Add Creative Commons and public domain licensing to the permissions system.

Proposal:

Add Creative Commons and public domain licensing to the permissions system.

For every asset that may be saved, allow the creator to mark the asset as: Copyright / Creative Commons / Public Domain. As much as is feasible, the permissions system should be adapted to enforce or encourage compliance with these options.

A distribution system for these objects should be added to the Find system.

== Advantages ==

This would be a much more flexible system of indicating intent of a creator of an asset, and would carry along with it all of the advantages discussed at:

http://creativecommons.org

It would likely cause an increase in the creativity and sharing of objects and knowledge within SL.

It would be a method of educating the thousands of SL residents to the advantages of alternative copyright systems, and a social experiment to see how those systems work.

== Implementation ==

If marked Copyright, the permissions would work as they do currently.

If marked Public Domain, all permissions for modify, copy and transfer would be enabled. This is useful to indicate the intent of the creator even though it can be done with the current system.

If marked Creative Commons, the following permission settings would become enabled:

* Allow commercial uses of your work? Yes / No

If No, any derivative work (or one that contains the object) can only be sold for $0 or $1.

* Allow modifications of your work?

- Yes

- Yes, as long as others share alike.

Would prevent the unchecking of the modify permission for that asset and derivatives (but would not affect containing objects.)

- No

== Distribution ==

In order to facilitate the distribution of these assets, the system should also include a checkbox, "Publish".

Checking this box, would publish the item, description and license terms in a database searchable with the Find button. The asset may be copied from the Find menu into inventory at the press of a button.

== Rating ==

Published items could be rated, or the popularity could be tracked as a means of helping people find useful objects.

== Community Standards ==

Spamming of the published items list, or using it for other purpose than presenting potentially useful assets would be considered inappropriate.

Vote on this at:

http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=966

ZS

There is a Creative Commons License Machine in SL already! You can find them at the Nota Bene notary offices in Thyris 14,178 and on Democracy Island.

The Creative Commons License Machine will walk you through the CC questions, and then generate a 'badge' prim just for your work. The badge will display the license to anyone who touches it, and offer to take them to the creativecommons.org deed page on the web.

The badge also allows you to record 'metadata' about your work: author, title, description, tags, etc... If you attach the badge into your work (you can resize it), or place it next to your work in SL, then you (as owner) are also given the option to sending the metadata to an on-line catalog service that Nota Bene is putting together.

See http://www.notabene-sl.com/cc/

We've already gone into great detail as to what restrictions can be implemented in the SL rights scheme in another thread, and "do not sell for more than $X" can't be done, because scripted sales take place in two separate transactions.

Zarf, I didn't realize that your badge posted metadata to a web site. That looks like a good approach to solving the distribution problem I try to address in my proposal.