RMS says Creative Commons Unacceptable 647
Mr A Coward writes "Richard Stallman has stated in an interview that he no longer supports Creative Commons licenses. In the interview carried on LinuxP2P.com, and which is largely about the P2P and DRM issues, Stallman ends by saying: 'I no longer endorse Creative Commons. I cannot endorse Creative Commons as a whole, because some of its licenses are unacceptable.' He suggests instead using the GPL for creative works." The crux of his argument is that, since he disagrees with some of the CC licenses, and people tend to lump them all together, he feels compelled to reject them all. What's your take? Are some Creative Commons licenses worth using, even if others aren't?
I sort of agree (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO, if you're going to have some sort of umbrella for licenses to be put under, it should mean something. Near as I can tell, Creative Commons has no real criteria for deciding whether or not a license is acceptable.
If I read that a license is OSI approved, I know exactly what that means, and what sorts of things I can expect to be able to do and what I can expect to not be able to do.
If I hear that a license is a creative commons license, it tells me nothing. For all I know, it might be "You're allowed to distribute this only if you feel strongly that you have green skin.". They have license that discriminate based on what country you're a citizen of, so I don't see why they won't pick other weird things in the future.
If they want to be taken seriously, they will publish clear criteria for the acceptability of a license.
Stallman's an idiot (Score:2, Interesting)
"the perfect being the enemy of the good"
He embodies it.
I don't think this concerns him. (Score:2, Interesting)
Creative Commons is for literature and other arts, way beyond his scope.
Besides, he said that he disagrees, not that he's going to do something about it, right? So, why should we worry about what he said?
Personal appearance? (Score:4, Interesting)
GPLv3 probably won't be used in BusyBox. (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried to comment through their web page, but it doesn't work with Konqueror. I sent a comment via their email system, but it was bounced by their robot. (The subject text, "Concerns about gpl3 and busybox", doesn't appear in the GPL draft document, this has not been seen by a human nor will it ever be. Try jumping through the hoop again.)
It was about this time I decided I really don't care enough about placating Stallman. Sticking with v2 is just fine with me, and his opinion about creative commons is irrelevant as well. At this point, I consider Stallman irrelevant, and GPLv3 just another incompatible license fragmenting the open source userbase.
A pity, really...
Re:Stallman slipping? (Score:3, Interesting)
So he's in a room with a bunch of mostly older computer engineers in the goverment sector. The first part of his speech goes alright, but then he starts driving off into crazytown. By the end of the speech, he's put on a robe and halo(!!!) and is talking about everyone embracing his ideals. Mind you, this is to a bunch of men mostly wearing suits in a corporate setting. I've never felt so embarrassed to be an open source advocate.
I really appreciate what RMS is trying to do, especially since from his prospective the world is going crazy with the proliferation of DRM technologies and restrictions on what you can and can't do with stuff you own, but nobody is going to take him seriously if he tries to compare himself with Jesus. RMS is his own worst enemy.
Re:What bunk! (Score:2, Interesting)
So is the case with the book. When it is over, you have a copy, albait mangled and compressed, in your brain.
Re:What bunk! (Score:3, Interesting)
If such a DRM scheme was possible without tamper we would indeed have the perfect 'sharing' mechanism.
Re:What bunk! (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing Stallman is not is a lazy thinker. In fact, I charge you with being a lazy thinker. You who are too lazy to see your way past the status quo. Who, in endorsing Lessig over Stallman seem to think a simple modification of the principles of copyright are enough to reconcile the creator's need for compensation with the internet's inherent zero-marginal cost nature.
You are wrong and Stallman is right. Jack Valenti unknowingly said it best -- "You can't compete with free." What Valenti did not understand, you do not understand and Stallman does understand is that basic axiom - if you can't beat them, join them.
One such method of "joining them" is a modern version of comissioned art. The internet makes it easy to share copies with a billion of your best friends, it also has the potential to easily aggregate funding from a billion "patrons."
Take the defunct TV show "Farscape" as an example. Production costs per episode were on the order of $2-3M each. If the production company is able to guarantee $3.3M in revenue per episode that means a ROI of at least 10% which is decent in the TV world were 90% of the shows aren't profitable until they reach syndication.
So, how could the production company have earned that kind of revenue? Without copyright. Yep, you read that right. Here's the details:
As a SWAG, lets say there was a fanbase of 10M worldwide. If just one third could be convinced to pony up $1 per episode - that's $3.3M right there. By using the internet and some sort of paypal like system (pay attention to what google is doing in this area, they seem to be thinking right along these lines) they could collect that $1 per episode and put it into an escrow account. When the balance reaches $3.3M production begins. When the episode is completed, it is released to the public domain and the money is released to the production company.
Such a system benefits all parties - the production company is guaranteed a profit before they invest a single dime, something completely unheard of in the world of entertainment business. In return for that guarantee, the end result is made freely available to one and all so that the people who funded the creation can share it with anyone they want without legal or moral issues. Ultimately the free distribution of previous episodes acts as advertising for future episodes.
Furthermore it is 100% free-market, no government intervention required, no dollars wasted on the FBI tracking down pirates because piracy is meaningless in such a system. And if the show sucks? People are only out a buck, not a big a loss and the chances of the next episode being funded goes down - it is survival of the fittest with no middlemen like advertisers and "programming execs" to muddle up the difference between good shows and crappy shows.
So - that's one idea demonstrating why copyright is indeed obsolete. How about you come up with one yourself instead of hiding behind the status quo?
Re:Stallman slipping? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you define wanting to defend the ability of people to freely share as "ideological", then sure. But he is driven by extremely strong principles that he's unwilling to compromise on, as distinct from his being driven by slavish adherence to some doctrine, which is the suggestion that clearly comes through in your post.
I have never met Stallman and so cannot comment on the assertion that he's somehow like a crazy person. But this is irrelevant in any case. His ideas are relevant. Frankly, I couldn't care less whether or not Stallman is as crazy as Hunter S. Thompson on a binge or is the epitome of 'normal'--his arguments are either sound or not.
His views on copyright are clearly consistent with his views on software. While the addition of anti-DRM principles to the GPL 3 is debatable and perhaps ill-advised, it's also clear that patents and DRM could be used to circumvent the intent of the GPL while legally following it, and Stallman is attempting to address this.
Whether or not the views on any of this are 'mainstream' is also fairly irrelevant, and further is rather difficult to prove. The 'mainstream' appears simply uninterested in the subject, rather than actively supporting the status quo or the move towards ever-greater restrictions. Stallman would definitely support the move back towards the original constitutional limited copyrights, so I'm not sure why you contrast this view with his view. Yes, he wants the freedom for anyone to share any published work, and yes, this may effectively mean 'distribution', but it's certainly not easy to find a reasonable balance between the original conception of copyright, the technological advances that have radically altered the landscape, and the fact that limiting distribution effectively means limiting sharing (and handing all kinds of power to the big copyright holders). Stallman's ideas in reaction to those tensions are consistent with his views, and that they are perceived as 'radical' indicates how ridiculous the status quo is and the degree to which the parties with vested interests in strong anti-sharing mesaures have managed to control discourse on the subject.
Stallman may in fact be wrong about DRM and the GPL (although I'm not convinced of this) and wrong in his push for absolute right of distribution of copyrighted works (I'm not convinced of this either), but in neither area has he abandoned or altered his principles, nor is either argument inconsistent with his previous expressions of those principles. Accordingly, I have no idea where your claims that he's "lost his sense of perspective and his grasp on reality" are coming from--unless you have always disagreed with the principles he's espoused and are using ad hominem attacks to make them seem untenable due to the fact that they're promoted by 'a crazy person'.
Re:What bunk! (Score:2, Interesting)
Blah blah blah. Copyright is not something one is forced to enforce. There is nothign stopping saomeone from dumping millions of dollars into something pof value and then giving it away (see: ubuntu). There is nothing stopping the producers from doing this now, because no one is forcing anyone to enforce their rights of copy.
So put up the website and get crackin'. No one's stopping you from trying.
Re:What bunk! (Score:5, Interesting)
But Stallman's "facts" are impractial in the real world.
Last time I checked, copyright goes completely against the laws of physics. It's a human construct designed to make bits uncopyable. In the words of Bruce Schneier [businessweek.com], it's akin to trying to make water not wet.
Now maybe in a reality-free zone where everybody works for the common good and nobody takes more than his* fair share, that would be a reasonable thing to pass off as a fact.
Well, no. What you do, as with free software, is accept -- indeed welcome -- the fact that bits can be copied. You then charge people for your time. Sure - you won't be the next Microsoft doing this. But the good old capitalist economy will be better off if the Microsoft tax on basic business goes away. There's no communism here. This is the free market at work. Without artificial monopolies.
Rich.
Re:What bunk! (Score:5, Interesting)
Public domain means no copyright, which means all things are possible - even derivative works. If the development company does this for even one episode, then someone else - Spielberg, Warner, Fox, etc. - can take the Farscape line and produce their own episodes, or their own feature films.
Sure, to the public that paid for this one episode, that might be a benefit. But, for the production company, they have just lost all control over the future of one of their creative products, in return for a measly $300k.
I don't think any television or movie production company would go for such a deal. Now, if you allowed them to release under a creative commons license, such as one that allowed for free distribution but restricted derivative works, for-pay distribution, and public performances, then I bet you might find a company willing to take a shot at it. (And I'd be one person donating $1. Heck, make it $2 - I pay that for shows on iTunes anyway.)
Re:What bunk! (Score:3, Interesting)
They are both cases of "sharing" or "copying" (i.e. transmission of information). Our language simply does not deal well with the underlying processes for it was developed for dealing with physical objects and actions of people, not abstract theoretical things such as information. When we say "copy" we usually mean "to transmit a block of information with as little loss as possible". When we say "share" we mean this in a less strict manner as in "transmitt in any degree of fidelity". There are many words which we use to describe the underlying process, poorly and in most cases inaccurately. They are however all instances of the same process simply varying in conditions and methods of processing of that information.
We intuitively know what is copying and what is sharing. When we start bandying about definitions, that's when I start thinking that we're trying to rationalize behavior that is either wrong or illegal. I guess that it's like the old saying that it's not wrong unless I get caught.
See above. Our "intuition" is based on our simian brains evolved to deal with bannanas in the jungle. To deal with properties of information, like those of quantum phenomena, we need to make a serious effort to separate ourselves from our built-in macroscopic, physical world biases.
RMS's position is harmful, for once! (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't even read other comments yet as I'm writing this, but I'm sure that most other commenters would agree with the first part of that sentence, but rather fewer with the second.
Everybody knows that RMS's public posititions on Free Software tend to be uncompromising to say the least... and while I personally have often thought a more compromising position might be more productive especially in the short term, for his stated long-term goal of making
However, in this case I believe he is wrong. I order to achieve RMS's goals of ubiquitous Free software, one has to address the underlying economic assumptions made by society. The problem is that the dominant "neoclassical" view of economics is also very rigid and exclusive... it holds that its idealized "Free Market" is the best and only way to conduct economic congress, and Free Softare does not fit. This economic view is held by essentially all those in power or in control of the economic resources in our global civilization, and successfully sold to the mass of humans that compose this civilization.
What needs to happen before Free Software and many other urgently needed economic alternatives can fully succeed is that the noeclassical market's grip on the global economy needs to losen. For this to happen it is important to first show that viable alternatives exist, and can be to the benefit of our civilzation! That the rigid view of the Free Market is wrong and that we
The Creative Commons has done the remarkable job of helping all alternatives to succeed better without much more of a philosophical position than to say "alternatives are needed and exist". This is to the benefit of the whole spectrum of opinion and a detriment only to the dominant exclusivist one which needs to be toppled.
Yes, it does (very slightly) weaken the Free Software Movement's "GPL Brand", which derives some strength from it's position as the opposit extreme of the dominant one by labeling the all alternatives generically (all are "CC license with X provisions"). But this harm is minimal because the CC and the FSF operate in on different types of information, and aside from occasionally saying "just use the GPL", RMS has not really made any effort to address the clearly at least somewhat different needs of non-software media. In any case, any dilution of the FSF's position would come fairly and as part of a democratizing process.
So, surely RMS must admit that the overall benefit of the CC's well executed efforts massively outweighs any harm it does to his own cause.
: Jürgen Botz
Re:are they different? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a big fan of CC. I personally like the CC-BY license and use it for my own creations.
Re:Let the creator decide (Score:3, Interesting)
Mr. Stallman has been ranting for 25 years. A long time. Pushing the GNU message.
He has predicted doom and gloom for 25 years.
The sorry and sad part? Even though the GNU GPL 2 has been widely accepted, the "doom and gloom" has come to pass. As predicted. DMCA, Copyright Extensions, DRM.
25 years of Stallman activism -- can you use a new XBOX for anything interesting? 25 years of Stallman activism -- you can be brought up on charges for taking apart a toner cartridge. 25 years of Stallman activism -- are component HD actually useful for HD?
Maybe Stallman hasn't been strident enough?
Ratboy
Re:you, too (Score:4, Interesting)
Neither scientific advances nor engineering advances are protected by copyrights, so your argument is spurious.
And, in any case, we are talking about music here, not science or engineering. Having copyrights for the latest Britney Spears song is not going to advance science or engineering.
Those nations that have strong copyright and patent laws have developed far beyond those that make at most a token effort, while the latter commonly derive a significant part of their economic value from a black market in trading the former's work, rather than creating work of a similar calibre on their own.
There is a correlation, but you are getting cause and effect wrong. The US was infamous for ignoring copyright and patent laws during its best years. The US computer industry became strong before patents and mostly before copyrights on computer software became a factor.
So, economically successful nations have strong patent and copyright laws, but they have them because economically successful nations also have powerful industry lobbies that use patents and copyrights to exclude competition. And you only need to look at the UK to see what the long term consequences of that are.
MSFT +1.73... (Score:2, Interesting)
Has anybody stopped to think that Microsoft, and other proprietary ("Evil! Evil!") software companies out there are laughing all the way to the bank while RMS bitches about obscure licensing terms? Does anybody in F/OSS aside from the people writing the code realize that maybe 5% of the people who actually use the software really care about whether it uses a CC, GPL, LGPL, or whatever license?
F/OSS professes to want to provide the world with a viable alternative to the Microsofts. A noble endeavor to free society from the tyranny and oppression of Non-free software! You're not going to do that with a fucking license. You're going to do that by writing, and distributing, software that's good. Software that works , and works better than any other alternative. Software that presents a compelling vision of computing to the rest of the world. You can only license code after it's written... it's the quality of the code that will determine whether or not anybody wants to copy the code in the first place. Apache anyone? Perl? Python? Ant? There are plenty of other open-source projects out there that are de facto standards over any analogous Microsoft product in that market segment, simply because they're fundamentally better, or they fill a niche that Microsoft didn't think to try and fill.
What RMS is doing is stupid, and counter-productive. Focus on what *you* do, do it well, and release it with a license you agree with. Who cares if Microsoft keeps writing proprietary software, if you're not using it, affected by it, or supporting a style of software development you disagree with? If I want to spend $100 bucks a year buying new versions of Microsoft Money, well, it's my money, isn't it? If you have a free alternative that does the same or better job than MS Money, then tell me about it. Show it to me. But until then, why do you give a flying fornication what I choose to use? This is what I just don't get.
You say you want to provide a choice, and then you pitch a fit when people choose to do something you don't agree with? Hmm... maybe you should have told us it was a rhetorical question, then.