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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?
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.
Does anyone else see the MEAA's decision as anti-competitive?
Of course. They're a union; it's their job to be anti-competitive. (That is, to protect their members from competition with non-members.) Essentially, the MEAA is a labor cartel, placing restrictions on members' output to boost the asking price.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Its basically an actors' guild, and actors' guilds have always been asshats about what their members do or don't do. I'm sure if the actors want to show up in CC films, they'll do what actors who want to ignore their guilds have always done: be credited with a pseudonym.
It's a time-honored tradition. Don't look too deeply into it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Well honestly you don't want every joe blow calling you waisting your time. But how hard is it for a corperation to call you up and say "Hi, we'd like to use your icons?".
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.
Precisely, yet observe how many horrendous works come out after an artist/author dies. Think Dr. Suess would have stood still for the trashing of The Cat in the Hat?
For some utterly bizarre reason people feel they must retain absolute control of an idea, even if it means killing it. Michael Critchton was rather pissed with the treatment a couple of his books recieved, when made into films. IIRC Rising Sun was one of them, all the suspense was stripped out of the story and it became a tired showcase for actors everyone was supposed to be dying to see in another film. His mistake, for the money he signed away rights (or maybe signed them away to his publisher who then sold them to the motion picture ship of fools.) When you sell your ideas, don't look back.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I believe I have the right to say how it's used.
That's like telling me where I can take my car, or what kind of tires I have to use. It's like needing the arquitect's(sp) permission the paint my house. The closest thing you have to natural rights on a work is to have your name attached. Everything else is fair game. The "artistic integrity" is in your eyes only. Your rights to property are determined by the society you live in. They are NOT absolute or inherent.
What?
(Or, why is it such a big deal if they have to contact me first?)
...and then they move on, and the artist never even knew.
Because there's like 999,999,999,999,999 little packages in a big fat thing called a distro, made by untold countless people, all of who would be angry that they didn't get their 1 cent per 1000 CDs sold.
What you propose means that each company has to hold and maintain a contract for every single little micro-deal made. That means tons of lawyers, tons of phone calls, tons of paper (yes, paper,) tons of beaurocracy, tons of this, that, and the other thing. Just tracking you down can be hard.
Believe me, it's not worth it to them.
Since GNOME, KDE, small time app developers, whoever all want to be part of distros, or, hell, let's forget distros- let's just talk people who sell CD images for $3.00 each-
Since the devs want their work to have all their freedoms, they'll say, "Thank you for your lovely icons, we may make them available on our web site (where only a handful of people will see them,) but we can't include it in the core distro. Have a nice day."
The saddest thing is that the conversation doesn't even take place-- the whole point of this kind of licensing is so that there doesn't have to be a conversation. What actually happens is this: Someone's looking over icon collections. They see a cool one, "Oh, that's neat." "Oh, wait- non-commercial. Can't use it. Damn..."
What would be better:
Offer to sell your icon library to KDE (or whomever) for licensing however they like. Say, "For $300, I'll make you these cool icons, you can license them however you like after you buy them." Then KDE can give you $300.00, and make use of the icons.
Because you enjoy it? (Rhetorical question; the answer is "yes".)
If you don't enjoy it, then don't do it; nobody's forcing to you be creative. Get a job at McDonald's if that's what floats your boat.
The MEAA has always been quite inflexible when it comes to allowing it's members to work on projects that want to use different ways of getting actor participation. In the past actors have been prevented from working on projects for little-or-no pay (e.g. short low-or-no-budget films) because the MEAA has been worried that unscrupulous producers will plead poverty to avoid paying actors the proper industry rates. This move to prevent particpation in Creative Commons projects would appear to be from the same mindset - an attempt to prevent actors from being exploited. Imagine the scenario - an actor gets paid to work on a short film. The film is licensed under the Creative Commons and is subsequently remixed. The remix (somehow) makes money, but the actor doesn't get paid for appearing in what is bascially a 'new' work.
What the MEAA doesn't get is - by creating a high barrier to entry for film-making (i.e. not allowing professional actors to set their own rates for projects that can't afford the standard industry rates), in effect they are keeping actors out of work. Everyone knows that the more you get your face in front of people the more likely they are to recognise your talent and then offer you more work.
In the same way, by preventing actors from appearing works that are licensed under a Creative Commons arrangement, all the MEAA is doing is reducing the opportunities for actors to work.
it's not worth it to them
...and then they move on, and the artist never even knew.
Which is entirely beside the point. If they want to *sell* something, they have to create it, or get permission from the author. If it's valuable enough for them, they will.
What actually happens is this: Someone's looking over icon collections. They see a cool one, "Oh, that's neat." "Oh, wait- non-commercial. Can't use it. Damn..."
Except that it doesn't actually happen that way. If a company wants to distribute something enough, they *will* ask.
I take pictures. I release them under a the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 license. If people want to use them to create art, they're welcome to do so (and many have.)
If someone wants to use them commercially, they have to ask me for my terms. If the photo's important enough to them, they will (and have.) In some cases, I've granted the permission for free; in others, I've asked for payment.
Your assertion that the conversation doesn't happen isn't actually borne out in the real world.
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
Actually, it's a power when you deciding whether others can distribute copies of your digital work; that's licensing, telling others what they are allowed to do with the covered work. It would be a freedom if you were deciding for yourself whether to incorporate the work in something of yours. It's ironic that you bring up RMS later on in your post, because he reminds us that the difference between power and freedom hinges on who's affected -- "Freedom is being able to make decisions that affect mainly you. Power is being able to make decisions that affect others more than you. If we confuse power with freedom, we will fail to uphold real freedom.". This means that licensing anything is a power. Freedom means making a decision whose outcome chiefly affects you.
I think that CC does us all a great service as well, but I think that the FSF and CC's work are complimentary and they serve different ends. RMS and Lessig aren't working on licensing the same kinds of works, for example -- RMS' licenses are for computer software and documentation, the Creative Commons licenses are not intended for licensing computer software.
Digital Citizen
"We collectively agree that we will not" on the grounds that overall it does more harm than good.
The problem is, of course, who is "we?" Sounds like some sort of union "high counsel" making the decision and not the rank and file. In the long run, CC-licensed productions may be the best thing to happen to the industry, but it sounds like the union management has their head right up there with the MPAA's - deep in their respective asses that is.
Unfortunately, I bet SAG will be just as myopic too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.
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.