Anti-Capitalist Attribution Cooperative License
A downloadable License
By exercising the Licensed Rights (defined below), You accept and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Anti-Capitalist Attribution Cooperative License ("License"). To the extent this License may be interpreted as a contract, You are granted the Licensed Rights in consideration of Your acceptance of these terms and conditions, and the Licensor grants You such rights in consideration of benefits the Licensor receives from making the Licensed Material available under these terms and conditions.
Section 1 – Definitions.
A. Adapted Material means material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor. For purposes of this License, where the Licensed Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording, Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is synched in timed relation with a moving image.
B. Adapter's License means the license You apply to Your Copyright and Similar Rights in Your contributions to Adapted Material in accordance with the terms and conditions of this License.
C. Capitalist Corporation means any for-profit company limited by shares employing more than fifty people.
D. Copyright and Similar Rights means copyright and/or similar rights closely related to copyright including, without limitation, performance, broadcast, sound recording, and Sui Generis Database Rights, without regard to how the rights are labeled or categorized. For purposes of this License, the rights specified in Section 2(B)(1)-(2) are not Copyright and Similar Rights.
E. Effective Technological Measures means those measures that, in the absence of proper authority, may not be circumvented under laws fulfilling obligations under Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty adopted on December 20, 1996, and/or similar international agreements.
F. Exceptions and Limitations means fair use, fair dealing, and/or any other exception or limitation to Copyright and Similar Rights that applies to Your use of the Licensed Material.
G. Licensed Material means the artistic or literary work, database, or other material to which the Licensor applied this License.
H. Licensed Rights means the rights granted to You subject to the terms and conditions of this Public License, which are limited to all Copyright and Similar Rights that apply to Your use of the Licensed Material and that the Licensor has authority to license.
I. Licensor means the individual(s) or entity(ies) granting rights under this License.
J. Anti-Capitalist means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation for a Capitalist Corporation as defined in Section 1(C). Anti-Capitalist also means
You are one of the following:
1. An individual person, laboring for themselves.
2. A non-profit organization.
3. An educational institution.
4. An organization that seeks shared profit for all its members, and allows non-members to set the cost of their labor.
5. An organization with owners, where all owners are workers and all workers are owners with equal equity and/or equal vote.
You are not one of the following
1. Law enforcement.
2. Military.
3. An organization that is working for or under law enforcement or military.
K. Share means to provide material to the public by any means or process that requires permission under the Licensed Rights, such as reproduction, public display, public performance, distribution, dissemination, communication, or importation, and to make material available to the public including in ways that members of the public may access the material from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.
L. Sui Generis Database Rights means rights other than copyright resulting from Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases, as amended and/or succeeded, as well as other essentially equivalent rights anywhere in the world.
M. You means the individual or entity exercising the Licensed Rights under this License who has not previously violated the terms of this License with respect to the Licensed Material, or who has received express permission from the Licensor to exercise rights under this License despite a previous violation. Your has a corresponding meaning.
Section 2 – Scope.
A. License grant.
1. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, the Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material to produce, reproduce, and Share Adapted Material for Anti-Capitalist purposes only.
2. Exceptions and Limitations. For the avoidance of doubt, where Exceptions and Limitations apply to Your use, this License does not apply, and You do not need to comply with its terms and conditions.
3. Term. The term of this License is specified in Section 6(A).
4. Media and formats; technical modifications allowed. The Licensor authorizes You to exercise the Licensed Rights in all media and formats whether now known or hereafter created, and to make technical modifications necessary to do so. The Licensor waives and/or agrees not to assert any right or authority to forbid You from making technical modifications necessary to exercise the Licensed Rights, including technical modifications necessary to circumvent Effective Technological Measures. For purposes of this License, simply making modifications authorized by this Section 2(A)(4) never produces Adapted Material.
5. Downstream recipients.
a. Offer from the Licensor – Licensed Material. Every recipient of the Licensed Material automatically receives an offer from the Licensor to exercise the Licensed Rights under the terms and conditions of this License.
b. Additional offer from the Licensor – Adapted Material. Every recipient of Adapted Material from You automatically receives an offer from the Licensor to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Adapted Material under the conditions of the Adapter’s License You apply.
c. No downstream restrictions. You may not offer or impose any additional or different terms or conditions on, or apply any Effective Technological Measures to, the Licensed Material if doing so restricts exercise of the Licensed Rights by any recipient of the Licensed Material.
6. No endorsement. Nothing in this License constitutes or may be construed as permission to assert or imply that You are, or that Your use of the Licensed Material is, connected with, or sponsored, endorsed, or granted official status by, the Licensor or others designated to receive attribution as provided in Section 3(A)(1)(a)(i).
B. Other rights.
1. Moral rights, such as the right of integrity, are not licensed under this License, nor are publicity, privacy, and/or other similar personality rights; however, to the extent possible, the Licensor waives and/or agrees not to assert any such rights held by the Licensor to the limited extent necessary to allow You to exercise the Licensed Rights, but not otherwise.
2. Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this License.
3. To the extent possible, the Licensor waives any right to collect royalties from You for the exercise of the Licensed Rights, whether directly or through a collecting society under any voluntary or waivable statutory or compulsory licensing scheme.
Section 3 – License Conditions.
Your exercise of the Licensed Rights is expressly made subject to the following conditions.
A. Attribution.
1. If You Share the Licensed Material (including in modified form), You must:
a. retain the following if it is supplied by the Licensor with the Licensed Material:
i. identification of the creator(s) of the Licensed Material and any others designated to receive attribution, in any reasonable manner requested by the Licensor (including by pseudonym if designated);
ii. a copyright notice;
iii. a notice that refers to this License;
iv. a notice that refers to the disclaimer of warranties;
v. a URI or hyperlink to the Licensed Material to the extent reasonably practicable;
b. indicate if You modified the Licensed Material and retain an indication of any previous modifications; and
c. indicate the Licensed Material is licensed under this License, and include the text of, or the URI or hyperlink to, this License.
2. You may satisfy the conditions in Section 3(A)(1) in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in which You Share the Licensed Material. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a URI or hyperlink to a resource that includes the required information.
3. If requested by the Licensor, You must remove any of the information required by Section 3(A)(1)(a) to the extent reasonably practicable.
B. Cooperative
In addition to the conditions in Section 3(A), if You Share Adapted Material You produce, the following conditions also apply.
1. The Adapter’s License You apply must be an Anti-Capitalist license and conform to the specifications in Section 1(J) to the extent reasonably practicable.
2. You must include the text of, or the URI or hyperlink to, the Adapter's License You apply. You may satisfy this condition in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in which You Share Adapted Material.
Section 4 – Sui Generis Database Rights.
Where the Licensed Rights include Sui Generis Database Rights that apply to Your use of the Licensed Material:
A. for the avoidance of doubt, Section 2(A)(1) grants You the right to extract, reuse, reproduce, and Share all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database for Anti-Capitalist purposes only;
B. if You include all or a substantial portion of the database contents in a database in which You have Sui Generis Database Rights, then the database in which You have Sui Generis Database Rights (but not its individual contents) is Adapted Material, including for purposes of Section 3(B); and
C. You must comply with the conditions in Section 3(A) if You Share all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database.
For the avoidance of doubt, this Section 4 supplements and does not replace Your obligations under this License where the Licensed Rights include other Copyright and Similar Rights.
Section 5 – Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability.
A. Unless otherwise separately undertaken by the Licensor, to the extent possible, the Licensor offers the Licensed Material as-is and as-available, and makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the Licensed Material, whether express, implied, statutory, or other. This includes, without limitation, warranties of title, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, absence of latent or other defects, accuracy, or the presence or absence of errors, whether or not known or discoverable. Where disclaimers of warranties are not allowed in full or in part, this disclaimer may not apply to You.
B. To the extent possible, in no event will the Licensor be liable to You on any legal theory (including, without limitation, negligence) or otherwise for any direct, special, indirect, incidental, consequential, punitive, exemplary, or other losses, costs, expenses, or damages arising out of this License or use of the Licensed Material, even if the Licensor has been advised of the possibility of such losses, costs, expenses, or damages. Where a limitation of liability is not allowed in full or in part, this limitation may not apply to You.
C. The disclaimer of warranties and limitation of liability provided above shall be interpreted in a manner that, to the extent possible, most closely approximates an absolute disclaimer and waiver of all liability.
Section 6 – Term and Termination.
A. This License applies for the term of the Copyright and Similar Rights licensed here. However, if You fail to comply with this License, then Your rights under this License terminate automatically.
B. Where Your right to use the Licensed Material has terminated under Section 6(A), it reinstates:
1. automatically as of the date the violation is cured, provided it is cured within 30 days of Your discovery of the violation; or
2. upon express reinstatement by the Licensor.
C. For the avoidance of doubt, this Section 6(B) does not affect any right the Licensor may have to seek remedies for Your violations of this License.
D. For the avoidance of doubt, the Licensor may also offer the Licensed Material under separate terms or conditions or stop distributing the Licensed Material at any time; however, doing so will not terminate this License.
E. Sections 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8 survive termination of this License.
Section 7 – Other Terms and Conditions.
A. The Licensor shall not be bound by any additional or different terms or conditions communicated by You unless expressly agreed.
B. Any arrangements, understandings, or agreements regarding the Licensed Material not stated herein are separate from and independent of the terms and conditions of this License.
Section 8 – Interpretation.
A. For the avoidance of doubt, this License does not, and shall not be interpreted to, reduce, limit, restrict, or impose conditions on any use of the Licensed Material that could lawfully be made without permission under this License.
B. To the extent possible, if any provision of this License is deemed unenforceable, it shall be automatically reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. If the provision cannot be reformed, it shall be severed from this License without affecting the enforceability of the remaining terms and conditions.
C. No term or condition of this License will be waived and no failure to comply consented to unless expressly agreed to by the Licensor.
D. Nothing in this License constitutes or may be interpreted as a limitation upon, or waiver of, any privileges and immunities that apply to the Licensor or You, including from the legal processes of any jurisdiction or authority.
(Attribution: The Anti-Capitalist Attribution Cooperative License is heavily based on Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, as well as The Anti-Capitalist Software License by Everest Pipkin and Ramsey Nasser, and Left Copy Revolutionary License 2.14 by Mat K. Witts.)
| Status | Released |
| Category | Other |
| Rating | Rated 4.7 out of 5 stars (26 total ratings) |
| Author | Takuma Okada |
| Tags | anti-capitalist, license |
Comments
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Wouldn’t this include lawyers and judges?
So this is a contract which prohibits representation, adjudication, or enforcement?
Is this a joke?
Not at all a joke. In many countries such as the United States, judges are part of the judicial branch of government instead of the executive branch, which is where we find law enforcement and the military. Many, if not most, lawyers do not work for law enforcement unless they are prosecutors, lawyers employed by law enforcement agencies to bring criminal suits.
This license has been added to the social domain license list. RFC.
it seems that website is not up
Is there a kind of lay-person version fo this for understanding? It is just a bit hard to keep up with all of the information,plus it would probably help creators making stuff derived from work under this licence to undesrtand "Oh, it's OK to make my cool hack of this game.
And how would I go by applying this license? All I need to do is copy it into whatever I am making?
I think I understand the spirit of this license, but the title is a bit misleading, since it's not really anti-capitalist, it's anti-big company (smaller businesses (under 50 people, privately owned) are ok). It also includes strictly non-economic organizations under the "capitalist" umbrella such the military and law enforcement, structures which are an integral part of running non-capitalist systems across time, so, odd to single them out.
This would also prevent creators from listing their products for sale on larger platforms that take a cut of the profits, or else force creators to list their products for free on these platforms, which I think is an important disclaimer for creators to be aware of. It is perhaps the only truly anti-capitalist aspect of this license.
Smaller businesses are not all included due to Section 1-J, which specifies what kind of smaller businesses are considered anti-capitalist. Military and law enforcement in many countries as they are right now support capital interests, *not* the interests of the people. It isn't a military-industrial complex for nothing.
Also not sure why this license would prevent creators from listing products for sale on larger platforms that take a cut? If you can explain that part that'd be great.
(edit: fixed typo, for listing -> from listing)
Sure thing! Thanks for replying, and explaining that, I could be misunderstanding something for sure.
I believe that section 1-J just sets aside additional entities that should be considered capitalist or “anti-capitalist”, but doesn’t alter the description of a “capitalist corporation.” So, a for-profit company that is not limited by shares or is smaller than 50 people would not be considered “anti-capitalist” according to the license definitions.
My comment about militaries and law enforcement wasn’t about what they do, but that they aren’t a strictly capitalist invention; they’ve been around in all civilizations and forms of government across time, including anti-capitalist governments present and past. Because of that, I thought it was strange that generic “militaries” and “law enforcement” were set aside as specifically pro-capitalist in the definitions.
Ok, on to the explanation about not being able to list products for sale: section 2-1 says that the licensed material must be used “for Anti-Capitalist purposes only.” And “anti-capitalist” is defined as “not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation for a Capitalist Corporation.” So, any big marketplace app, like steam for example, makes money (in part) by taking a cut of the sale in exchange for the time and effort it takes to maintain and improve the platform and make the listed products reach a wide audience. Selling something on a platform like that (and like Itch) would be working toward monetary compensation of a capitalist corporation. In order to avoid that and abide by the terms of this license, you would have to list your product for free in order to prevent a monetary exchange for the corporation.
The only loop hole I can see is that maybe you could argue that your product isn’t “primarily” intended to benefit a capitalist corporation, and so any monetary compensation that occurs is incidental.
Anyways, if you read all that, thanks for taking the time to interact about it! I will be googling “military-industrial complex” soon to learn more about that :D
You are misunderstanding a really important part of 1-J:
"
4. An organization that seeks shared profit for all its members, and allows non-members to set the cost of their labor."
This is actually an anti-capitalist company, which do exist. In a capitalist company, profit is not shared equally and certainly not shared according to how much work is done by individuals. CEO's do very little yet make anywhere from 300% to 1000%+ of what the people below them do. This is one of the major causes of inequality in the world, and why capitalism is corruptive to societal structures in the long run.
Think of it this way: any factory worker is the one who is actually running the machines and fabricating the product. Their labor creates the product. Management of their labor does not. And yet factory workers get very little of the value of their labor, while the CEO and other corporate leaders get almost all of it.
Without workers, there is no value, but capitalism doesn't recognize this.
Sharing profits equitably is a sign of a non-capitalist company, and is very rare in America, but they do exist. Some of these types of companies are called co-ops, and I do believe there are indie devs that have such co-ops as opposed to working under a AAA company.
Other signs include a more anarchist rather than hierarchical structure, i.e. everyone gets a vote in how the company fares (more anarchist) rather than just a few people or even a single person (more hierarchical).
As for military/police, what a license exists for is the state of the world as it is now. It doesn't make sense to write a license for present-day software in accordance to the state of the world 200 years ago, or even 50. These days the military and police are co-opted by capital interests, so no anti-capitalist license can actually include them. Project Palintir and ICE aren't things you can support without having blood on your hands in a literal way.
As for your explanation about not being able to list products for sale on, say, Steam: that doesn't hold water because they aren't the ones who are using this license. So let's say we have Bee Company, and they publish a game using this license to Steam. Bee Company is the one addressed in this particular license, and Bee Company itself is the one that needs to not pursue capitalist profiteering in this case. Just because Steam takes a cut doesn't invalidate the license.
Another license could be written to explicitly outlaw this sort of thing, but that license would actually be much worse than your misunderstanding of this one: nothing on the internet can be run without a cut being paid to a massive capitalist interest. Such a license would be pretty dead in the water, and that is at least one reason that kind of restriction isn't present in this one.
Licenses are long and painful to read, but kind of necessary when you set out to create your own business. (That and IP, copyright, trademark, etc.) It is the only reason I poke through them still, even though I'm no longer capable of running a business. I know they can be confusing as hell, which is why I support initiatives to create readable versions of licenses. For instance, I really admire the Commons licenses because they have very understandable versions that don't require parsing through and considering the interactions of different sections and possible situations.
Anyways, that's why I interacted here. You did sound a bit hostile towards the end of your original comment, but I recognize that feeling ^_^ so I thought it was worth discussing things.
Be careful as you read more about things like the military-industrial complex. It will make you incredibly, incredibly sad. If you wish to pursue this, I recommend thinking about why the Americans ended the war in Vietnam, and why they never ended the war in the Middle East. Wars are profitable for certain areas of industry, and how do you propagate a forever war without incurring the wrath of your citizenry? Why, you arrange things so that many cannot receive healthcare or an education without participating in the military, declare that to be a voluntary action (despite it being a kind of socio-economic blackmail), and make it so that it seems to most people that anyone who "volunteers" to fight is doing so of their own choice rather than the choice of capital working closely with government. And any such volunteer who dies? Their death is transmuted into "sacrifice", and humans have a strong tendency to forgive any acts committed by such "sacrifices."
And that's just the bare surface I've scratched there. It goes really far, really deep, really damn depressing.
Have a good day! Er, that sounded ironic, but I really do mean it.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response, and the interaction here, it has been good stuff.
I think you are totally right about section 1-J-4, in fact I think Valve might operate that way? So yes, absolutely, large companies can be structured in other ways that are much more flat and share ownership/responsibility/risk/profit more uniformly and would perfectly fit the descriptors in this license. My (small) point was that it seems like small, for-profit, more traditionally structured, "capitalist" companies might also be able to fit the descriptors, and I think that's still in the spirit of the license which also wants to allow individuals benefit from the product.
I completely misunderstood the "directionality" of the license, and so that was really helpful for me to understand that! Thanks for taking the time to explain that. I did not mean to sound hostile, but I think that makes it double cool that you chose to interact anyways about it.
And thanks so much for the warning about researching. It seems like an important thing to understand, and I think it's important to really understand even the most horrible things, in order to best know how to combat them. But, and especially these days when it is easy to fall into depression, I was truly touched that a stranger would seek to keep me from something even as small as sadness. So thanks for that too :)
I too, sincerely, hope you have a good day!
CEOs do very little? Who conceived of the company, business or product? Who got it off the ground? Who worked longer hours than rank-and-file workers protected with caps like 37.5 hours per week, who could go much longer, on evenings and weekends? Who assumed most of the risk when the company was small or not widespread and not making money?
Capitalism is PROPERLY explained here.
Yikes. That video severely undermines your points because it relies on several logical fallacies (particularly a strawman) to make its arguments.
Regarding your comment itself: you confuse CEOs with entrepreneurs or founders, which are not automatically the same. The CEO is hired by the board of directors, who are in-turn elected by the shareholders; that's it. To assume the CEO is necessarily the founder is like mistaking the pope for Jesus.
Who conceived of the company/business?
Frustrated/inconvenienced people frequently devise their own solutions; entrepreneurs are a small subset that choose to charge for their solution.
Who conceives of the product?
Designers/inventors/engineers do and are frequently not CEOs.
Who got it off the ground?
"Off the ground" is equivocal; this point seems void for vagueness.
Who worked longer hours...weekends?
This question seems loaded with presuppositions, but let's put that aside for now. First of all, don't pretend CEOs universally put in long hours. Second, there's a huge difference between an employee told they'll be fired if they don't work 80+ hours and a founder who chooses to donate more of their life to promote their business. If the founders believe in the cause that much, then their volunteering is its own reward, not a justification for endless extracting excess value from the labor of others once the firm is finally successful.
Who assumed most of the risk... not making money?
The financial risk is assumed by whoever's putting in the money, which, again, is not necesarily the CEO. Venture capitalists or angel investors are making the biggest gamble because it's their money that's being spent yet they're not directly driving the company.
In summary, please shore up your understanding of fallacies so you can make better arguments. Also, I strongly suggest you compare and contrast the terms CEO, founder, inventor, and angel investor to better understand how they are distinct from one another.
Yo this kicks ass