Licenses for Building Instructions

[Lasse D]

It happens now and then that people on Ebay and elsewhere try to sell models built by AFOLs, such as recently seen by Jurgen's Little Devil: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=58204

Now. People like Jurgen and others make instructions free for use without asking for money, but wants you to credit him when you modify, sell or copy his work.

This is beyond fair. People put a lot of work into instructions without asking for anything but credit. Still. This is too much to ask according to some Ebay sellers, so I would like to find a way to better prevent people from violating this rule.

I don't have any experience in this area, but after a little bit of research, it seems that using a license like "Open Publication License: Attribution" is exactly what is needed. It allows you to do exactly what I described and holds up legally.

My questions are. How exactly do we put a license onto our instructions? And is this the best way?

I have added a poll for that second question :)

[roamingstop]

Some form of creative commons license would seem fair. In the world of open source programing; you can build a script which does a specific set of functions, using common keywords. There are plenty of different ways for that script to work (implementation) etc, but in the end the exact coding you use is your copyright. If someone else comes along to extend or improve the algorithm, they should state in the copyright the original source, and that they are making an improvement.

Often you cannot sell that source code; or the function built around that source code, without first contacting the authors for their permission.

There may be technicalities with using a creative commons license around Lego bricks; but in the end those who are creating the instructions / models are building a specific concept, using a subset of common building elements. Someone could build exactly the same concept completely on their own, but it is unlikely to be the same build, unless it is a specific function (or algorithm) for which there may only be one or two solution.

So a creative commons license would seem to be the most obvious solution. However there are many different flavours and it would be good to debate the differences. And in the end, the Ebay sellers probably have no idea of the CC license means; although it would be slightly easier for a take down request.

Edited August 2, 2011 by roamingstudio

[vexorian]

Err, each MoCer should decide.

GPL is not so great for creative stuff. There are Creative Commons licenses that have copyleft.

They could also choose a CC license with no copyleft. Or OPL, maybe.

Copyleft has the advantage that if someone makes improvements and distributes the modification then they would also have to share the improvements with the same openness as you did originally.

Or they may actually issue licenses that forbid copying, if they want.

Explain how your work may be distributed without adding a license

Then it would actually be a license, but one you yourself invented and probably without formality. The lack of formality threatens to allow people to bypass your wishes.

We should not add licenses to instructions at all

When you do this, then it is assumed that you have default copyright over it. Edited August 2, 2011 by vexorian

[Lasse D]

I'm not saying that this should be forced on builders. I'm simply looking for a preferred way to handle this since we keep getting into the same problem over and over again.