It's more a feeling thing. I don't like that CC provides so many licenses some of which I wouldn't call "free" licenses. Now even a sampling license was written, a translation license will follow and so on. This is so lawyerish. And I just stumbled accross this text:
http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/print/0,17925,608619,00.html
which unintentionally captures all my reservations against CC: It says
"Yet if Creative Commons is successful, sharing will become even more pervasive. And a lot more money will be made along the way."
The article is rather unclear in how "a lot more money will be made". and, I'm not so sure that would be a bad thing.
I have the feeling, that CC is in fact about exactly this: Somehow find a new big-business-model for a world where lossless digital copies already are common (sic!).
hmm. I see it as something else. The main point about copyright is control. Even the GPL is a copyright, and is about control.
The main point of the CreaCom licenses, as I see it, are that artists can retain _some_ control, but still be able to allow people rights for personal use and share amongst themselves.
the idea of retaining _some_ control is to protect yourself from being commercialy exploited (thinking of how Mac OSX exploits BSD), and to keep your stuff from being the moto song of something that has mass public exposure and cuts across your ethics or wishes. I'm not so sure, but I maybe Twisted Sister does not approve the use of their song, "We're not going to take it", in Arnie Schwarzeneggers gobernatorial race.
I like, that the FSF always was not so much about business models but held to that ethics goal of a more free society (for programmers).
not true. read stallman, and you will see that he was a capitalist from the beginning. lessig is aiming at something else I think.
I hope it's becoming clear, that this isn't a rational or legally correct descicion, but about a bad feeling I have with CC. It wouldn't stop me from providing content for a community project like that -- provided one of the free CC licenses is chosen, that is: Commercial use must be allowed. Also I would insist on ShareAlike.
I hear ya. I can't think of a perfect license either. I haven't read all the docs myself, but I think CreaCom license might be heading a decent direction.
best -august.