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.'"

Comments

Re:One sentence license:

[Siniset]

i don't think you understand what the liability is in the public domain copyright notice: it is that if the work of art is not in the the public domain, the person publishing it can be held accountable. It's not liability if something breaks, but rather if you don't have rights over it in the first place.

Suggestion

[ta bu shi da yu]

There is an email form to register your disgust.

Re:One sentence license:

[Anthony Boyd]

Someone from a public domain advocacy website wanted to use quotes from one of my slashdot posts on his site. But he had released all text on his site into the public domain. I had to decline unless he could change his license, not because I care where my words were used, but because I care that they be attributed to me.

Yes, that was one of my Web sites. However, since my interaction with you is getting lumped into a discussion of plagarism, I would mention that I do not plagarize -- everything I put up there is extensively cited and credited. The reason I didn't change my license for you was simply that other people were more easy-going, so there was no need to pursue your writing.

Re:Union Ideal Gone Sour

[werdna]

Its more reasonable than it seems. Actors own a right to publicity, the commercial use of their image, which is only granted in part to the production company for certain conduct related to the sale of the film. They negotiate this reservation of rights with the production companies, who then do not overreach with individual actor agreements on the point. Thus, folks who want to use a commercial film clip outside the scope need to negotiate with the actors to do so. This provides some residual rights for all actors in the film.

The problem is that the standard provision gets in the way of the CC license. There is no obvious or practical solution here. The actors are asked to donate their right to publicity, which is simply outside the scope of the deal. The reason this provision is collectively negotiated serves largely to benefit the union members, but it does limit the scope of flexibility actors in the union have to give broader rights. And it does this by design.

Now, I'm a US lawyer, so I may just be guessing what is going on down under. But that would be the problem if the issue came up here.