CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 2, Group 2
Alternative Intellectual Property Models
Creative Commons and the GNU General Public License are two alternative intellectual property models that are used in the software industry, and are now becoming more frequently used for non-software projects. Organizations and projects like Lulu, Wikibooks, and Flickr, utilize these alternative models and facilitate the creation of intellectual works. Examine the ethical considerations surrounding the practice of self-publishing and creation of collaborative works under alternative licenses.
Copyright vs. Copyleft
Simply put, "copyleft" is all things related to alternative intellectual property models that are less restrictive, but more complex than the classical concept of a copyright. If a creative work has been "copylefted," then the creator of that work undoubtedly has chosen to be more permissive with what others may do with that work. All rights not reserved, as it were. This is not the same as declaring a work part of the public domain, in which all rights are relinquished. The concept is best visualized in this spectrum graphic presented on the Creative Commons website.
Origins
Copyleft was popularized as a direct result of complex frustrations of software developers with existing copyright laws and practices during the 1970s. Richard Stallman, of the Free Software Foundation, who valued the free and open exchange of ideas wanted to preserve the environment that he experienced while working at MIT's AI Lab in the early 1970's. During that period, software vendors stopped shipping their products with the source code included, instead distributing the compiled executables, thus making user modification or improvement impossible. The intended purpose of this new practice was to help prevent unauthorized/unlicensed use of their intellectual property. Stallman's reaction to this, was to work within the established rule of law to present an alternative view of software development and innovation, thus creating the GNU Project and eventually the GNU General Public License.
GPL (GNU General Public License)
Synopsis
The GNU or General Public License, now in its third version, is a licesne primarily used by GNU programmers and programmers developing free software packages. The license was written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. The GNU project is an operating system that in Unix-like in way it looks, but it is composed of all free software. The GPL it self is a great example of a copyleft license with requires derived works form the project to be available under the same copyleft license. The GPL grants the user of the software free software definition. The means that the user is free to copy the software, change the software, and redistribute the software.
Related Licenses
- GNU Lesser General Public License - is also a free software license that is a compromise between the original GPL and other permissive licenses. The main difference between GPL and LGPL programs is that LGPL programs can be linked to non GPL programs. Then the non GPL program can then be redistributed as long as it is not a derivative work. If it is it has to account for reverse engineering and debugging.
- GNU Free Documentation License - is a copyleft license for free documentation. It gives the readers the ability to copy, redistribute,modify a work, and that all derivative works be available under the same license. Copies can actually be sold but if more than 100 copies are made the source code must be made available. The Free Documentation License is mostly used for manuals, textbooks and other reference materials, it is also the license that Wikipedia uses.
- Affero General Public License - a free software license with a strong copyleft background, dealing with network server software. Very similar to the GPL, except that it makes the user have to have the source code available to any networked user of the AGPL'ed work.
Creative Commons License
Synopsis
Creative Commons is a Tax-Exempt charitable organization dedicated to defining the range of possibilities between full copyright and public domain. Their licenses offer a "some rights reserved" copyright. The corporations goals are cooperative and community-minded in a voluntary method.
Optional Conditions
Attribution: 
Non-commercial: 
No Derivatives: 
Share Alike: 
- Attribution (by) - This license allows others to distribute, alter, build upon, even commercially, as long credit is given to the original creator.
- Attribution Share Alike (by-sa) - This license contains the same terms as Attribution but also ads the terms to the new creation.
- Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd) - This license allows for commercial and non-commercial redistribution, as long as the creation is unaltered and credit is given.
- Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc) - This license allows others to distribute, alter, build upon the work as long as it is non-commercial and credit is given to the original creator.
- Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) - This license contains the same terms as Attribution Non-commercial but also ads the terms to the new creation.
- Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) - This license allows for non-commercial redistribution as long as the creation is unaltered and credit is given to the original creator.
License Expression
There are three methods for the license to be expressed for the work.
- Common Deed - plain-language summary of the license with icons.
- Legal Code - fine print that will ensure the license will stand up in court.
- Digital Code - Machine-readable translation that helps search engines and other applications identify the work by its terms.
Licensing in the Wild
Public attitudes on the nature of intellectual property are constantly evolving, and so the diversity of copyright licenses that creators attach to their works increases constantly. The complexity and differentiation amongst these licenses upon works seem to show that creators do not agree that "all rights reserved" is the optimal attitude to adopt at publication time. When a creator makes the decision to publish their work, they may decide to use an existing license from this license bestiary from GNU, to draft their own license, or avoid license-language altogether by reserving all rights, and instead dealing with any public inquiries strictly upon request.