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I think it's absolutely appropriate for people to complain about free riders on CC licenses. It's pretty clear that most people who use CC licenses mean to prom

I think it's absolutely appropriate for people to complain about free riders on CC licenses. It's pretty clear that most people who use CC licenses mean to promote creative reuse of their works by the broader creative community. An implicit, if not legally mandated, requirement for reuse in many cases is that you add something to the work. Clearly, just selling prints en mass is mechanical enough that it fails to meet many people's personal threshold for what constitutes a creative addition. But practically speaking, it's impossible to add a legal definition of "creative addition" without just creating an explicit list of creative augmentations. Such a formulation would necessarily defeat any novel creative forms, and so such a formulation is antithetical to the ideals behind Creative Commons. So, enforcement must be relegated to the realm of social norms. That's what's going on here. Creators are saying Yahoo are being jerks for using using their works in a way that meet the letter of the license, but not the spirit.

Flimm 12y ago
I think many free content creators would disagree with you on what the spirit of cc-by is.
- shawn-furyan 12y ago
  Hmm... that very well may be, and it even strikes me as probable. The nebulousness of the expectations regarding what CC means, and should mean is central to this entire episode. Part of the reason that CC exists is that copyright makes it difficult to share your work without either just giving it completely away, or striking explicit deals on an ad hoc basis. CC was a partial solution, but it's not really high resolution enough to satisfy everyone's needs and/or expectations in such dynamic and diverse areas as the pursuits of art. That's why I say that social norm is an appropriate companion to CC here, because the formation of social norms allow for nuance that one size fits most CC licensing really doesn't. Further, independent artists are typically going to be at a large disadvantage when trying to enforce licenses against large institutions, so to the extent that it is used by small independents, it's in many ways a system that relies on generally charitable intentions all around. I'm sure there are examples of independents taking on larger organizations, but I suspect that if it becomes clear that the only way to get what you want out of a CC license is to adopt a litigious stance, then it's adoption would decline pretty dramatically.

Flimm 12y ago

I think many free content creators would disagree with you on what the spirit of cc-by is.

shawn-furyan 12y ago
Hmm... that very well may be, and it even strikes me as probable. The nebulousness of the expectations regarding what CC means, and should mean is central to this entire episode. Part of the reason that CC exists is that copyright makes it difficult to share your work without either just giving it completely away, or striking explicit deals on an ad hoc basis. CC was a partial solution, but it's not really high resolution enough to satisfy everyone's needs and/or expectations in such dynamic and diverse areas as the pursuits of art. That's why I say that social norm is an appropriate companion to CC here, because the formation of social norms allow for nuance that one size fits most CC licensing really doesn't. Further, independent artists are typically going to be at a large disadvantage when trying to enforce licenses against large institutions, so to the extent that it is used by small independents, it's in many ways a system that relies on generally charitable intentions all around. I'm sure there are examples of independents taking on larger organizations, but I suspect that if it becomes clear that the only way to get what you want out of a CC license is to adopt a litigious stance, then it's adoption would decline pretty dramatically.