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Non-commercial licenses and political parties

(3 posts)

  1. johndoe
    Member

    Hi CC people,

    We had a discussion today about licensing our photos on Flickr. A friend licensed his photos for "non-commercial" as he doesn't want to open up the license for political parties he doesn't support. I can see his point, it could be unethically to give your photos for a cause you don't support or worse, you try to fight against.

    So, my question here... is a political party a commercial organization? They get subsidies and don't make profit, they don't "sell" anything and are not subscribed in the "commercial register" (at least in Belgium that is).

    Does anyone know something about this?

    Thanks!

    Posted 1 year ago #

  2. mlinksva
    Mike Linksvayer

    Hi johndoe,

    Good question. The best guidelines we have no regarding what constitutes commercial use are at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/NC but these are in draft form and don't seem to attempt to cover political parties, and probably other arguably non-commercial users as well. So there is no definitive answer.

    However, I would say that CC licenses, like almost all "open" licenses, are intended to be offered to the public, not everyone excepting people the licensor doesn't like.

    I think the enlightened thing to do is to let anyone use your work and demand attribution with a link (as every CC license facilitates) to you. If your enemy wants to go ahead and link to you, which presumably subverts their cause, great!

    If you can't stomach unforseen uses of your work, don't release it under a public license.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  3. johndoe
    Member

    Thanks Mike! I think you are right: "the enlightened thing to do is to let anyone use your work". That's indeed what it's all about.

    Posted 1 year ago #

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