Is Creative Commons Flexible Enough for Historians?

Gumby and Monkey, by Joe (CC-BY-SA)

Creative Commons licenses are incredibly useful. They're easy to use. More and more people understand them. It's even possible to do web searches of Creative Commons content making it easy to find content you can use with confidence. The Open Access movement, particularly in the UK, seems to be promoting Creative Commons licensing as the best way to move towards open access to research, because it means we can (largely) leave lawyers out of it all and implement a standard set of licenses that everyone understands (or should understand). I see the practical merits in that and am a big fan of keeping costs at a minimum. But I also see the counterpoint, that many historians feel Creative Commons just isn't designed for them (see my previous post on Alternative Licensing). Sometimes that feeling is based on a misunderstanding. Sometimes, I think, it's justified. In the interest of opening that discussion, I thought I'd present a couple of scenarios in which I believe Creative Commons is not flexible enough for historians looking to manage the rights associated with their research.

For all of these scenarios, let's assume the work in question is an academic monograph written solely by me.

1) Supporting certain derivations

What I want: I'd like people to be able to translate my book into a range of formats (braile, French, audio, stage performance) without having to ask me, provided that every effort is made to ensure that the translation accurately represents the arguments and positions of the original, and the translator is listed as such on the title page or where applicable. This reuse is only permitted if the entire work is included in the translation.

Why this is important to me: I'm a big supporter of accessibility; I wouldn't want anyone working to provide access to my work for the blind to feel they were prevented from doing that good work by a legal restriction.

Why CC is not sufficient: CC-BY would allow this type of reuse. But it would also allow someone to translate only the introduction, or to pick and choose parts and rearrange them in a way that changes my message. I'm worried if they do that someone might get the wrong idea about my work. You may not think that's important, but it's my book and my reputation, and I am worried. I could use a 'no derivatives' license, CC-BY-ND, but I do want to allow certain types of derivatives under certain conditions.

2) Supporting certain commercial reuses

What I want: I'd like professors creating course readers to feel empowered to use parts of my book with their students. I'd also like private individuals to be able to use individual chapters in edited collections with modest print runs (let's say less than 500). I don't want Evil Publishing Ltd to be able to do the same without asking.

Why this is important to me: I'm a big supporter of ensuring students and my colleagues have access to my work. I also think it's important to support small entrepreneurs. But I know that the publishing industry is big business, and if they're going to make big money from my ideas, I think it's fair to ask that I get a cut of that. Anyone who has ever licensed stock imagery to use on a website or in print knows that the price of the license changes with the number of 'impressions'. In essence, the bigger the advertising campaign, the more money they want to charge you to use the image. This merely attempts to apply those types of restrictions on my book.

Why CC is not sufficient: CC-BY wouldn't give me the power to put the restrictions on Evil Publishing Ltd that I believe is important. Forcing me to use CC in this instance forces me to give away rights I would like to hold onto.

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Those are just a couple of simple examples, which I don't believe are far fetched when considering licensing and reuse from the historian's perspective. For them to work, I think at the very least we need to adopt a CC-BUT license, in which creators are allowed to add restrictions to their license. As I said before, if the concerns of licensors aren't met, they won't get on board. I'd like them on board, but that may need to come at the expense of what seems on the surface to be a simple CC solution.