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Linspire Accused Of Misusing Creative Commons Art
SuperDuG writes "Seems that intellectual property and copyright laws are something that Linspire still doesn't seem to have a firm grasp of. Their flash intro has with it some popular Linux images made by a rather talented artist. An email to Klowner was the first notice he ever got about the images being hijacked, not once has Linspire requested permission to use these images in their ad campaign. They seem pretty similar to me, you be the judge."
Well, now we know the seven last letters of Linspire are just there by accident and do not denote a particular skill of them.
Lawsuits from both The Rolling Stones and Microsoft are pending.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
is just to use art that nobody would want to copy anyways. OpenOffice.org figured this one out earlier this week.
No, since there was not CC license when the Flash demo was made, and there was no mention of copyright, then the default copyright laws apply. That is no derived works are permitted, period.
The CC license now allows non-commercial derived works.
I really respect that Lindows^WLinspire is doing what it can to give OSS an outlet to the non-/. public
That being said -- there is something about that organization that rubs me the Wrong Way
Another fact about this story that leaves me wondering -- the Klown website very sneakily says (paraphrased) as of 24 April is licensed under ... Well, inquiring minds want to know: PREVIOUS to 24 April, under which (if any) license was it released under?
Of course, I am sure I don't need to point out that under US Copyright law (assuming for the moment that the artist is producing his work in that country -- and Linspire is definitely based in the US ofA ), the mere production of the work attaches copyright to the creator of the work, and s/he is under no obligation whatsoever to delineate the ways in which it can be used by others.
This is important people: Whatever you write is copyright by definition. In absence of verbiage to the contrary (i.e. GPL, CC, BSD), nobody can usurp your product. Another question: Can someone who Is A Lawyer quote some caselaw on active-protection as applied to copyright? (I know how it applies to trademarks, but copyright != patent != trademark )
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Well, depending on how much the artist depends on art for his income, I'm not sure that it could be much worse. I use a great deal of commercial art in my work, and I think most of the people I contract with for artwork sell to me because they need to pay the rent (or enjoy RAII-approved CD now and then...). There is no excuse for a sizable commercial entity like Lindspire to be misusing other peoples work in even a small way (and, really, a flash intro on your flagship web site is not a small misuse).
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
There's no hypocracy here at all...
Copyright is generally a neutral thing. It's neither good nor bad.
Music is generally considered something people want to share and is good. The problem is how expensive and restrictive the music has been and worse, how the RIAA has chosen to go about enforcing the copyright. Instead of addressing people's concerns, they've decided to sue people and create technology which limits freedom.
But no one that I know is against artists getting compensated.
Here, we have someone who is giving his art away, but with the restiction that if you use it to make money- you have to negotiate something with him. A company has decided to use his work for just that purpose. So now people are upset.
Does anyone here think critically?
Does all this Knee-Jerk, Anti-Lindows/Linspire trolling ever once take into account that as a corporation, Linspire/Lindows didn't say: "Hey! Let's go rip off as much stuff as possible, and not pay people for it..."
Can anyone consider the possibility that someone who made up that Flash Presentation used the material and didn't happen to mention they lifted it?
It happens all the time.
It doesn't require Linspire to be an evil company looking to rip people off, and make a buck off someone's work.
It just takes one person who isn't clear on copyrights, and assumed they could use that artwork without permission. They might not even have realized they were doing something wrong.
How many people do YOU know, who totally understand IP and Copyright laws?
I'm getting tired of the automatic Anti-Linspire sentiment expressed by most Linux people. Linspire has given back A LOT to the Linux community. They've donated big bucks to WINE, KDE, Reiser-FS, and other projects. Go check their website.
And if you read their financials in the item about their upcoming IPO, if they are making money... They've sure fooled everyone.
What's a hypocracy? A country run by hypocrites? ("hypocrats?") That seems not inappropriate...
I myself have noticed alot of confusion concerning the usage of the creative commons licences. The original idea seemed simple to me - pick which clauses you want and list them. They even provided simple icons to help mark what your licence allows. But apparently alot of people just don't get it. I don't know how many sites I have seen that simply state that thier works are available under a creative commons license, without bothering to mention which one.
However the problem is not entirely the fault of the artists. I went back to the creative commons site today, and it took me ten minutes to find the original simple page explaining the different licences. Before that I went through their "Choose a licence" path it and they actually encourage people to mark the works on their websites vaguely as being under a creative commons licence. To get the terms of the specific license you must click on the link.
This is bad practice. People are used to the name of the license telling them roughly what you can do with the licence. GPL, BSD, Open Source, Shareware, Freeware, these all give you at least a rough idea of what you can do with the work. Therefore someone stumbing on the Creative Commons Licence for the first time would naturally extend what they know to think it is yet another licence. But it isn't - it is a collection of licences.
Consider the first time someone encounters a creative commons licence. Unsure of what it is suppose they actually do click the link on the bottom of the page and read the (very nice and clear) human readable creed. They will then think "okay that is what they creative commons licence allows" and never bother to click on any other link again, because they think they already know what the licence allows.
I do not think that creative commons concept is too confusing for people, but it is different, and the way it is being handled does nothing to indicate to people that it is different. At the very least people should display the applicable clause icons next to the creative commons link, so that people may notice that there is something different.
PS:
This does not directly apply to this case since prior to April 24th these had no licencing information, and after that the notice was clearly displayed, and in either case Lindows should have contacted the author to get permission. It is just a side discussion.
Ohhhh, it's Wednesday, 'Copyrights are good day.'
SCO and Eolas should use this to their advantage.
I wish slashdot would just publish a schedule, "Ok, yea, MS, we'll like you on alternate Thursdays."