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

One sentence license:

[Anonymous Coward]

Any one can use this free of charge for anything, forever.

What's so hard about that?

Re:One sentence license:

[tmasky]

I love people. I hate corporates.
These "things" have far too many bloody rights and leeway as it is. They aren't "natural people" but are treated as such too often.

Providing them further opportunities to increase their profit margins without giving anything back is simply not good. It ultimately benefits nobody but shareholders and overpaid directors. IMHO =)

Anyway, more on-topic, these actions in the industry make me question how far the balance of money and love for the art is going to be pushed. It's pretty sad.

Re:One sentence license:

[ortholattice]

So plagiarism of Tom Sawyer is a serious problem these days? Get real. You're making a mountain out of a molehill. Most people (even assuming they are unethical in the first place) don't plagiarize not because of copyright but because it would damage their professional reputation if found out (or in school, get them expelled). But hey, if you're so paranoid someone's going to "steal" your words, please copyright the hell out of them; even better, don't release them in the first place. I notice, by the way, the public domain guy seemed perfectly willing to acknowledge you and even asked your permission. That's what most reasonable and honest people do. I just don't understand the big deal here - how are you going to suffer if someday, somewhere someone quotes your slashdot post without attribution? Copyrighted or not, it's pretty easy to prove you originated the words with a search engine, if it becomes an issue, and probably embarrass the person who plagiarized them. Would really take them to court though (the only benefit of copyright I can see)? To me people who obsess with the copyright of the most trivial minutiae seem to have hair up their ass.

Re:One sentence license:

[Qzukk]

Forwards this time!

No, copyright does not cover the "idea" which your song expressed, it covers the exact embodiment of your song. When I convert your song to another embodiment I'm making a derivative work of your embodiment, which is why it is also covered by your copyright.

The copyright isn't about the paper I put ink on or the canvas I painted on or the floppy disk I saved my thesis on then stapled to the submission form. It is about the text in the floppy, the image on the canvas that matters. Your logic is flawed (calling a copy in a different format "derivative work" indeed. The term is applied to works where you add some small value such as a translation or typesetting or performance or additional text or notes, where the original work makes up a basis for the derivative too large to dismiss as fair use or quoting. Ripping your CD to mp3s adds no literary or other artistic merit to the work, it simply copies it to newer, more convenient "paper" with "better" ink) yet the outcome of your thought process is still valid: the song/picture/movie/document is still copyrighted.

Yes, you are responsible for the damage an mp3 does to my equipment.

So if you download an Aerosmith mp3 from kazaa, and your ipod freezes up, you're going to sue Aerosmith? You ignore the fact that beyond my song being present, there is no control over the container with certain CC licenses that allow re-encoding or re-distributing (hell, with "All Rights Reserved" copyright in effect, they still can't crush all illegal copying. Are you going to go to court and insist that you thought the mp3 was an authorized Aerosmith good being given away by Aerosmith for free because copying is illegal so therefore the mp3 must be legal?). If A records a song, B re-encodes it in a malicious format and sends it to you, you can try suing A, but the judge will call you to the bench, slap you, tell you to sue B, and dismiss the case. If you somehow win, A will appeal, and appleals court judges slap harder.

present something as factually correct when it is not you open yourself up to litigation if your claims cause damage.

Yet there are millions of idiots in this world all claiming things that are flagrantly, even intentionally incorrect. Yet aside from claiming incorrect things about someone (ie, libel or slander) I don't see a lot of lawsuits over how Jane told Billy she had a headache that night but was really just turned off by the fact that he ate a garlic sandwitch after dinner. If I have a page reading "On Formally Decidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems" consisting of a thesis that at every turn attempts to disprove Godel's law, with no text beyond the title and the body of the thesis and a CC license at the bottom, with no other statement indicating that in reality, I stapled my Mathematics PhD to my application form and failed to get my Doctorate, can you sue me for that? Even though I make no claims claiming I am a math whiz? Does the CC license matter? What if I marked it "All Rights Reserved"?

A formular for making styrofoam cups is indeed an invention Yes, and I explicitly stated that inventions are separate, as they can blow up and kill people. Shakespeare does not blow up and kill people, no matter how long you cook it. Brittney Spears does not blow up and kill people.
Mona Lisa secretly blows up when noone is looking, the rest of the time she smirks about what she's getting away with. The formula for TNT can be used to blow up and kill people. See the difference? Literary work, musical work, artistic work, invention.

And now we're on rat poison on a playground which has nothing to do with copyright, and even less to do with creative commons licenses for copyrighted works.

Re:Anti-Comeptitive

[IntelliTubbie]

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

Re:Non-commercial elements of the Creative Commons

[MindStalker]

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?".

Re:not just money

[ackthpt]

Or you could come up with your own new characters and go from there, with no licenses, no lawyers, no oversight. Of course, you'll have to work harder to build a brand from the ground instead of buying your way into .. I Robot (was any oversight involved there?)

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.

Re:Non-commercial elements of the Creative Commons

[iminplaya]

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.

Re:Non-commercial elements of the Creative Commons

[Peter La Casse]

Problem is if I as a content/whatever creator have no rights regarding my work why should I distribute it at all? I'm better of getting a job at McDonalds.

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.

Artitsts?

[k-zed]

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.