Deadline extended on Creative Commons "non-commercial use" survey

Creative Commons has had such a great set of responses to their challenging, though-provoking survey on what constitutes "non-commercial use" that they've extended the deadline until Dec 14 -- you've got six more days to weigh in!

Creative Commons is conducting a study on the meaning of “NonCommercial” and you can weigh in by answering a detailed questionnaire on the subject. We’ve extended the deadline for participation to December 14 (originally December 7) as we’re still getting healthy response via all those who blogged about the questionnaire this week.

NonCommercial study questionnaire extended to December 14

[#1 posted by MrJM , December 8, 2008 10:37 AM]

Cory,

I took the survey and, as requested, provided my own definition for "non-commercial use" and then applied it to the scenarios that followed.

Imagine my surprise when I got to the end of the survey and found that the CC definition was virtually identical to my personal definition.

My take-away from participating in the survey:

Either 1) the CC definition of "non-commercial use" is very intuitive to this citizen of the 21st Century, or 2) reading your work on this topic -- BoingBoing posts and articles -- over the years has internalized the CC definition of "non-commercial use" and made it a personal norm.

I guess I can't rule out a third option: 3) All of the above.

In any event, it was an interesting and highly recommended experiment.

-- Mr.JM

[#2 posted by zuzu , December 8, 2008 11:13 AM]

Interesting, since I brought this to Larry Lessig's attention when we spoke at that Flavorpill / CC charity event where Diplo and Girl Talk performed, and at the time he politely dismissed it as something like a trivial question.

Basically, I had asked, "Well, what isn't a commercial activity?" For example, some people get twisted in a knot if you earn revenue from Google's AdSense using non-commercial CC content. Also, Wikipedia precludes including non-commercial CC material because they want to be able to sell disc versions of their archive for distribution in places where Internet access is not readily available. Commerce isn't limited to only when money is involved, but any form of mutual exchange.

(Income tax, in this regard, can have some bizarre outcomes, such as taxing astronauts and the President.)

So, for example, if you grow your own vegetables, you get a benefit from growing them and harvesting or consuming them instead of buying them (or being a paid a salary to use to buy them), but it's imputed income so not counted as gross income. If you wash your dishes, you don't have to pay tax on what you save from paying a maid to do it. Etc. With me? On the other hand, if the veggies were sold, tax is owed on the money made--it's income. Now also, if there is barter, both sides of the exchange owe tax: if you give a dentist veggies in exchange for his fixing your teeth, you are both supposed to pay income tax on the value of what you received. (Incidentally, some jerks favor "taxing 'imputed rental income,' i.e., the money purportedly saved because a homeowner owns and occupies a home rather than renting it out. But I don't know why that idea makes sense, let alone so much sense that the absence of such taxation is an "egregious" "loophole."" There are also those who argue that the imputed income rule means that "acquisition of virtual assets from a massively multiplayer game could be taxed by the IRS."

And think of jobs like astronauts. These guys get paid to take trips to outer space, which is a perq if I ever heard of one--after all many people are willing to pay millions to take a ride on a spaceship. Seems to me that means all normal career-employee astronauts owe income taxes of millions to the feds, which means that the space program would have to be dismantled--or only use millionaires as astronauts, in which case NASA could perhaps make a profit.

[#3 posted by Kaleberg , December 8, 2008 7:09 PM]

I took the survey and found the choices offered to be a bit limited. I put in a lot of don't knows and not applicables because no better answers were available. One thing that did come from taking the survey is that the issue, to me at last, is not really commercial versus non-commercial, but rather business rather than non-business. For example, a church is not commercial, but it does conduct business. If a church declared that one of my photos was of their god and put it on the altar of their churches without my consent, I would be upset because they are using in the conduct of their business. If an individual decided the same, and put the photo in a private altar, I would have less concern. This is not a completely bogus example. Look at what happened to Haile Selassie!