To sum up, they need to:

-become an hardware maker
-become an ISP
-reverse-engineer our brain

And I want more of the MS Monster. He's so cuuute!

http://bayimg.com/image/cacdbaace.jpg

Brillian, Philipp!

Brilliant, indeed.

huh?

http://imgur.com/k5Zcg.jpg

Chrome OS for China

ha ha ha ha ha ha

Don't get it.

WAHAHAHAHA... LOL

Reminds me of the relationship between Advertiser, Viewer, and Television Broadcaster.

feed not working :-(

All I know is that they better not have Chrome browser installed by default, else no better than MS as far as EU competition council's concerned

Lorrinda, what is not working for you?

Bob, I don't know if its even possible to decouple the Chrome browser from the OS. Sounds to me like the browser is the OS. Meaning, when you boot the system, the browser or its components are the UI. And I assume that other compatible browsers can still operate within that framework as well.

Apple defaults to Safari. Its not that a company cannot default its browser, its that MS abused their monopoly position with the way they integrated/required IE.

> I don't know if its even possible to decouple the Chrome browser from the OS. Sounds to me like the browser is the OS. Meaning, when you boot the system, the browser or its components are the UI. And I assume that other compatible browsers can still operate within that framework as well. <

Yes, that's exactly the excuse MS used. Didn't work too well. ;-P

Hey Philip – this is absolutely brilliant and right on the money.

Heh heh – hope you wouldn't mind if we use your picture to explain Google to people!!

Cheers

Jan

> Heh heh – hope you wouldn't mind if we use
>your picture to explain Google to people!!

Jan, this blog and its pics have a Creative Commons license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Philipp, under an attribution non-commerical licence, is it okay to use the image if a blog uses adsense or other advertising?

Check out this James: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-07-n77.html

“You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You ... in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.”

To me that's as clear as could be, and says that items licensed "CC Non-commercial" can't be used to earn AdSense income. A content creator who licenses their work for "non-commercial purposes" is probably not expecting other people to be making money from their work.

But obviously some people have different opinions.

I was recently invited to complete a survey for Creative Commons on this very issue, so they are looking into it and will presumably clarify it one way or another in a future revision of their license text.

Meanwhile, I don't use CC-BY-NC on my websites, and when I license my own graphics for re-use I do so under CC-BY so that my work can be used by all, not just by those who like to "push the limits in grey areas".

> To me that's as clear as could be, and says that items
> licensed "CC Non-commercial" can't be used to earn
> AdSense income.

I see it differently. For instance, a site like this may use the occasional CC-licensed pic AND may display AdSense – however, this site is not "earning money" (directly) by displaying CC-licensed pics. Instead, the CC-licensed pic merely spices up an article (it is one of many things which added together may create a site earning money). In other words, it's a gray zone, and the more commercial your usage of the pic specifically gets – say, you're aiming to SELL it directly – the more you're moving into the no-go zone per the CC licensed.

Added to all that you need to consider that many sites which put up AdSense may not actually EARN the creator anything in profits, but that they just cover the server costs. A simple rule like "has AdSense or not" does not cover the gray-ness of all these cases IMO...

> Meanwhile, I don't use CC-BY-NC on my websites, and
> when I license my own graphics for re-use I do so under CC-BY
> so that my work can be used by all, not just by those who like
> to "push the limits in grey areas".

Of course you're free to do so and will certainly live the most risk free, but the fact remains, ALL of copyright (Creative Commons, traditional CC, even Public Domain stuff ["public domain in which country?"]) is a gray zone. Consider the law of "fair use", which grants us many rights ... it's the grayest of all colors. By saying "I will simply not go into that zone as it's gray" we give up a lot of our citizen/ user/ creative rights (i.e. all the gray to white gray shades). I will keep to my fair use rights even if it's a fuzzy area.

(By the way: a CC license pic does not restrict anyone's fair use rights. A blog post – AdSense or not! – may well make fair use of imagery if certain parameters as in the fair use law required are met. I think this is often forgotten when using CC stuff.)

Hmm, that's a good position to take Philipp. Indeed, I think we need worldwide, or at least Europe-wide reforms of licensing for the new age, but it is hard to know where to begin to be able to clarify them easily.

With "fair use", I agree with Philipp wholeheartedly. If we do not make use of it, it will cease to exist because corporations will exploit the judicial processes to defeat it.

But with CC it's quite different. The content owner themselves is freely licensing their creative output beyond what the law requires. I think it's fair to respect the creator's intentions, and I'm sure most people who license their work CC-BY are not expecting others to be making ad revenue from it.

Philipp, let me put it another way: by licensing your content CC-BY-NC you must be intending to exclude some kind of commercial use. But from your point of view, what's the difference between someone publishing the contents of this blog as a printed book (and possibly making money from the book), or publishing the contents of this blog on their own website (and possibly making money from AdSense)?

I just don't see the difference.

The previous discussion
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-07-n77.html
mentions CC-BY-NC content on Knol, with AdSense.

This is a fallacious argument because Knol content has two licenses: the CC-BY-NC license that the creator gives to other people, and the unlimited license that the creator gives to Google when they sign up to Knol.

Google has no "non-commercial" restriction on the unlimited license that they have been given by the content creator.

> Philipp, let me put it another way: by licensing your
> content CC-BY-NC you must be intending to exclude some
> kind of commercial use. But from your point of view, what's
> the difference between someone publishing the contents of
> this blog as a printed book (and possibly making money from
> the book), or publishing the contents of this blog on their own
> website (and possibly making money from AdSense)?

I think the difference is in the proportion.

Similar to how I would check the balance Use-of-Copyrighted-Work VS Use-of-Own-Work to "calculate" fair use or not... so too I would check the balance of CC-Content-Context-Commercial-ness-or-Something-Being-Part-of-the-Sale VS CC-Content-Not-Being-Part-of-the-Sale. If you would directly sell a CC image of mine, then I believe the CC image turns into the core of the sale, and that is commercial.

As I've illustrated in the example where I had asked Lessig & co: "Not that they’re saying you’re allowed to directly sell the CC content or anything, but you’re allowed to display ads if you use CC-NC content. But it’s also a matter of how you display ads, Lawrence disclaims, saying that there could be certain advertising schemes that take it too far."

But importantly, as I also disclaimed in that post:
"It should be noted though that the Creative Commons organization does not determine whether a judge would agree with their interpretation, in case someone would get sued over using NC content on an ad-supported site." When you will be sued for using CC content by a CC content creator, then what Lessig said during an interview may not really convince the judge... the judge may merely look at the CC license text itself.

PS: I wonder how the CC organization will clarify this, if ever, and whether they'll ever release additional license options. Even something harmless as a single additional license could cause new problems because it might convince people that the old licenses should be interpreted a bit differently from how they were popularly used...

I think "commercial use" means that you are making money from the image, which is not necessarily true when you show ads next to the image.

When I think about it now, if a newspaper uses a CC-BY-NC image it feels the same as another blog doing so, and (in my opinion) that should be okay. It's complimenting the article, not selling newspapers, right?

But if Coca-Cola uses your CC-BY-NC image in an ad campaign, that feels different, though essentially they are both commercial.

Perhaps a Commercial-Non Branding licence would be a good addition, so that it can be used for commercial purposes, but not in the branding of a site of company?

> Perhaps a Commercial-Non Branding licence would be a
> good addition, so that it can be used for commercial purposes,
> but not in the branding of a site of company?

One thing to keep in mind, there's already these clauses in CC:

"For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page."

"You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)."

Imagine Coca Cola both prints your site's URL on the coke can, but also that you don't endorse them...