4.0/Draft 1

4.0 has now been published; this page is maintained as an archive of past discussion.

Welcome to the Public Discussion of Draft 1

This page provides information specific to the public discussion of the first draft of version 4.0. The draft presented is the result of discussions started during the CC Global Summit in Poland (Sept 2011) and a lengthy, unprecedented requirements gathering process. Both forums resulted in valuable suggestions from CC affiliates, community and stakeholders. Our goals and objectives are ambitious, and we welcome your ideas and opinions to achieve them.

Please submit comments on the license-discuss list. We expect the comment period to remain open until late May with Draft 2 published by mid June 2012.

(Note that for purposes of this first public discussion, we are publishing the draft of BY-NC-SA (international) only. BY-NC-SA contains most of the elements necessary to build the other licenses. Look for complete drafts of the other licenses later in the process.)

Treatment of issues and proposals in Draft 1

The discussion topic pages tracked on our 4.0 wiki contain clearly marked explanations for how the relevant issues have been generally handled in this draft. Additionally, the numbered proposals on each topic page have a corresponding note if the topic was addressed in some manner in this draft. We have also included an occasional prompt to highlight where additional feedback is especially requested. We will do the same for later draft(s).

Core policy and drafting considerations

The 4.0 licenses are intended to operate in largely the same manner as prior versions, granting conditional permission to use the licensed work where permission is required by copyright, and where those rights are held by licensor.

Additionally, the license:

* affirmatively licenses neighboring rights, including database rights, on par with copyright and subject to the license conditions (note that the definition of neighboring rights is tightly defined in this first draft for the reasons described under Feedback requests, below);

* waives moral rights and other copyright-like rights that could prevent use of the work as allowed by the license, but only when legally possible to do so, and then only to the extent necessary to allow the licensed work to be used as contemplated; and

* internationalizes and simplifies the legal code wherever possible, particularly for attribution and other conditions (modeled in part on the 3.0 Australian port), to better ensure the license is more widely available and acceptable for use by adopters worldwide where possible.

Expanded explanations and details for this draft on these particular issues are noted prominently on relevant 4.0 wiki pages: scope of license; moral rights; attribution; and internationalization.

Feedback requests, including topics and policies still under consideration

We want to hear from our community on some important drafting and policy decisions in the current draft:

* Definition of Adaptation (Section 1(a)): Do additional uses merit special mention in the definition so as to be considered an Adaptation (or not) for purposes of SA and the ND licenses?

* Neighboring rights versus ancillary rights: We tightly defined neighboring rights, which are licensed, and more loosely defined ancillary rights, which are subject to a limited waiver. Our purpose in doing so was to focus discussion on the problem of ancillary rights generally, and to see whether this division and differing treatment is a feasible solution. Are there established neighboring rights that ought be licensed (and subject to conditions) that might now fall into the category of ancillary rights (that are waived and not subject to conditions)?

* Moral rights: Does the limited waiver (where possible) work legally? As a a matter of policy?

* Attribution (Section 3(a): Should more flexibility be built in for massive collaboration projects? Are the requirements understandable such that likelihood and ease of compliance increases?

Additionally, there are a few important topics that we have left unaddressed in this first draft in order to gather more input from the community prior to making a formal proposal:

* Technical Protection Measures: Please help us identify use cases to inform a later proposal. Ideally, these will be based on demonstrated needs (or lack thereof) by licensees for a change from the prohibition in 3.0.

* NonCommercial: More discussion will be necessary to advance current proposals or arguments for deviating from the current definition in 3.0. Concrete proposals and use cases are sought, including specific clarifying use cases that could be added to the definition similar to file sharing, which is already included.

* Warranties and disclaimers: Does the current proposal work as a baseline, much as the 3.0 (international) license provides? Would an Additional Terms clause similar to Section 7 of GPLv3 assist with this and other issues?

Provisions for other Licenses in the Suite

For Draft 1, only BY-NC-SA is rendered in full. The other licenses will be derived (fairly easily) from it for Draft 2.

For example, to create BY-SA, (1) remove the NC definition and related NC terms, (2) add a reference to Compatible License in Section 3(c)(1), and (3) add the following definition of "Compatible License" in Section 1 (note that the language is the same as in 3.0, but adjusted to use the current terminology from BY-NC-SA Draft 1):

"Compatible License" means a license that is listed at http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses that has been approved by Creative Commons as being essentially equivalent to this Public License, including, at a minimum, because that license: (i) contains terms that have the same purpose, meaning and effect as the License Conditions of this Public License; and, (ii) explicitly permits the relicensing of adaptations of works made available under that license under this Public License or a Creative Commons jurisdiction license with the same License Conditions as this Public License."

Please join the CC license-discuss list or add your input directly to the CC 4.0 wiki.