The Share-Alike vs. Non-Commercial Debate

One of the more interesting and seemingly intractable debates surrounding open source/open access is the growing volume of displeased chatter within the copyleft community around "NC" restrictions in licenses. A lobbying effort to recognize the "superiority" of share-alike provisions has organized and a group called Freedom Defined published an explanation of their view on "Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons -NC License".

Creative Commons, which supports multiple variations, recently linked to the discussion, adding the "Free Culture" label to help people choose, but wisely stopped short of endorsing the label as a uniform goal.  As CC puts it,

"CC hopes to promote a more open culture than “all rights reserved”. Some creators want to allow very broad use of their works. Some wish to allow some uses but restrict others. We believe that all levels of openness are worth encouraging and supporting as an alternative to “all rights reserved.” While we hope that some creators will use the non-free licenses as a stepping stone to greater openness in the future, CC encourages sharing under any of its licenses as a way to create a more open culture."

The "free culture" licenses are CC0, CC-BY, and CC-SA (and combinations thereof).  The "non-free" licenses are those with NC or ND mixed in.

ND, which prohibits derivative works, obviously limits cultural expansion (but allows you to use the work intact without the SA or NC restrictions).  The NC version acts as a bridge to a more open community and it acts as a stopgap against commercial exploitation, which may enter a grey area with some kinds of projects. However, the SA license has its own problems that are not recognized by Freedom Defined.

E-Books and Economics

With today's news that MacMillan has settled with the DOJ over its pricing investigation, the discussion about what exactly is going on with this industry is back on the front page (for limited values of "front page"--no doubt most people don't care at all).

One comment I've often seen is some variation on the idea that what the publishers and Apple were doing was taking power away from customers and handing it back to publishers.


Almost.  It shifts power away from distributors back to the publishers.  This, of course, is why the publishers signed on in the first place.

In neither the Amazon nor the Apple model is the customer the one with power.  Amazon is using its weight to crush competing bookstores by purchasing books from publishers and then selling them at a loss in order to encourage people to invest in their store.  Apple, on the other hand, tried to use its weight to stop Amazon, which actually would have eliminated the Amazon price advantage and made it possible for multiple bookstores to run digital versions, because they'd have to compete on things other than trying to match Amazon's negative margin.

The question is which is better for the customer, and is one or both illegal?