While I struggle to come to terms with the seeming impass present in these recordings, it seems to me that it represents an inverted issue to the one you outline… one that might prevent the growth of free culture, other than the growth of a dominant and almost imperial free culture.

Hope I’m making a little sense, enough to raise your interest to help me out with coming to terms with my issue with BY SA. Its late, best I go to bed.

No TagsDavid has published an intriguing draft of a possible book chapter, written in the form of a historical review at a future date, looking at the 2005 – 2010 OpenCourseWars. As one commenter already pointed out, this form of fictive, entertaining …

1. The court voiding the NC clause, despite the precedent it would create, specifically, that the content creator cannot stipulate the terms of use of the content,

and

2. That, after having done so, the court would not continue down that same path by voiding the Share Alike clause.

In my alternative version of this story, the NC license is saved by the brilliant oratory of a young rebellious lawyer (call him Larry Jr.) with his now now famous catchphrase, “Vagueness doesn’t resolve.” If a license is vague, he argued, then the court cannot, for no good reason, make it more precise. The publishers did not demonstrate that they had *right* to the NC texts, hence, “the vagueness doesn’t resolve.”

In my other alternative version (call it Alt-Ver-B) after the NC clause is abolished, the court *does* rule that the SA clause can be voided. This was the result of a really slimy young lawyer (call him the anti-Larry Jr.) who argued that, since the court already recognized that the publishers had an inherent interest in the content, they had an inherent interest in voiding any clause that acted against that interest. Since the SA clause was vague (they were, after all, selling it – which is not even remotely ’sharing alike’), the by-now-famous dictum, “vagueness resolves” came into play, granting the right of the publishers to assert ownership over the materials.

As one industry wag commented at the invitation-only victory party after the ruling, “If they had simply abolished the NC clause in the first place, we would have done the same thing and it would have saved us two expensive court cases.”