Slashdot Mirror
Creative Commons
mpawlo writes "Creative Commons just opened to the public. From the initial statement: "We are building a Web-based application for dedicating copyrighted works to the "public domain," and for generating flexible, generous licenses that permit copying and creative reuses of copyrighted works." Read also the article in the New York Times." There's also an older story that summarizes the concept behind the site, although I think their FAQ's do a pretty good job. A page at the Berkman Center documents some of the development of the project (although it doesn't render properly in konqueror for whatever reason). rbeattie describes it like so: "At O'Reilly's ongoing Emerging Technology Conference today, Creative Commons gave a presentation about their new service, an "easy way for people (like scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and authors--from world-renowned professionals to garage-based amateurs) to announce that their works are available for copying, modification, and redistribution." They've provided an online wizard where you can choose the type of license and restrictions you want to put on your work, and then they'll provide a circled CC logo you can put on your website with links to the license. In addition they are providing search functionality for those looking for public domain content - the license is provided in "machine readable form" (read: XML probably) so that it can be easily indexed/searched."
...or has this already been done?
There are also other sites dedicated to this idea.
"Shining a Spotlight on Sharing"
I learned in kindergarten
Find your ol' Prison Buddies at InMates.com!
tcd004
I just read how this turkey (btw that's Barry Dennis, 410-591-1900) loves spam. Sheesh. We need more projects like this to combat the village idiots out there.
This is a good thing.
Unless various legislation sponsored by the xxAA's gets passed, making greed mandatory
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's a tragedy that places like this must exist. Copyrights are so far from their original intent in the United States, they are almost alughable. Almost.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. The wealthy smoke the real stuff.
For most starving artists (well, at least those who have starving for some time) they'd jump at the chance to make it big and forgo sharing their works publicly.
Once the first future star gets told by their agent or a big buyer that they love their stuff but can't support the Creative Commons license, one of two things would happen: 1. They abandon Creative Commons or 2. They abandon Creative Commons and tell the world how they screwed out of their first big 'hit' by releasing it for free. Unless open source software, it sounds like a system where, by its nature, the content is always inferior.
GNUArt opened a GPL'ed Art Gallery in January 2001.
I am however pleased to see that other people begin in the same direction which will make this way of thinking more and more popular until the merchants begin to think differently about what copyright protection should mean for the artists.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
As a physicist, I know the importance of taking credit for my work. My livelihood depends on my continuing to make advances in the field of science and I can't do that if other people are building on the foundations I keep laying down. IP law has it's flaws, yes, but the basic structure is sound. It keeps people away from my work until I've done all I can with it--and that's good for everybody.
How will Creative Commons affect the GPL or better yet how will the GPL affect Creative Commons?
------
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
What the hell does this have to do with the xxAA's?
For "copyright violations", and for stealing parts of his idea. That will serve 'em right :)
S
One thing that struck me is that this approach, while bringing people, their license, and their artistic product closer to the public domain than it would be otherwise with the automatic copyrighting that occurs know these are -not- going to be public domain works when these restrictions are applied to a basic license.
While this is still a step in the right direction do not be confused that adding restrictions like 'not for commercial use' or 'you can't make derivitive works (unless you contact me)' puts a work into a public domain. These restictions are closer and better(?), but still not a public domain work when you really chew on this concept.
One presenter was very bias'd toward companies using a work for 'commercial use' and was very intent on pushing that restriction. I was very uncomfortable with that position coming from someone at this organization. A next absurd step in that thinking, though you might know someone like this, is to add further restrictions that make sense to the person who owns the work, but not to the rest of us. "not for us in Iran", "not for use in the southern US."
Regardless of whether you believe these restrictions are justified or not is another issue. Adding restrictions is not my idea of a "public domain".
How will they verify that a work I submit is my own? Can they ensure all material will be in the public domain? What is to stop me from submitting an unfamous, yet copyrighted peice of artwork?
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
How does one prove ownership of a particular property? And... How can Creative Commons prove that to users wary of something "too good to be true"?
What better way to sow the seeds of confustion is for someone masquarading as some obscure/forgotten author or artist (such as MC Hammer) and "giving" their works to the world. I wonder how long Creative Commons would exist after one of those little trojan horses was delivered? Not that the RIAA would EVER do anything like that.
I'll bet that proving ownership will ultimately prove to be too burdonsome.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Who in their right mind will give away the fruits of their labor for free. Here in NYC there are plenty of well to do artists selling their works for a lot of money. I haven't heard of a single one who toils just to give their work away for free. How many kids dream of being a rock star and being poor? Making unbelievable amounts of money goes hand in hand with dreams of making it big in the music biz. Same thing in anything else with creativity involved.
When I first read this, I thought, "great!" After all, this is every slashdotnik's dream, right?
But then I paused. You see, as much as we'd like to think otherwise, information not only doesn't "want to be free," but it will fight tooth and nail against becoming free. In today's MTV-fueled, Britney Spears world, much of the intellectual property that's out there is so entangled in derivative works that true public domain is just a geek's pipe dream.
If only it weren't so.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Great tool for Estates of dead IP holders to be publicly philanthropic. Artists could will their entire bodies of work to this post mortem, make money while alive, and enrich the public domain.
You are not the customer.
The only thing GNUArt shares with what made GNU or Linux software successful is the "GNU" in the name. Totally lost is any concept of modularly separating out the pieces so that one can make works using the material yet not being derived works under copyright law. Two market leaders of free software are the Linux kernel and the gcc compiler. Note that the point of a kernel is a separation between the kernel and userland. A person or company can make a product that invokes only the Linux system calls and license this product under any terms. Similarly usage of the gcc compiler does not give RMS any say over the licensing terms of the resulting binary. In fact the Linux kernel's owners even permit distribution of proprietary binary drivers that work with the kernel. Ironically it was the overly restrictive license of Minux that caused Linus Torvalds to create Linux in the first place. Part of the genius of Linus is that he initiated a system where he simply doesn't have to care what people bundle his kernel with in their distributions, what applications they use with the kernel, or how much money they make doing so without sharing one penny with him.
The control of the mass media corporations may be disburbing, but to assert that the solution is to create a "commons" where the only recompense is recognition is in contradiction to the entire history of Western art. The craftsman deserves to be paid for his work.
His last book was scanned and posted to the newsgroups. Commons are fine for everyone else, but when it comes to HIS work, he believes in paper publishing just like everyone else.
This project isn't target to people who want to be rock stars or commercial artists. Believe it or not, there are a lot of charitable people who donate thier time an efforts so they can inspire people, and this is a project to give the options to how they donate thier work to the public.
I agree that most people want to make a lot of money, but you're also underestimating the charitable nature of people.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
This really isn't a problem as it's been addressed with any other website that hosts text, images or movies.
Slashdot, Creative Commons or any other website can only be held liable if they fail to remove the offending content upon request of the copyright holder or if they were responsible for posting the copyrighted material.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
First of all, Creative Commons isn't really a new idea. Slashdot, MP3.com, and a slew of other websites allow users to post text, movies, music, and images that could be copyrighted.
What happens when someone posts MC Hammer on MP3.com? In this case, it is up to the copyright holder to notify MP3.com that they are infringing on thier copyright and to remove the material. If MP3.com does not comply, then the copyright holder can sue MP3.com, but only if MP3.com does not comply.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
From what I understand, copyrighted works will expire after X years after the issuing of copyright, regardless of it's use in other copyrighted materials, so I can't really see how derivitive works can entangle original works so as to cause them to expire at a later date.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
If an author/artist/programmer wants a customized "sharing" license for their work, they'd be well advised to run it by a lawyer or stick with an existing license
If someone submits copyrighted material (art, music, code) to a public website the website isn't held liable unless they were notified the material is copyrighted.
That doesn't mean the poster can't be held liable...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
From what I recall, Opencontent.org has been around for a few years.
The creative commons has been designed to work in the area of copyright.
We all hate software patents, but they're not going away. We have to work within the system. Anyone have ideas on how to carve out a commons in the area of e-patents?
Here's a thought: form a Free Patent Foundation which would owns the patents. Regular folks submit patentable mechanisms to this foundation which does the patent search, defends the patent, and collects reasonable royalties on implementations which use it. Pay back some amount of the money procured from proprietary sources back to the submitter.
However, free implementations would pay no royalties at all, they would just be bound to reference the patent in the code.
Thoughts?
I've been following the Creative Commons build-up for a while and am glad to see it finally launched. I would like to help and/or collaborate if you feel that would be productive.
= showday&pageid=737
8 17
I listened to a presentation Lawrence Lessig gave at SXSW earlier this year and was motivated to action.
I've removed the copyright notice from all of my pages and replaced it with an invitation for people to use the content for whatever commercial or creative use they want.
For many years I've maintained a website where I have recipes, stories and thousands of photos. In the past many people have asked to use some of these and I've allowed it with the provision that they include a copyright notice and a link to me. People have stolen some of my designs and I've gotten very upset and threatened to sue.
But hearing your speech made me start to wonder why. What is the point of me stressing out over control of these things? I don't ever intend to make money from them. Why not open them to people who can find a creative use?
So I have.
Already people are grabbing the images and using them for some cool things. A film maker intends to use them in his work, websites are using them for banners. I am very happy. Here's a link to my page where we're discussing this:
http://www.jonsullivan.com/home_archive.php3?task
And an example of one of my public domain photo pages:
http://www.jonsullivan.com/BigPicture.php?imgid=1
I'm rather surprised at how tightly some people's idea of "art" is linked to copyright and control. I always thought art was creativity.
I'm very interested in using the "contributor application" and seeing how well it matches up with the licences I've been using. One thing I did see missing from the licences they show (Attribution, Noncommercial, etc) was an explicitly public domain licence.
Most of my photos actually fall into this category. I just want people to use them, even if I don't attribution. Of course this seems like a bit of a non-licence, but it would be nice to have something specifically stating that. I constantly get email indicating that a) people don't understand what public domain means, and b) they don't believe I really mean it.
At any rate, I want to thank Creative Commons for their work and inspiration.
Jon Sullivan
www.jonsullivan.com
As I understand it, an artist will be able to tailor the license. Perhaps an artist could make the art free for noncommercial use. If a big buyer comes along they have to pay for alternate licensing terms.
... a deficiency I sincerely hope will be corrected in the not too distant future. :-)
It is these sorts of licenses that are truly a big threat to the creation of a 'creative commons.' One of the reasons Free Software was able to succeed so well, and so quickly (a blink of an eye in historical terms) was because there were relatively few free licenses: X, BSD, and the GPL initially, around which a critical mass of software was able to evolve.
In a creative commons, one would ideally be able to incorporate the work of any project into their own, so long as their work is also released into the commons for others to use. As an example, I might want to have a Star Trek episode that is particularly apropos to my project, running on a television in the background in one of my movie's scenes. I cannot do this now because of draconian copyright regimes, nor will I be able to do this within my lifetime because of copyright's no longer (practical in human terms) limitation in duration.
But, if every clip and contribution is distributed under its own, tailormade license, I will likely be unable to do this in any project, even taking material from the creative commons.
Maybe, for example, I do want to sell my movie on custom burned DVDs, so I can make a little money to cover my filming expenses. But, I plan to release it under a GPL-like license (GPL-like so that Hollywood movie moghuls can't take my work and then steal the freedoms I offer from their customers by making it proprietary and css-encoding it onto their DVDs, for example, which public domain and BSD-like licenses wouldn't prevent), so it is free as in freedom, but commercial in that I'd like to get a couple of bucks selling my CDs. Or perhaps commercial in that, I've become successful and well known, and coca cola is paying me a bunch of cash to place their logo in a few key scenes in the movie.
Now I've got to wade through a dozen different licenses, for a dozen different clips or musical scores I'd like to include, any of which may be mutually incompatible with one another as well as my own project. This severely diminishes the usefulness of the creative commons.
What is needed is a relatively few number of licenses, as compatible with one another as possible. Ideally they would boil down to a GPL-like license, a BSD-like license, and public domain, so that, depending on one's philosophy, one can license ones work, and use the work of others, in a relatively straightforward approach. Whether one is using my Free Media License (still being drafted, not ready for use, and if a better, more widely accepted one a la the GPL comes along I'll use that instead), or one of the other licenses out there, as great a degree of compatiblity as possible is needed for a commons like this to work at all.
What is really missing from the entire Free Media and Creative Commons movement is a good, solid licensing framework we can all use to license our contributions. My Free Media License is one attempt to fix this, but I'd much rather be writing a novel than writing a license, and most other creative people probably feel likewise, which makes addressing this deficiency difficult.
Unfortunately, the Creative Commons website seems a little short on Licensing information as well
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Their FAQ says they're not going to host material, just provide links to it. So this whole thing is a nonissue. You follow the link to the author's web site, and on that site you'll find the legal stuff, straight from the horse's mouth.
Find free books.
I agree that this is a very very good thing!!! I have a novel that I've been trying to shove into the public domain in a formal way for literally YEARS now. There is no formal system for making something public domain. You can find out if something's copyrighted (registered) fairly easily, and there are trademarks and patents listed in searchable databases... But Project Gutenberg doesn't accept modern works to be placed in the public domain -- including my novel! Very very frustrating. I'll admit, it's not a fantastically great book - but it's a real, full novel and I do want to give it away.
I know people say 'Who in their right mind would do that?', but as someone who almost had her shirt sued off because she did fan-art based on a set of novels, I can tell you I'm doing it so that anyone who's inspired by my writing can be inspired, create from it, and never fear that some $500-an-hour lawyer is going to train their gunsights on them for it.
And what happened to Napster with that same philosophy? This "I can get away with it as long as I don't get caught" mentality is positively sickening.
The original poster is right. People will forge credentials and get Creative Commons to mark goods as free. Other people will then use the goods illegally,m actual copyright holder finds out, and it all hits the fan.
If they cannot prove that the person "freeing" the work is the actual creator of the work. they will fail miserably. 1 year, 5 years, who knows, but failure is the only possible outcome.
Now it's not that they COULDN'T do it. A face to face meeting with physical proof. Positive ID and noterized documents would go a long way to preventing fraud. But if you can do all this on line, they are in for a lot of trouble.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
No it's not a non issue. Anyone can copy a web site. OS projects have been stolen and/or hijacked before by people putting up competing websites and just being more vocal about "their" software than the originators. This site now provides the centralized means to doing the same for all kinds of "software". Sure no one would be able to realisticly release Star Wars into the public domain this way, but as other people have said, it would be SO easy to do that to lesser works, and this site provides the means to make it easy to do.
And when that does happen, what then? Does the site provide arbitration or lawyer support to sort out the mess that they've created?
You can still get into trouble - even if you just have a link to something.
Video Game cheats, hints a
And what happened to Napster with that same philosophy? This "I can get away with it as long as I don't get caught" mentality is positively sickening.
You obviously didn't understand the Napster case, because if you did, you would have understand they ruled that Napster wasn't fulfilling thier part to prevent the posting/trading of KNOWN copyrighted material.
The RECORD INDUSTRY IS RESPONSIBLE for providing Napster with a list of known copyrighted works which can't be added to the database for trading.
Creative Commons is considered an ISP. If I posted copyrighted MP3's on my website hosted by my ISP, my ISP could be help liable on two conditions.
1. They knew I was posting copyrighted MP3's and ignored it.
2. The copyright holder notified them, and they did nothing.
The RIAA's case against Napster was that they notified Napster of the copyright infringement, and Napster didn't nothing to prevent those known copyrighted works from being traded.
Do you get it now?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I sent them the following feedback on their idea. Hopefully others will do the same.
o -o -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oo -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oo -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
t mlm
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
First of all, I think that the license generator is an excellent idea. Artists and programmers are not license lawyers, yet they need to deal with this issue. A site devoted to the commons is a great asset and generating easy to understand license descriptions is important.
However I do have a few nitpicks and suggestions:
* Some of the choice seem contradictory. For instance, someone may choose to have a no-derived works and copyleft. There needs to be a way of sorting this out.
* Some of the choices seem ambigious. Is copyleft the same as copyleft+attribution? Are either compatible with the GPL? Novel's original free software license was copyleft, but it was GPL incompatible because Novel's license had stricter licensing terms.
* There are several other variations of licenses that are not included that people find important. For instance, I may not mind if my work is quoted verbatum in a larger work or I may allow annotations or even deletions, so long as they are made explicit. Or I may allow changes to my work but all changes must be given to the public. Or they may wish their work to become licensed under a freer license (e.g. public domain, GPL, BSD) after a certain period of time so they can make money on it first. For an interesting look at a few more, take a look at:
http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/licenses.html
I think that there are no more than 15 main characteristics that distinguish between most source available licenses. classifying licenses along these lines would really help sort out what each license means. It's sad that licenses are more made for lawyers, than for the people who use them.
* Relating to the above point, it would be desirable to be able to use the 15 main characteristics to not only define a license but also to look at commonly used licenses that are close to this one. For instance, there may be a license that has 3 of the 4 characteristics you consider most important. If you want users of your work to feel comfortable with your license, you'd more than likely choose a popular license, even if you have to give up on a few points. This feature allows you to reduce the license fragmentation.
* Finally, I'd suggest that you integrate the Librock License Awareness System into your web site:
http://www.mibsoftware.com/librock/lidesc/index.h
http://www.mibsoftware.com/librock/lidesc/user.ht
1. This software allows you to determine if two licenses are compatible and may be combined into a greater work. It's best to be aware of licensing issues before you combine source code since afterwards it may take more pain to become compliant than you wish.
2. Also also importnat when you wish to choose your license since it can alert you to unintended consequences. For instance, if you choose a license with the clause "you are free to modify this work but may only be distribute it or any derivatived work non-commercially" (i.e. an Alladin-like license), you may be upset that it's not GPL compatible. If GPL compatibility is important to you but you're not willing to give up your license on your current work (you don't want people making money redistributing your work before you have a chance to), you may be okay about making it GPL compatible after a certain amount of time or you may make other concessions.
Now I've got to wade through a dozen different licenses, for a dozen different clips or musical scores I'd like to include, any of which may be mutually incompatible with one another as well as my own project. This severely diminishes the usefulness of the creative commons.
I guess they don't understand the problem you're raising here, or how that problem is any greater than doing media development under any other licensing scheme. If anything, this would simplify the matter because you can assess compatibility based on the key freedoms: copying, distribution of derivative works, attribution, and copyleft.
So since you're planning to distribute your work as a possibly commercial, copyleft, derivative works permitted you would just go search for public domain or licenses that permit derivative works for commercial use.
At least one of the things that really appeals to me about this scheme is that it is modular and it treats the various aspects of licensing independently. I have been looking for a license that would open source some of the things I am currently working on while reserving the exclusive option of closing the copyright on future revisions of the product. I don't agree that the ability to use all works is really essential or even desirable. For example, I might design something specifically for a nonprofit, and I might want to keep that license as a nonprofit in order to prevent commercial enterprises from poaching it.
Or I might want to exercise some ethical screening on how my product is used in order to make money. So while I might want to open distribution and derivative works for noncommercial purposes, I might restrict commercial distribution on a case-by-case basis.
Your congress critters already made a provision for handling this and put it in the DMCA so ISP's and websites wouldn't get sued into oblivion if this scenerio happened.
If someone has copyed and posted your work, here's what you or any other copyright hold has to do.
If you have a lesser work, all you have to do it tell the nice people at Creative Commons to remove links to people infringing on your copyright. Then send another nice letter to the ISP who's hosting your copyrighted material.
If you want to attack the root of the problem, you can even take the copyright infringer to court for damages.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I've had a community wiki project in place for months and I've been promoting it around the Jersey City artistic community for a couple of months.
Its beginning to pay off and generate interest. Maybe you'll be able to find my site. The DNS servers don't seem to know about http://www.creativecommons.org/ yet.
I'm using an implementation of wiki, phpwiki-1.3.3, which uses logon to attribute edits to their authors, tracks all deltas and I back the thing up everyday.
I have no opinions on subject matter, I apply no censorship. I am just trying to give writers a place to collaborate on works, register a copyright on their own works and perhaps round out some things which have always been experimental and awkward and bring to works words which couldn't exist in any othjer form.
Come see it at http://wage.packet.org/
Click on the community Wiki in the left hand pane and if you're a writer, contribute your ideas
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Is this the least popular topic in slashdot history?
maybe the editors will get the message and realize that just because the topic has the word "sharing" in it, doesn't mean that they have to share it with everyone.
I'm very glad to hear about Creative Commons because in our society, copyright is the "default", and it is very unclear how to put anything into the public domain. Most people don't worry about copyright, it seems that we all regularly violate the law, copying pages, websites, etc. without asking permission, and where expressly prohibited. The public domain is a "free trade zone" of ideas. Worrying about permissions makes it impossible to create mosaics of knowledge. This makes it impractical to accumulate our experiences and draw patterns from them. A related problem is, how can we create a marketplace where private interests pay for work to be done openly, publicly? So far I haven't seen business models for open source where the money is made from the "openness", not the exclusive "add-ons". I think this can only work if we invest in relationships, if we sell passion and people, rather than products, services, code, ideas. My lab is creating such a marketplace for working openly. http://www.ms.lt/en/workingopenly/MinciuSodasPropo sal.html
We function as a research multiplier, we reduce in high uncertainty entrepreunerial projects. Funders know that they are attracting constructive workers, and workers know that they are paid to work openly. This allows everybody to work more flexibly, which is important for promising start-ups that thrive on low capital, high uncertainty.
We're looking for funders and participants. Our lab, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, serves and organizes independent thinkers. Our thinkers "work for free" on their own projects, we do our best to support each other. This makes us a "constructivity magnet", as we attract those who have their own projects, and we repel those who don't want to work for free.
We've been careful to conduct our work in the public domain. Our correspondence includes the tag "Each letter enters the Public Domain unless it explicitly states otherwise" and now we have 5000 letters that we can reuse as needed, without asking permission. http://www.ms.lt/en/archive/index.html
Having a definite way to place work in the public domian is very helpful. Maybe even more helpful would be to have a convention for discussion groups to include a "Public Domain by default" tag. Most helpful, in building a "free trade zone" of ideas, would be for the copyright laws to be changed so that creative works are in the Public Domain by default, they are the ones that should be explicitly registered. But first we should demonstrate that the Public Domain is of itself productive, constructive, economic, a good investment.
Andrius Kulikauskas
Direktorius
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@ms.lt
+1 (773) 651-3785
Chicago, Illinois
Maybe I'm missing something (in fact, in a sense I hope I am), but there appears to be no database of works, just information on "open" licenses that can be used. This is good, but not as helpful as providing access to the actual works themselves. The latter function is apparently the intent behind Creative Commons, as well as the Open Music Registry (with a narrower focus, of course).
No Laughing Allowed!
It is these sorts of licenses that are truly a big threat to the creation of a 'creative commons.' .... if every clip and contribution is distributed under its own, tailormade license, I will likely be unable to do this in any project, even taking material from the creative commons.
I disagree. The critical thing here is the machine-aided roll-your-own licencing based on standardized template components. Right now the custom license is based off six simple clauses. This could eventually expand to include variables such as cost (with automatic payment systems) duration and so forth. By keeping the compnent clauses simple and common (just like HTML tags are simple and common) you should have no problems quickly checking the compatability of licenses. Since everything is machine-readable (xml) you could build this right into some DRM software that chould check all the materials you're sampling: you'd debug your license like you would your code.
This is exactly the kind of application that we (content creators, artists: I'm one) need to take control of copyright. It gets us out from under the thumb of lawyers and lets us fight fire with fire (our own licensing terms to combat restrictive corporation-favoring IP laws).
I remember working with someone on this idea (machine-maintained licenses) 4 years ago. Back then, nobody saw it. Hopefully creativecommons.org will help bring that innovation to light.
Howard Dean for president
If it has a copyright or license, it isn't Public Domain. Duh!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
copyrighted works will expire after X years after the issuing of copyright
Yes, but if X increases at the approximate rate of one year per year (as has happened in 1976 and 1998)...
Will I retire or break 10K?
You may find it sickening, but
- It's the way the law works! It's not like the original poster was making it up, that's how the DMCA covers this exact situation. Look it up for yourself.
- How else do you expect it to work? Emphasis on work, not expect like you might read it at first. Ethically, it's just not my problem to figure out whether your works are being infringed, and practically, it's impossible for any non-trivial service to decide whether a given piece of content is copyrighted. Are you going to look at each and every comment posted on Slashdot, determine whether its copyrighted by someone other then the poster, further determine whether the poster has permission to post it to Slashdot (which they may!), and then take corrective action? Do you want that job? Does anybody?
It's just not practical to expect any service that allows content posting to check everything, if for no other reason then you have to check for permission, in addition to copyright status! That's why the DMCA distributes the responsibility back to the copyright holders. It can't work any other way. Like I said, you may find it sickening, but not only is it the way it works, it's the only way it can work. (And remember... Napster never posted a copyrighted song on their service. Place the blame where it belongs, with the violators.)Rather that waste their time on things that will never get off the ground, I wish they put their efforts into developing a system like eBay for authors/musicians/artists which would link authors with buyers (no, eLance is just not it).
Are you saying there shouldn't be as many licences and especially that the ability customize one to your own needs would create chaos, but then linking to one you're creating to suit your custom needs?