August 30, 2006 4:00 AM PDT
Perspective: Creative Commons--an answer to the copyright debate?
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Creative Commons consists of a U.S. charitable corporation and a not-for-profit company in the United Kingdom. It believes that all-out copyright has failed to help many artists and entrepreneurs gain the exposure and widespread distribution they desire. As a result, a significant number of them are increasingly open to "innovative business models" that ensure a return on their creative investment.
This is where Creative Commons comes into play, by offering a set of licenses on its Web site, free of charge.
All too frequently, the debate over creative control has tended toward the extremes. On one end of the spectrum is a total control paradigm that Creative Commons describes as a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and where "all rights reserved" notices (and then some) have become the norm. At the other end of the spectrum is an anarchical world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are vulnerable to exploitation.
So it was that the people behind the concept of Creative Commons became concerned at the increasing disappearance of balance, compromise and moderation. Creative Commons was started in 2001 with the goal of reviving the driving forces behind a copyright system that once equally valued innovation and protection. The group proclaims that its ends "are cooperative and community-minded, but (its) means are voluntary and libertarian." Creative Commons seeks to offer creators methods to protect their works while also encouraging certain uses of them. It wants to improve a system marked by increasingly restrictive default rules with "a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright."
How will this work? The group has developed a Web application that assists people in dedicating their works to the public domain or allows them to retain their copyrights while licensing them for no charge for specified purposes based on certain conditions. The Creative Commons licenses are not designed for software. They instead are geared for other types of creative works such as music, film, photography, Web sites and literature. Creative Commons also has developed metadata that can be implemented to associate "creative works with their public domain or license status in a machine-readable way."
Thus, for online works, a creator can apply for a Creative Commons license from the group's Web site by choosing the license that applies based on preferences. The selection will include HTML code that will automatically generate the "some rights reserved" button with a statement that the work is licensed under a Creative Commons license or a "no rights reserved" button if the work is selected to be put into the public domain.
Creative Commons is gaining use and notoriety among prominent creators. In May of this year, the group announced that Pearl Jam's new single "Life Wasted" was to be offered to the public under its Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives license, enabling people internationally to copy, distribute and share the clip legally.
In the same month, under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license, people were able to legally remix and share their own personal versions of two different songs from the album "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" by David Byrne and Brian Eno.
It does appear that Creative Commons is offering the flexible copyright options it envisioned at the outset. As always, time will tell whether it will inspire a true movement that gains even more momentum.
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I want [b]CDs[/b]!!! I want something that's not going to deteriorate all that fast.
However, I [b]would[/b] prefer that the CDs have more than just ONE decent song on them. $15 for ONE song is [b][u]REDICULOU$LY GREEDY!!![/u][/b]
good counter-movement to heavy-weight and (often) short-
sighted rights owners continually pushing/lobbying for more
restrictive copyrights. Solving the current content/piracy/DRM
issues, however, requires more. Key problems are the lack of
transparency in rights ownership and the transaction costs
involved with licensing (and rights administration). Revenue
streams for rights owners will continue to shift to non-
traditional models (songs in video games, on web radio..rather
than sold on a CD). And there is greater competition for users
eyes and ears. For rights owners/creators/contributors to be
able to survive or thrive in this new world, transparency on
rights ownership and transaction costs of licensing need to be
radically improved. For this to take any significant effect, it
needs to apply to new rights (e.g. registered with CC) and
existing rights (signed and sealed for decades) - as licensees/
new legal services generally require exhaustive catalogues to be
able to compete with pirates. Hence, CC is an important part,
but only one part, to an urgently needed solution. And to find
such a solution is important - not only for all the creative folks
(very much deserving it), but also for culture in general (rights
are about content, and content is about culture). For all
interested in these issues, I recommend comparisons to Patents
(registration, international administration, etc), the Pho mailing
list, Digital Media Wire, and a chat with us guys at
Incubix.com :-)
The Science Commons button is at the top of the Creative Commons website page.
- Berne convention should be updatred
- by hadaso August 31, 2006 1:44 PM PDT
- Creaive Commons is great. But the goal should be that the Berne Convention treaty would be updated. The 19th century is over!
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(9 Comments)The Berne convention requires that every work is automatically considered copyrighted and receive full copyright protection. That what created the need for the Creative Commons licences in the first place. If works were not fully protected by default then there would be no need for CC licences in most cases.
The Berne convetion requirement that works automatically receive maximum protection - when in reality only a very small fraction really needs this kind of protection - has created an abnormal environment where the vast majority of authors need to do something to give up some of the maximum default protection, instead of the more reasonable alternative that those that want the maximum protection that usually do because it creates imcome from them would be the one required to make a very small effort of requesting this kind of protection.
The absurd situation is that people have to make an effort to learn how to choose and apply a CC license just to give up some "rights" that the law forces upon them (the CC foundation makes easier and cheaper than hiring a lawyer, but it still requires some effort). Most people that publish their work on the web are completely unaware of the need to license their work because common sense means that their mnaking it freely accessible implies that it's free. And consumers of culture learn to ignore copyright laws because they are irrational.
All this so that a small minority that can make money on a small number of works is free from filling a form once every quarter century or so...
Of course then those that want this maximum protection don't really get it because laws are not worth much if the public ignnres them.
Perhaps not requiring an author to register a work was a sensible thing in the 19th century. After all it might be quite difficult for some authors to ride a horse several days to the capital city, deal with all those government clerks, and all this just for having some kind of record buried in some cabinet of a government office. In the 21st century, however, it is not so difficult for an author to login to a website (say WIPO, or of a govenment agency in each country) and register the work, including a electronic version (or photo if its a physical object) that can be used to identify the pretected work.
So I think this should change and the way to change it is to adapt the Berne Convention to the 21st century. It doesn't mean to that every work should be automatically put in the public domain if not registered. But there should be a more reasonable ladder of rights, with the default protection closer to the bottom than to the top. No one can sell copies without license for the first few years (say 3 years). Some basic registration process for resticting noncomercial use and extending the term of protection for those who need this. Some more complicated procedure for getting much longer term of protection and for getting "additional protection".
Disney can have the law protect their rights to make a lot of money off Pixar animation in the 22nd century. Only I think they can be required to spend a little lawyer money and perhaps pay some taxes to get the extra protection from the public legal system. And they can get better protection if their work is singled out as one of the few works that were registered to receive this kind of protection than they would get with the current system that gives them exactly the same legal protection that I have for this post (that is automatically copyrighted in my name by law, and only licensed to Cnet by the TOS). It would be much easier for the law to enact harsh measures on infringement of a few works singled out for extra protection and to really monitor fair use than when there is nothing in the law that differetiates them from any other work.
And for all this to be possible, the Berne Convention should be changed, because otherwise no participating country can apply such laws. The result would be better protection for those who need it (money makers) and a freer world for all of us.