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Creative Commons In the News
An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC is running an article on a new licensing scheme being used to bring civility to the world of copyright." From the article: "Interest in Creative Commons licenses comes as artists, authors and traditional media companies begin to warm to the idea of the Internet as friend instead of foe, and race to capitalize on technologies such as file-sharing and digital copying." At the same time, mpesce writes "Boing Boing is
reporting that the Australian equivalent of the Screen Actors Guild, the MEAA, has forbidden its members to work in Creative Commons productions. 'The MEAA Board decided that it could grant none of the dispensations sought
by MOD Films, on the grounds that these would be inappropriate.'"
Any one can use this free of charge for anything, forever.
What's so hard about that?
Does anyone else see the MEAA's decision as anti-competitive?
Unless the production company reserves all rights, they feel they will lose money. No lawsuits over unauthorzed translations, no lawsuits over non-commercial copying and viewing, etc....
From TFA Sub-Heading: Creative Commons is new licensing scheme
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
The boing-boing isn't clear if this is part of the press release or not, but I quote: "Mash-up and re-mix potential is an intrinsic part of the Sanctuary project empowering the audience to exercise greater control over purchased film content and treating re-use as an opportunity as opposed to a threat."
And how is that bad, exactly?
On a totally different note. I was thinking about the part of the GPL that most people really don't get: the offer to supply source code at a later date. More than any other part of the GPL that section really confuses people. Maybe we should make a GPL-lite, where source code simply MUST accompany all binary distributions. That'd clear up the confusion for programs licensed under it at least.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Not just money, but creative control, which is what production companies are best at screwing people out of almost as good as money.
Imagine a world where you could make your own animations featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, et al. without any permission as to how you use them. Same goes for the portrayal of a part in a play/screenplay. You've got to play by certain rules or rights holders revoke permissions or simply send over their Bucket o' Lawyers to cut you off at the knees.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
how is that bad, exactly?
Simple - it's progress, and the MEAA is a union. Progress is something that unions around the world hate and work against.
I've got a couple of papers (nothing professional, mind you, just short grad school papers on the use of open source technologies in public libraries) and a short story all licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Most of the writing I do, however, I'm not licensing yet. I need to see how the rights that mainstream magazine and anthology publishers want to buy work alongside Creative Commons licenses. Some of us still want to make money off our writing someday (well, we can dream, at least).
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
Yep, and America is full of gun totting Christians.
Oh, and Denmark is full of clog wearing porn stars who own chocolate factories.
And, France is full of stuck up arrogant smokers who.. (oh wait, that one's true)
Can you at least try not to generalise an entire nation?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Denmark is full of clog wearing porn stars who own chocolate factories.
Why am I just being told this now??!?!?!
Well, you're not here, so there's one racist bastard that we don't have...
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Does anyone really care what Australia thinks anymore?
By now you should have guessed...I'm your magic negro.
The sad part of this is that you weren't even trying to put your foot in your mouth were you?
Racists obviously come in your color too.
[...] for some reason it seems Australia is full of racist bastards. Basically, white people.
According to the CIA factbook, Austrailia is far from full.
Hey! I resemble that remark!
I think the above phrase is being overlooked by most people. I mean that's a pretty strong statement, to paraphrase, "I/We forbid you to do any work that does not make us money."
The question I have, is that part of "the members" contract or is this "a new policy"?
Either way I have to wonder just how far they can go at curtailing a members outside activities.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Are they an important part of Australian film making? And if so, isn't this restraint of trade?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Area - land: 7,617,930 sq km
Area - comparative: Slightly smaller than the US contiguous 48 states
Population: 19,913,144 (July 2004 est.)
This tells us that there are only approximately 2.6 people per square km, and thus, unless these are really enormous people, Australia is most definitely not full.
Therefore, you are proven wrong.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Does anyone else think these guys made a serious typo in their Articles of Incorporation and couldn't be bothered to fix it?
Okay, so a philosopher, a philologist, and a philatelist walk into a bar...
"Oh, and Denmark is full of clog wearing porn stars who own chocolate factories."
Which is fine by me, as long as they don't tape their movies in the factories. When I bite into a piece of Danish chocolate, the only creamy thing I want in my mouth is caramel.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
And if you're really concerned with artistic integrity, there's a No-Derivatives version last I checked.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Can someone please tell me why they are doing this without going into conspiracy theories/nonsense?
Seriously, if the actors know going into this what will be done, and are being paid a fair wage to appear, where's the beef? Name actors appear in indie films all the time in Australia, for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes for no pay at all. How is this different?
Is it a misguided attempt to keep from having any exceptions where actors rights are taken away or something shadier? (was going to use sinister but didn't because of the rights/left connotation)
Its a shame because there really doesn't seem to be a threat from creative commons to actors livelihoods. To the extent that creative commons is non-commercial it really falls outside of the film industry and shouldn't be regulated as such. In the US, SAG can be pretty brutal on actors who don't make big bucks. They can be forced to turn down roles and get blacklisted in the industry if they don't even if they need the income to get by.
There is an email form to register your disgust.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'd like to get this story from a source that's not named "Boing Boing" and doesn't use words like "sez" in their articles. Even Fox News would be a better source of information. Maybe.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
thats quite a disposition you have going there towards white people :) i take it you are australian
I wonder if governments else where are makeing the same efforts for cultural/social integration as they do here the internet makes me think no
then again last week i found out a country less then a 1000Km away from me give's away nifty machiene guns to all it's citizens.
anyway i've seen CC a few times in the news nothing bigh though
O yeah i think you meant to say
as for some reason it seems Australia is full of racist gay bastards.
but if they are gay think about it, do you blame them for being racist.
I know i know troll me already
> Australia is full of racist bastards. Basically, white people.
No kidding. I hate how those racist Australians and white people are always generalizing entire groups of people.
www.EmpiresOfSteel.com
Then the actors said they could grant none of the wishes sought by the MEAA Board, on the grounds that these would be "inappropriate."
Or at least I hope that what some of them say, though I don't know how hard that might hit them in the wallet. Look, the future is coming, and the MEAA can either join the 21st-century, or they can fade into irrelevance. Their choice, but the future already made its choice.
My is this news for nerds? Aren't most porn actors and sock puppets non-union anyway?
You are technically correct.
The best kind of correct.
I'm white.
Then I guess all our errors are belong to MSNBC.
Somebody set them up a spelling complaint.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I was going to post something vaguely along those lines.
Only, rather than flaming I was thinking along the lines of...
This little Orsie apologizes for yet another example of dumbass politcal bollocks, plebian-archaic-techno regulation and rank shortsightedness from our "Representitives".
In other news, our fucked up governbent just wiped out the student union movement, leaving university student bodies down $140 million from next financial year. Why? Cos they dared to be critical of a government that kills off any chance of education for the masses and when the workforce discovers that skilled labor is in short supply, the PM calls in more immigrants. Stupid fucking cunt Howard. </rant>
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
crybaby minorities... like me?
When in doubt, call the other person a crybaby.
Alright, to be less brief.
I am an American, but a bad one. I don't ever plan on owning a gun, I hate white people as a matter of principle, even though I am one.
That having been said, perhaps my generalized criticism of white people should not be an international one.
What I meant to say is that I have an equal amount of hostile feeling toward people in positions of power in Australia as the poster above this comment, despite not being an Australian. Their immigration policies have often made my teeth grate, and I am quite displeased with Australian telecommunications industries. The Australian entertainment industry enrages me only slightly less than the US equivalents, but that's only because I hear much less about them.
Also, people have noted that no, Australia is NOT full.
I will thus restate my statement to say the following:
Every time I see the word Australia in a paragraph about something I cared about and was originally optimistic about, I cry inside because I know that Australia is not a fertile ground for ideas that I like.
Also, I should be clear about that 'racist bastards' remark. I am of the potentially wrong opinion that whities from Australia are about as racist as whities from Montana. I have nothing against bastards, and understand that the majority of Australians aren't bastards. One of my good friends is a bastard. I don't hold it against him.
Then again, he IS white. And I do hold THAT against him.
I suspect Creative Commons licensed work will just be assigned to shit that nobody wants anyway, just as "Free Software" licences are assigned to crappy software nobody wants to buy (eg, Linux).
That's exactly the same as music/movie industry copyrights except for free distribution. If there's nothing wrong with your restrictions, I don't see anything wrong with their restrictions. As the creators and copyright holders of the music/movies, I believe they have the right to say how they're used.
This tells us that there are only approximately 2.6 people per square km, and thus, unless these are really enormous people, Australia is most definitely not full.
Erm, they are. The average Australian is approximately 50m tall, maybe larger since I last looked. Why do you think we keep them in the Commonwealth? I'll tell you: if anyone dares to pick a fight we'd send a couple of Aussies around to stamp their country into dust. Environmentally-friendly, and it gives our antipodean friends chance to see the world, albeit from a long way up.
The inhabitants of New Zealand are, in fact, originally from Australia but were forced into permanent migration by their far larger brethren. Poor devils were nearly driven to extinction, and it was by sheer carelessness alone; the larger Australians simply didn't worry about anything so small being crushed underfoot.
Ask any Aussie about the veracity of these facts and they'll be happy to oblige.
If everyone switches to creative commons, I'll never pay a cent for a movie or for music again. That's the economics of it for me.
Vote for Pedro
and today information is the currency for a freer society.
You can't lawfully spend a photocopied $100 Federal Reserve note, and you can't lawfully reproduce and distribute a work published by big media. A copyright apologist would claim that information is to currency as copyright is to anti-counterfeiting laws.
the Australian equivalent of the Screen Actors Guild, the MEAA, has forbidden its members to work in Creative Commons productions. 'The MEAA Board decided that it could grant none of the dispensations sought by MOD Films, on the grounds that these would be inappropriate.'
I'm sure I don't have the correct terminology, but in the USA independent productions (i.e. very little, if any pay) can get exemptions from SAG which allow union actors to officially work on the project - I guess there are still some minium standards they require of the production like workmans comp.
Furthermore, union actors often work on non-union projects under a pseudonym and to the best of my knowlege. no SAG member has ever been forced out of the union for working in a non-union project.
Or you could come up with your own new characters and go from there, with no licenses, no lawyers, no oversight.
Then watch Marvel, Disney, and the rest of the big-media fiction rights holders sue you, alleging that your characters are "substantially similar" to theirs. It's even worse for music.
They wiped out the student union movement? You mean I am no longer forced to fork over hundreds of dollars I don't really have in order to fund Labor party agendas?
Hallelujah!
Hopefully this is just the start of a massive culling of all Union movements. The less thugs in this world the better.
There are bigger, badder, uglier, richer, more powerful thugs in business and givernment than there ever were in any union.
Divided, we are powerless. It's then that you'll see their teeth.
Oh, and it's Labour you idiot.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
When I put a bunch of my stuff in the public domain in the mid 1990's I knew well that this was both irrevocable and that--if a person so chose--he or she could used the work in any way they wanted to, including commercially.
I have since seen several product contain my compilations. I see this as a good thing if my goal was (and it was) to make sure the material had a wide a distribution as possible, including free for the small shop just starting out.
Putting things simply into the public domain, especially in the age of the internet where it can be easily found and cheaply retrieved, is still the way I would go.
"What if I write something truly insightful in one of these posts? "
Dude, stick with the realm of possible here for just a few minutes. I can't get past this line.
What you're saying is true, and unions are important, and I support them. But its not 1890, or 1930 or even 1980 any more. They've got to adapt or die.
What exactly is labor's plan for protecting U.S. workers rights against cheap outsourcing?
If they don't have an answer for that basic question, its a good bet they're irrelevant.
I think the GP chose his words poorly. Information is more like the air we breath, not like a currency. I hope nobody tries to limit breathing legally ever...
Linux is not Windows
A century ago, unions were thought to be one of mankind's great hopes. It was assumed they would stand up for workers against people such as John Rockefeller and Henry Ford, both notorious for crushing strikes with hired thugs.
Unfortunately, that's hasn't happened. Like the pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm, many present-day union officials seem to believe that some workers (themselves) are "more equal" than others. Sad.
--Mike Perry, Seattle, Author: Untangling Tolkien
Australia is a relatively small country, with a small film, television, and theatre industry. Consequently, there's not that many professional actors. Particularly when talking about mature actors in regular work, they'd all be instantly recognisable.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
There are bigger, badder, uglier, richer, more powerful thugs in business and givernment than there ever were in any union.
Yes, they banded together and formed the Labor Party.
And it is Labor (and government for that matter) you idiot.
If you're going to bore us with your minority-view political opinions, at least learn to spell.
I don't see how either of those disqualify one from being a worthy source of information. Instead, it looks like you're using poor criteria to give yourself no reason to justify looking into the information further by calling the MEAA Board or MOD Films and asking them for their input into the situation, or looking around for other coverage. So, if you insist on dismissing the account, I'd ask that you do so for a better reason than stylized spelling.
Digital Citizen
I can think of two reasons off the top of my head:
Digital Citizen
Compulsory student unions. Gotta fuckin' hate em. What's even funnier is that students doing higher research degrees are forced to pay a student services charge.. even though they use none of the services that students are provided. Part of that fee goes to a student union that doesn't even represent them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Thanks QuantumG, you just caused the slashdotting of Denmark itself.
Australia is mostly not prime real estate, whereas a much greater percentage of the 48 states of the US have areas where people would actually like to live.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Some people prefer to spell in alternative ways. 'Labor' was an acceptible spelling in the late 1800s, and it took one major Australian newspaper till the late 1990s before it homogenised. One major political party still uses the old spelling, standardised upon as late as the 1920s.
Look out!
Every school I have ever been to has had some form of student governance. In primary school, of course, the school government is pretty powerless, but they gradually get more powerful as the students get older.
I just see the Student Union as a bigger version of the student governments we had in high school. It gets most of its funding directly from the students rather than from the government but that's the only real difference. And the GSF is pretty insignificant compared to what I'm paying in HECS.
Maybe if we called it something like "University Student Council" instead of Union, the Liberals wouldn't get quite so annoyed...
Part of that fee goes to a student union that doesn't even represent them.
They get to vote in the elections. They are entitled to use the facilities. Why do you say they aren't represented? I've never been to a public hospital. Does that mean I shouldn't contribute to their cost?
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
According to quite a number of articles here and on The Register, most (true) artists, authors and musicians were never really against file-sharing - it helps by spreading their work, lets more people experience their talent. It's just the traditional media company that doesn't like it's N-approaches-infinity percent profit margin diminished.
we discovered a new way to think.
My first novel is available for free download under a CC license at my website above. Sure, at some level this is a gimmick, free advertising, that I hope will help paperback sales. But it is there.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Information is more like the air we breath, not like a currency. I hope nobody tries to limit breathing legally ever...
When the administration cuts EPA funding again, and industrial pollution makes outside air dangerous, watch businesses start charging for 90 seconds of access to clean air, as has been done in Mexico City. Libertarians on the other hand would let residents band into neighborhood-backed local EPAs to sue polluting businesses.
Someone actually *gets it.*
As an artist, I create because I am compelled to do so. It is a type of communication, the same communication responsible for human progress, civilisation and evolution. To profit off of this is, to me, unethical as it discriminates against those who, through no fault of their own, cannot afford the content. They are therefore disadvantaged with regards to cultural, political and economic discourse which serves to keep them in a poor financial situation.
Additionally, when someone sees, hears, etc. a work, they then own it. Period. It becomes a part of their world, their cognitive view, their mind - so it is foolish to say that they have less rights to use the work as they see fit as, say, the originator. That's not how human beings, our evolution and our brains work.
IP is fundamentally opposed to human growth, progress, invention and evolution. This should be obvious, and certainly is to those who spend their lives studying the history of our cognitive growth.
-JH
Please read through this before flaming away, and I'm not here trying to advocate that the MEAA is doing the right thing, but there is a point of view that has not been expressed yet here on /.
The point of a professional associations, wheither it is something like the American Medical Association (for doctors), the American Bar Association (for lawyers), or the Screen Actors Guild, is that you want to restrict exactly who is going to be a "member" of the club. Basically, this is a hold-over from the medieval trade guilds, where they viewed people practicing their "craft", if done in a free-for-all fashion could kill their entire industry. (BTW, I'm mainly familiar with these American institutions, but there are many others like this throughout the world).
One way that these organizations help to improve their "craft" or "profession" is to try and restrict membership in the form of formal certificates... often issued through a government and where possible even enforced and backed up by laws that make it illegal to practice that craft without possessing that certificate.
The purpose of this is to make a small pool of hopefully talented people where there will be enough work available to keep everybody comfortable, and raise wages for the members of the organization. Some sports player associations in the USA have done an incredibly good job at raising the salaries of its members, notably the Major League Baseball Players Association and the National Basketball Players Association.
In the case here, the MEAA is merely trying to cull out the riff raff and try to keep its members from getting involved in projects that would from their perspective lower the value of the rest of its members.
A comment was made on another message board that this would in effect keep unemployed actors from getting jobs. This is precisely what the intent is here, where they are trying to drive out in this case actors with low skill. By following the Creative Commons license it doesn't seem likely that actors participating in these projects will ever make substantial amounts of money. Indeed, the attempt here is that actors who are so desparate that they want to participate in films like this should not be in the profession anyway (from the viewpoint of the MEAA). By restricting its members they will (hopefully) be improving the income for its remaining members.
The danger in a situation like this for any guild-like organization is that non-members and ex-members may totally ignore the guild and either form a rival organization that permits the activity being banned (in this case a group that would be willing to work under the Creative Commons license), or that the guild would be so dilluted in power due to small membership that it would be ineffective. This BTW is the problem with a guild-like organization for computer programmers (there are a few but fortunately/unfortunately they are all rather small).
If you think projects for actors involved with something like a project with the Creative Commons license (or other open source equivalent) could make some money, it would have to be from this financial aspect that you would have to encourage the MEAA.
Unfortunately, from experience with the open source movement I don't see this as a positive experience to compare what computer programmers are getting paid via open source programming projects vs. closed source programming projects. This isn't to say that humanity and mankind in general aren't better off for having open source projects, but from the perspective of a professional guild I can see that it is incompatable with the ideas of the open source community.
I should stick to coding. There's less politics to it. (ha!)
Think coding isn't subject to politics? Look at all the politics around the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive that the proprietary software lobby is trying to push through the EU legislative process.
I also want some degree of control over said content, i.e. I do not want people representing my work as theirs, I do not want people modifying my work unless it is clear what those modifications are (i.e. I do not want them to insert errors into my work which they then distribute, making me look bad).
Even the permissive zlib license does exactly what you have described, and I'd imagine that the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license (the most restrictive CC license that would be described as "free" by the FSF and Debian) does this as well. Those who modify and redistribute your work must include 1. your copyright notice so that people know that you worked on it (using your copyright to discourage plagiarism) and 2. the modifier's copyright notice so that people know that somebody other than you worked on it (making errors more evident). Neither the -nd or -nc option is necessary to achieve these goals.
If you want a better contract, you need to organize with your peers. That's how I negociate my contracts. I can't understand why your line of work should be treated differently.
What if the other party has made it clear that its policy is to use contracts of adhesion ("we're much bigger than you; here's our contract, take it or leave it") and that it is not willing to accept any altered contract at any price lower than half the company's market capitalization (hostile takeover)?
I as the content creator
Which parses as "I as the happy god". A better word for one who creates works of authorship is the term the law uses: "I as the author".
Internationally, "calling you up" can pose a logistical problem, especially for people who just want to sell a copy of your work at cost.
Using your logic, Microsoft can legitimately claim "Freedom 'R' Us License" isn't doublespeak, becase we are free to re-write compatible software from scratch.
Poor analogy. Microsoft has stepped up its efforts to seek patents as a way of blocking interoperability with free software.
And more importantly, what are either of us doing not in Denmark?
Meet you at the third chocolate factory from the border?
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
If your selling at cost I don't believe you fall into the catagory of commerical seller then.
Be careful with licenses that you haven't memorized. Unlike the GNU General Public License, most Slashdot users have not memorized the Creative Commons 2.0 series licenses. According to my strict interpretation of the text of the CC licenses that include the NoDerivs restriction, selling copies even at cost is considered commercial. "Non-commercial" within the context of CC licenses refers primarily to free-of-charge electronic distribution methods such as HTTP and BitTorrent.
FWIW, I did a Google search for MEAA. It seems the only information out there is other blogs.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
I did a Google search for MEAA union. First result is the MEAA's site.
Furthermore, union actors often work on non-union projects under a pseudonym and to the best of my knowlege. no SAG member has ever been forced out of the union for working in a non-union project.
... I'd much rather see actors bringing their talent to the screen in cooperation with the larger creative community, but if their unions are going to plant their feet on this sort of thing, then their passing will go largely unlamented).
If five years, if "trusted" computing doesn't destroy it, our home computers will be able to render photo-realistic films with photo-realistic actors in something close to real-time, allowing the merging of machinima and classical rendering. With these sorts of tools, any small group of people with a good story to tell and a modicum of talent will be able to choreagraph, render, and distribute feature-length films that do not resemble cartoons or computer animation so much as life, real-action movies.
Actor's guilds that try to shut out new, innovative ways for creative people to collaborate are simply ensuring the demise of their own profession. $10 Million contracts for lead actors will become a thing of the past, and I for one won't be shedding a whole lot of tears (though I will shed a few
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"Can use it for a Free Software piece of software? Nope."
Yes they CAN, provided they don't *sell* it. How comes I don't seem to get this point across?
Say, you have free/open software, and they GIVE it away (like sometimes can happen, like with knoppix-CD's), then they can use all the non-commercial stuff in there.
I agree that, in most commercial distro's, this won't help much because they do sell their products (exept for the free d/l many of them offer), but that's their choice. If they wan't to use it, they can, provided they don't sell the products - much like you can use GPL stuff, provided you abide to the rules of the licence.
Every licence knows its restrictions (apart from possibly BSD and public domain), but it doesn't mean one can not make use of them, it only means you can make use of them as long as you agree to the rules of the licences. In the case of (some) CC licences, this involves the condition that, if you want to use them, you may not sell it (or make a profit from; I'm not sure, and there is a distinction, ofcourse).
Since FLOSS products do have the posibility of being distributed without being sold - even in practise - they could certainly make use of non-commercial CC works in some cases.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I'm white.
You are forgiven for not changing your colour, as Michael Jackson has done. In April, the forgiveness ceases. :-)
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.