Users of Microsoft Office can now choose one of the Creative Commons licenses for work created in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Microsoft and Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works, partnered with 3sharp LLC to develop and test this new copyright licensing tool, known as the Creative Commons add-in for Microsoft Office.
This is the first i’ve heard about a license for work created in Office Apps. In Office 2003 (or XP), what license does your work default to when you save?
I suspect there is no such license.
This sounds to me like Microsoft is preparing to make DRM more common in the average user’s life. Wean user into creating a DRM policy for files they create, and they won’t be as suprised when files others(read: riaa,mpaa,etc) create have similar schemes.
Or maybe i’m completely off-base. can anyone bring some light to this?
Edited 2006-06-21 23:33
DRM is not inherently evil. DRM can be used to properly control documents to avoid files being digitally tampered with. (Remember the news on Digg a long time ago about the man who had one figure striked off of his contract and he only found out by an old copy of the word file he had)
MS adding creative commons support is an absolute excellent and forward thinking idea. Microsoft deserve praise for this; after all, why didn’t the Open Source alternative think this up first, they are all about document freedoms.
DRM may not be ‘evil’, but it is inherently unworkable and stupid.
If I have the ability to see/hear the data, I can copy the data and remove the DRM – even if its hard to do so, it can by very definition be copied.
Of course, DRM is not to stop you from copying something – it is to stop you from altering the original. In the enterprise this is absolutely of critical importance.
Its not clear that this is any type of DRM, although I am always suspicious about what MS does. I also dont know how this really works. Copyright is automatic upon creation. Therefore, copying a file is technically illegal if you dont have the rights to it. And you would have to have a copy of it to open it and find out what the license is on it. The author should really be telling you that the file is CC before you download it.
I have a feeling DRM will lead to hardware with hidden features. It was tough finding documentation on buring CD-ROMs for my operating system–I found a bit of kernel debug output with the right numbers on a web-site, but it only works on one of my two CDW’s. This sort of thing can be the nail in the coffin for preventing new operating systems.
http://www.losethos.com
Enjoy it while it lasts.
“I have a feeling DRM will lead to hardware with hidden features.”
Last time I checked the hardware features weren’t being hidden, instead Intel and AMD decided to say from the get-go that they’d eventually be sticking DRM chips on hardware and it would be illegal under the DMCA to remove them. I think VIA is still clean though, and if that remains true then I might try out of of their mini-itx boards when I have the cash.
What sucks about DRM chips is that there’s only so many companies making motherboards, and they all seem to be warming up to the idea under the belief that upcomming commercial operating systems will require such things to boot. By now everyone should know how companies who’s products are readily available in most local stores are scared to be incompatible with both Windows and OS X. It may become necessary to special order DRM free motherboards or violate the DMCA, and I for one have no trouble with the later.
We’ve always had the choice to place anything created in Word, Excel or Powerpoint under any license we choose. If I write a book in Word, I can ‘license’ it any way I please, because it’s *my* book. If I want everyone to be able to read it, I can place it under the CC license if I want. Microsoft providing some tool to write that on a document isn’t changing anything at all.
Maybe they’ve just been assuming everyone is as anal as they are until recently.
from what I read and my understanding of them I can see how this can be a good thing. Think about the aspiring author that writes in his spare time. He could write one chapter at a time and put it on a web site for people to download and share where nterest in his story could grow. When the book is complete he could remove the files and provide a link to purchase a copy professionally printed or converted into electronic book form.
Sure, that might work. But Microsoft would add exactly what in that procedure?
Does this mean I could previously licence my work only under Microsoft-sanctioned licenses, which left CC out?
Will I be able to publish my novel under a licence of my own devising, or will I have to reach an agreement with Microsoft before?
This has to be the silliest piece of news I’ve read today.
Edited 2006-06-22 09:50
So you need MS’s permission as to what license you can use to distribute your intellectual property created with their tools? Well alrighty then, nice of them to let you give it away. Maybe it’s just a start, first they let you give away your code and then someday maybe work their way around to giving out their own.
There are only a few comments so far, still, it’s clear how little knowledge people have about licenses and ways to license their own works. Also, “why didn’t the Open Source alternative think this up first” smells like crap. First, one could always use any license one wanted before now and in the future, CC, GPL, FDL, whatever, just need to place the text in the document or attach it. Second, MS didn’t do anything special, just allows a dialog box selection – and a very limited selection – of license use. Maybe that’s good in a way, if this makes Windows people look up and understand the different licenses out there. Other than that, this is hardly worth the validation checking hassle.
What the hell? This has *NOTHING* to do with licensing. From the article one could be lead to believe that this was some groundbreaking move by MS to allow a different licensing for *your* work while it’s actually just an, admittedly nifty, plugin that makes it easy to chose from different license presets.
MS has no say in how you license the works you create with their products. Is this some kind of lame attempt at starting a flamewar?
Basically the Creative Commons allows non-DRM file sharing. They also have a non-commercial License for those who want to take a percentage of profits.
CC is an anti-DRM License that was created specifically in 2002 to allow people to freely share their music, digital art, and writings; especially on the Internet, so this is noble of MS to have this option.
CC is an anti-DRM License that was created specifically in 2002 to allow people to freely share their music, digital art, and writings; especially on the Internet, so this is noble of MS to have this option.
You may be onto something here. MS may need the option of including licensing beforehand in the document, if they plan to DRM every document by default. The CC option would be a signal to Office that every Joe, Dick and Harry is allowed to open a DRM Office file.
I wouldn’t call it noble though. It might just be a technical necessity to be able to create a write-once, read-many document under the “Paladium/NGSCB/Trusted Computing” scheme. In other words a solution to a problem that wouldn’t exist if there was no DRM.
Noble, why? Which option? Is Microsoft noble to give me the option to send a letter I wrote to my own granny?
Microsoft cannot not offer me an option to license my work as I well please, nor deny it. My own work is mine, and I can license it in any way I want, whether Microsoft offers me the option or not.
MS is the most noble company that has ever graced my keyboard. They are knights shining with glorious armor blinding all to reality while spoon feeding a custom fit rationalized version soaked in the entrails of backdated monetary technology under the watchful eye of a fascist regime.
Actually only ODF support would be worthy of mention. What if I put it under te CC and I can’t open it up on non-MS christened readers.
MS is getting into robots now. What happens when they lock customers into the robots eyeballs for reading stuff. Of course after the robots slaughter everyone it would be because they weren’t part of the isolated standard, and money because they need to ‘feed their families’ too, of course.
More ignoble.
As a matter of fact the CC is probably not legally compatable with non-standard filesystems I would have to think. If not they should put that clause in incase they haven’t noticed. Maybe CC hasn’t understood DRM properly. Great that people can share files but if they can’t open the dam things up.
You’re confusing a license with a standard.
CC lets you license anything you create, including closed and proprietry formats like JPEGs, MPGs and so on. Enforcing open standards is outside the scope of the Creative Commons.