Creative commons?

[crimperman]

Most Christian media has a standard copyright licence on it. This means there are restrictions on what you and I can do with the work and is partly the reason behind something like CCLI which is almost and industry in its own right . For example there are usually limits on how many copies of sheet music you can make and playing of recorded music in a Church requires permission. All in all it's a bit of a quagmire really.

There is also a set of licences available for the types of content we have in mind which frees up the user and the author from managing such restrictive terms. They are called Creative Commons (CC) licences. All CC licences permit the performance, duplication and redistribution of the work with varying degrees of freedom. For example you can choose an Attribution clause which means any reproduction or distribution must attribute the work to the original author. You can also restrict duplication and distribution to whole copies of the original work and prohibit derivative work. You can restrict all this to non-commercial users only and finally you can insist that an recipient of a derivative or reproduction of the work is given the same rights and freedoms as those accompanying the original.

More information on CC licencing can be found at http://creativecommons.org

What do you think of the idea of using these licences on the project. Would you like them to be accompanied by some clarification of what you can do with the work you are downloading. For example, next to a song you might see "You are permitted to use this in worship in any setting as long as it is non-profit" or next to a sermon illustration you might see "You can use this in your own sermons as long as you attribute the original author"?

What form should these hints take?

An alternative is to re-work the CC licences into Christian ones with specific terms applicable to church use.

Questions, comments, suggestions?

[Adam W.]

Let the historical record show that creating a Christian-specific alternative to the CC license was my idea.

I think that is the way to go for the simple reason of PR. While I think the CC is awesome, some people associate it with leftists, hippies, geeks, and radicals (which would still make it awesome, IMO). If we had something like a ChristianCommons license (hey- there's a name idea.... and I want credit... maybe I should TradeMark it), it would be easier to quickly explain what we're doing. We could frame the discussion around our Christian values, instead of the secular values of the CreativeCommons people. This would make us more than followers of a secular trend (which is how most Christian progressives appear).

BTW:
christiancommons.com, .org. and .net are all taken (by the same website, that isn't really using any of them...
So maybe that name is out.

[crimperman]

Let the historical record show that creating a Christian-specific alternative to the CC license was my idea.

Happy to admit you were the first to put it in writing

In my research into this in the past I've found that christiancommons, worshipcommons etc are all taken as domains. One other idea I had was Christian Copyleft. This takes the idea from the FSF's copyleft principles which are to be found in Creative Commons etc. but that's slightly crossing into What's in a name territory.

I'm all for good PR as long as in this case it promotes the freedom and not necessarily us or the project. I'm also not too keen on unnecessary splintering and forking so we'd have to come up with some good arguments to fork CC in this way. As CC grows more people will be aware of it and thus it's use here could provide a familiarity which helps all concerned. There's an similar debate over the proliferation of free and open source software licences. Whatever we use it should be crystal clear to both providers and users what permissions apply.

[DJones]

As you've previously mentioned involvement in the Free Software realm, you may know of Jono Bacon of Canonical and Ubuntu.

He has a band who release their music under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[crimperman]

As you've previously mentioned involvement in the Free Software realm, you may know of Jono Bacon of Canonical and Ubuntu.

He has a band who release their music under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Indeed and I have met and spoken alongside Jono a few times too. As far as I am aware his music is not Christian-based is it? That's doesn't make it necessarily bad but really we're trying to concentrate on Christian resources here or at least ones which would directly affect this project. Otherwise we'll be here all day listing all the great free content out there.

[DJones]

As far as I am aware his music is not Christian-based is it?

I'd say his music wasn't Christian based, I was just using the licensing of his music as the example for the Creative Commons licence, purely on the basis that I'm aware of his involvement with free software etc, so the licence he'd chosen could be applicable.

Regards

Dave

[crimperman]

As far as I am aware his music is not Christian-based is it?

I'd say his music wasn't Christian based, I was just using the licensing of his music as the example for the Creative Commons licence, purely on the basis that I'm aware of his involvement with free software etc, so the licence he'd chosen could be applicable.

Cool . I'm all for good examples of CC uses (I know of at least one successful author who publishes all his - excellent - stuff online under CC and still sells shedloads of books), I'd just prefer it if we can find some Christian ones - sadly I feel we may have less success in that area as the Church seems to be lagging behind somewhat. Why that is I don't know but it's something this project is aiming to change.

thanks
Ryan

[d0nk3y]

I think Open licensed items (be it music, clipart, fonts, photos, audio, video, 3D objects - whatever) for the Christian community is a fantastic idea.

My thoughts on the licensing is that a CC license would be the best way to go. I'm not sure that creating a 'Christian' specific version of the CC license would be a good idea as (I think) it would dilute the impact that releasing open content could have.

CC licenses are well known amongst those for whom it matters - introducing another seems like A) a lot of extra work for very little gain (as far as I can see), and B) reinventing something that already exists for no real reason.

I see what you mean with the whole 'hippie' thing but I wouldn't see that as a bad thing - unless the CC community started taking things in a particular direction that was at odds with Christian beliefs and thereby became something we *wouldn't* want to be associated with.

Just my 2p anyways.

[crimperman]

Okay I have a further idea on the licencing thing. Perhaps we could use the CC licences but in a way that explains how the work might be used in a Christian or Church-based context. So whereas a CC:By-NC licence might say:

You are free:

• to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

• Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
• Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

We might describe it as...

You are free (without cost) to:

• Perform or show this work (e.g. in a Church meeting)
• Pass it around or make copies (e.g. for a worship team or among churches)
• Adapt, change or include it in another work (e.g. to suit your Church's needs)

Under the following conditions:

• You must acknowledge the original creator. author with an appropriate reference to where that original can be found
• You must not use the work in a commercial environment (e.g. an event where attendees pay to attend or on a CD recording which is then sold)

We could then link to the original CC licence or a page which details the CC licence. I'm concerned on the legal ramifications of creating a licence of our own. Also I really don't like the idea of making something really similar but "Christian and not secular". I'm a great believer of Christians not making their own versions of non-Christian media etc. (e.g. Christian TV,radio, music awards). I feel we should be operating as Christians within the world and not in our own version of it.