting door open to debate based on doubt and not on judgement, and letting others express they concerns first, when the issue of long term vision of CC would become more "popular".
I changed the title of the article, and restricted this article to an announcement about some questions that wished to see debated within the freeculture community, before putting my own content production articles on Freedom in E-communication, photography for museum exhibitions, and compilation of work of others.
So this is it, in sommer 2004 I'm having doubt about usefulness of migrating all these contents into the CC, politically and socially speaking. I wonder if common good in in the appropriate fields with CC. All comments, suggestions and critics about this issue would be kindly appreciated.
Write me at moveTAKEMEOFF@cooperation.net
More news soon.
Théo Bondolfi
May 2005 : I still lead Ynternet.org, and it's board has been reenforced with new experts in global Communication dynamics. We give more importance to issues about long term visions in Free culture. We are designing new training courses for certification of competences in E-culture (European and Swiss pedagogical and research projects), and we host and facilite the writing of over 10'000 articles published in French by NGO activists, mostly from Africa thru Cooperation.net network.
This is why these questions are very important to an independant media network like ours.
Although most NGO grassroot activists and contents producers have other preocupations then the licence under which their articles are been regulated, Ynternet.org, as host of their contents, need some guidelines about licence choices to be recommended to our experts, members and services users. These guidelines shall be based on a large debate and a well documented and justified guideline. Currently we only suggest contents producers to use GFDL and Artlibre licences for non-software contents, without any real recommendation. We still pay a lot of attention to CC, and stay persuaded that CC is presenting lot's of interesses, although doubt stays about long term vision for CC (therefore we do not suggest it currently to contents producers).
July 9th 2005
Claude from Adisi sent me an article written by David M. Berry : On the 'Creative Commons': A Critique of the Commons without Commonalty Thanks Claude.
Berry's article is responding quite well to the two questions I also asked myself about CC long term development. It seems that "CC or ArtLibre ? " becomes a growing debate. This is a great thing considering the importance of such questions and such answers for freeculture movement and long term development.
It means that Free Art is slowly becoming a more mature issue.
I would appreciate to have Larry Lessig's opinion about these questions.
I find that the great interess of David Berry's critics about CC is that these critics are respecting Larry's work for development of Free culture, which is very important (it's important not to through the baby with the water of the bath, as we say in French).
I'm writing Larry an email from my office in Switzerland.
I would understand if he does not enter into the debate largely, because it's quite hard to modify policies and dynamics such as those of the current CC movement, but wait and see.
This reminds me about the legendary debates in the 90's (and still now somehow) between those promoting free software vision and those promoting open source software vision, and about the words of Bruce Perens saying It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again.
This brought FSF to publish some kind of a manifesto about it Why ``Free Software'' is better than ``Open Source''.
Making a big shortcut from free software vision to Free culture vision, I guess we can somehow imagine that one day, soon maybe, somebody (or a group) would write a global demonstration saying that it's now time to speak again about radical non-discrimination and 4 fundamental freedom in non-software culture, for the common good that we all wish to be reenforced.
This global demonstration might already exists in various parts thru the useful links below.
July 13th 2005
Lessig still didn't answer to my emails, although we know eachother (we even gave a conference together in WSIS in december 2003). I'm sending him a third and last email about it. I'd understand if he does not answer directly, maybe somehow he will make some publication about all this. Anway I recognize the vitality he bring to Free culture movement, and therefore I'm convinced that time will speak positively for all free communication promoters.
Besides, it seems that FSF is also entering into the debate.
As it is written in this article, during Copyright2005 meeting in Canada, Richard Stallman took a position that is quite responding to my two questions. It seems that FSF has the same concerns about long term for free licence in non-software issues : some core freedom should be respected, and unfortunately CC does not respect them.
We all recognize that CC is great to initiate debate about alternative to mainstream and majors of contents production and marketing, but it is not enough to adopt CC. Somehow CC approach stays under the minimum level of freedom required for a long term development, like Open Source does facing Free Sofware.
This is why many people who feel really concerned about long term creativity are now moving their work from CC to Licence Art Libre, the ancient and most reliable one.
It seems somehow that, due to FSF decision not to promote CC anymore and to recommend Free Art Licence again for other works then software(as initially in 2000-2002), this debate about long term development of CC is now less important, and already partly closed .
So, in conclusion, this is my choice of licences :
As CEO of the Ynternet.org institute of research and promotion of Freedom in Electronic Communication, I will also recommend this choice to next Ynternet.org general Assembly, in order to be able to spread in in our networks.
Thanks for having read this article all thru, thanks to Raphael Rousseau and Antoine Moreau for their important contribution on this issue
Useful Links showing same concerns about long term vision of CCs, in order of reception/creation
New position of FSF in 2005 : they recommend Free Art Licence
In this article, it is reported that Richard Stallman has withdrawn explicit support for the Creative Commons project (though he recognizes it is a “better” option than the mainstream)
http://dosemagazine.blogsome.com/2005/07/04/stallman-et-al-at-copyright2005/
Summary of discussion about CC in English
You can find for example a discussion about Debian position
A swot-like evaluation about CC, suggesting to each author to write and use his own copyright license.
Debian considers the CC as non-Free
Evan, a debianist and CC promoter, gives counter arguments in favor of CC in CC mailing lists
Raphael Rousseau shares his vision about "non-commercial" use in CC (article in French, English google automatic translation facility option included in the page).
Isabelle Vodjdani made an analyze and compilation of the existing webpages comparing the various Free Licences available for Non-software contents.
Debates about CC in French (mostly about translation of CC, but also some intersting contributions of Alexandre Dulaunoy
David M. Berry : On the 'Creative Commons': A Critique of the Commons without Commonalty