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.
First, let me be clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with selecting the "SA" license instead and what follows is not a takedown of -SA or of the copyleft model. There is a time and a place for a wide variety of copyright mechanisms and content licenses. However, since Freedom Defined adopts a tactic of NC-license-as-problematic, I'll continue with that framing mechanism.
Freedom Defined's Problems with NC
The "key problems":Of the above, only one and a half of these is actually even a potential problem.
- They make your work incompatible with a growing body of free content, even if you do want to allow derivative works or combinations.
- They may rule out other basic and beneficial uses which you want to allow.
- They support current, near-infinite copyright terms.
- They are unlikely to increase the potential profit from your work, and a share-alike license serves the goal to protect your work from exploitation equally well.
Point 1 is simply turning the issue around. It's not that SA content can't be used with an NC license; it's that SA decided to make itself incompatible with NC, so it's actually SA that has cut itself off from content that an NC license would otherwise have no problem using.
Point 2 is a potential problem. "Commercial" does not mean "profit", which means that people may be confused about what they're restricting.
Point 3 is pointless filler. Nothing about the NC use is germane to copyright terms. If you define copyright term as the problem, then CC0 is the only solution.
Point 4 is the half. It is true that it's unlikely to increase profit, but it wrongly assumes that the motive for the NC restriction is to seek profit.
Reasons Against NC that are Also Reasons *For* NC
Incompatibility. FD points to Wikimedia Foundation and the Public Library of Science as two 800-pound gorillas that won't accept NC works because their philosophy encourages commercial uses. They also imply that using SA instead will benefit the creator by requiring any for-profit companies to release their own work as SA. But who says either outcome is desired by an author? Like the locavore movement in food, maybe they don't want to be part of the corporate machine, whether for-profit or non-profit.
Basic and Beneficial Uses. FD talks about blog ads or subscription-optional sites (like Ars, presumably) and fallaciously asks if you "really want to stop all these individuals from using your work." But the NC license does not prohibit these uses. It's trivial to permit these and still preserve the NC attribute. The compilation example is nonsensical--yes, including one NC file among thousands of free files in a commercial product is a violation of the NC attribute. That's the point. The appeal to emotion about the developing world and the challenge of language barriers for requesting an alternative license is likewise weak. If their entrepreneurial spirit and poverty-ending dreams melt your heart and you want to allow it despite their lack of understanding of laws and the need for permission, then all you have to do is...nothing. Just let them use it, regardless of the license. That's always an option.
Profit. FD admonishes NC users about who they're really hurting ("not large corporations, but small publications like weblogs, advertising-funded radio stations, or local newspapers"). But the NC restriction isn't about seeking profit in my experience--in fact, even commercial uses are usually licensed for free. It's about stopping those large entities from steamrolling through on an overly permissive license that gives you no recourse to stop a reprint on the New York Times. If the smalltime blog or website or some random person wants to do something that's commercial in nature with the content, they can shoot off a quick email and ask. Even in tangled, multi-author projects where FD believes the licensing decision will be made only once (at the outset), it would be easy enough to set up a separate no-cost commercial license to grant on request. The SA option FD pushes gives the author no tools whatsoever to stop use by Big Oil or by Mega Pharma, but the NC option does--without prohibiting granting momandpop.com a license.
Reasons Not to Use a Share-Alike License
Incompatibility. The SA requirement forces subsequent users to surrender the choice of how to share their own contributions. This is an intentional part of the SA attribute: there's an expectation of reciprocity, which frankly should disqualify it from the "free culture" label at the outset. CC0 or CC-BY, on the other hand, have no such expectation. You can use it freely, and then do whatever you want with your own creations based on it, including selecting an entirely different license for those modifications or additions. The original remains just as free as ever. Many for-profit companies are not willing to surrender such tremendous rights and so they steer clear of SA/copyleft and will continue to do so as long as the business viability of copyleft remains so tenuous. After all, FD freely admits: "Any market built around content which is available for free must either rely on goodwill or ignorance."Basic and Beneficial Uses. Again, the SA requirement prohibits adoption in for-profit and non-profit corporate environments, walling it off from potentially valuable contributions. A team may wish to integrate it into a proprietary product, offering some of it back freely while retaining other parts for paying customers or other business arrangements. SA is an all-or-nothing approach that hinders the expansion of free cultural works by trying to leverage the fact that A gave it away for free into B giving something back to A for free.
FD frames this as, "Any company trying to exploit your work will have to make their 'added value' available for free to everyone. The company does not, however, need to share the income from the 'added value'", but fails to identify why anyone would pay for the "added value" if it were available for free.
Copyright Terms. While this argument is one I find meaningless for the reasons stated above, if FD believes in it, it applies equally for either SA or NC, so let's just use FD's wording verbatim and swap the type: While you may feel you are making a donation to the public domain when licensing your work under an -SA variant, you are effectively supporting the existing, extremely long international copyright terms.
In Conclusion
Ultimately, I'd say that "Free Culture" is clearly the goal of openness. CC0 and CC-BY qualify. CC-BY-SA, though, I can't be sure. The share-alike/copyleft principle is in itself a restriction on what you can and can't do with it. A valuable restriction that preserves everyone's access to an evolving and expanding body of work, yes, but still a restriction that fundamentally narrows the kinds of permitted uses.
FD calls it a "permissible restriction" like attribution requirements or protection of free access. But if the argument is that NC can't qualify because it cuts out some uses, then SA shouldn't either because it prevents some uses as well, while further reaching beyond the work being shared to other works. I can't see how a limit on non-commercial use ("don't make money off this but do whatever else you want") is materially more closed than a limit on derivative works ("you must allow others to profit on your work if they can, even though you can't guarantee making money on it yourself, and you must use these same terms") under the FD definition.
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