Notification Beyond Attribution
Would more creators apply permissive licenses to their works if the attribution requirement included some sort of notification that the work was being used (maybe call it CC BY-NO?). Professional courtesy, really. While there are simple ways to find your work online, such as via search engine, Google Alert, monitored downloads via registration or otherwise, etc., the onus is still on the original author and assumes the author would be aware of such tools. Yet reluctance to freely releasing creative work to the wilds of the Internet might abate if some sort of "reuse responsibility" beyond attribution were in effect-- perhaps so the original author can publicize the use, get in touch with the user or become inspired by the remixing. Fuzzy objectives, to be sure, although in the link below, it is noted that software creators might have technical reasons for staying aware of downstream uses. Still, a notification requirement begs the question of whether the original author could object within a certain period of time after notification, thus preventing the entire exercise in the first place, not to mention the question of what constitutes effective notification.
Thus, we're just back to permission-based regular ol' copyright or the obvious point that an author could have applied a more restrictive license in the first place. Containing notification as an enforceable license term could alleviate some creators' visceral concerns about sharing their work, but such notice without teeth might also result in a false sense of security despite the potential for community building in most cases. While this would seem especially true for authors of non-software creative works, a recent conversation with one is what made me consider the idea. Turning to the realm of software, upstream authors often become aware of downstream use via discussion forums or code repositories (that they participate in), as this post on the Creative Commons web site points out. It also mentions the idea of built-in notification mechanisms for software. While I agree that there are ample workarounds, tracking mechanisms and existing community norms in the software realm, I'm not quite ready to dismiss the idea for other creative works.
Thus, we're just back to permission-based regular ol' copyright or the obvious point that an author could have applied a more restrictive license in the first place. Containing notification as an enforceable license term could alleviate some creators' visceral concerns about sharing their work, but such notice without teeth might also result in a false sense of security despite the potential for community building in most cases. While this would seem especially true for authors of non-software creative works, a recent conversation with one is what made me consider the idea. Turning to the realm of software, upstream authors often become aware of downstream use via discussion forums or code repositories (that they participate in), as this post on the Creative Commons web site points out. It also mentions the idea of built-in notification mechanisms for software. While I agree that there are ample workarounds, tracking mechanisms and existing community norms in the software realm, I'm not quite ready to dismiss the idea for other creative works.
