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."

Comments

All I needed to know about creative commons,

[tcd004]

"Shining a Spotlight on Sharing"

I learned in kindergarten

Find your ol' Prison Buddies at InMates.com!

tcd004

good stuff

[Alien54]

This is going to be a good thing, just because there is a central location to verify if something is public domain, or what kind of license they are using, etc.

This is a good thing.

Unless various legislation sponsored by the xxAA's gets passed, making greed mandatory

not the first but still pleasing...

[mirko]

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.

Question...

[Arminius]

How will Creative Commons affect the GPL or better yet how will the GPL affect Creative Commons?

Re:Is it just me...

[interiot]

Read their FAQ: they aren't advocating or only advertising works which get released into the public domain. They're more interested in allowing authors to create their own license that allows and restricts whatever the author feels is good, in case neither of the two extremes of standard copyright or public domain are suitable for an author.

Problem

[Washizu]

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?

The one big question I have is:

[eyegor]

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.

Re:What happens when you're successful?

[Tomy]

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. Now while the RIAA might feel a need for total domination^H^H^H exclusive license, a car company wanting your music for an ad would probably like the wide distribution created by CC.

Think of the Trolltech business model. QT is GPL'd for noncommercial use, but if you want a different license you have to pay. Remember, a license is not a copyright. You can dual license your own IP.

GNUArt misses the point

[joneshenry]

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.

Re:Why it will fail

[squaretorus]

There are a couple of clearcut cases.

1: Someone who takes photos which are 'pretty good' as a hobby. You make them freely available to stop Getty being the only source for 'pretty good' photography.

2: Someone who has made their money from a piece of work and wants to set it free before they die to stop their kids squabbling about how to milk it dry to pay for crack.

3: Hippies. We still exist! We don't ALL pray to the almighty dollar. Give it away, give it away, give it away now!

but other than that, no, no one in their right mind would give something away that had an earning potential if they needed the money - so I don't think this will be used too much by 'kids in the garage' or whatever. They'll just post it on whichever napster variant is in vogue right now to get 'discovered' in the hope they'll meet and shag Britney or whoever is in young chaps dreams right now.

Can you licence a riff?

Free as in beer

[y6y6y6]

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.

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= showday&pageid=737

And an example of one of my public domain photo pages:

http://www.jonsullivan.com/BigPicture.php?imgid=18 17

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.

Licenses are the biggest threat to a true commons

[FreeUser]

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.

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 ... a deficiency I sincerely hope will be corrected in the not too distant future. :-)

Re:What if I submit copyrighted material on Slashd

[bcrowell]

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.