Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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??!?!?!
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...
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.
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
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.
"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.
Then there are those who are working for refugees, but don't set up websites about it.
There are hosts of similar sites, set up by those working to do good (unlike our government) on the issues of Aborigines, invading other countries and being a good global citizen.
Australia is a diverse community, about which generalisations cannot be made. I agree Australia's image is tarnished, but I also point out that a lack of shine does not sit well with many Australians.
Incorrect. I in fact think the opposite, Australias immigration policies are not open enough. Why would I hate Asians? I wish I were one.
j 26 .shtml
Historically (until 30 years ago), there's that whole 'White Australia' policy.
I don't know much about the interim, but more recently, they've tightened restrictions on immigrants who aren't exceptionally skilled with English, while touting it as a plan to have an open and nondiscriminatory immigration policy. More like whitewash it.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jan1999/imm3-
If anything, I would characterize Australia's immigration policies as anti-Asian, relative to levels in the past.
I think the real reason they tightened language restrictions was not out of public interest in the ability of newly settled people to communicate, but a targetted attempt to decrease immigration from countries where skill in English is not all that common.
I know there is a big hubub over the "Hey, our immigration law no longer separates by race!" thing - do a google search for Australia, immigration, and discrimination, and you'll see that hubub for yourself.
But that PR blitz is just that. So that white Australians can live in their happy little worlds and believe that they don't have immigration policies specifically designed to keep non-skilled Indians, Chinese, and other peoples out of their predominantly white nation.
If you can find any immigration data from circa 1985 or so to today, broken down by country of origin, please post a link and I will retract my "Australia has racist immigration policies" statement.
Well, I have a lot of **time** in some practice Cisco CCNA test questions and I released them under a Creative Commons license:
http://www.quest4.org/ccna/
I guess some people might think it is crappy, but in the end, I hope to have a test question pool that equals the questions in software that sells for anywhere between 10.00 and 60.00 (true, you do get some extra features).
Why did I release under a Creative Commons? Because I really wish someone could fill in the holes and come up with a really good test engine for the questions. I don't have time to do that, myself. And as long as they don't charge for the program, I don't care what they do with the questions.
In the end, I think everyone wins with Creative Commons.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
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
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.
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.