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Creative Commons & Webcomics

Posted by Hemos on from the intentionally-left-blank dept.

xerexes writes "This week Comixpedia is publishing an article written by T Campbell called "Creative Commons and Webcomics" which features a roundtable discussion with comments from Lawrence Lessig, Neeru Paharia, Mia Garlick, JD Frazer and Cory Doctorow. Traditional copyright faces webcomics with an uncomfortable choice. Its restrictions, properly enforced, would mean a virtual end to crossovers and homages, fan art, fan fiction, and many other staples that make the webcomic a more entertaining creation and foster artistic growth. A total lack of copyright, however, leaves unscrupulous readers free to "bootleg" subscription sites, program tools to deprive comics of advertising revenue, and even profit from others' labor without permission. The Creative Commons license presents a possible solution. It lets copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others, through a variety of licensing and contract schemes, which may include dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. "

3 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Prohibiting parody? by HyperBlazer · · Score: 2, Interesting
    From TFA, quoting JD Frazer:

    a bitter ex-fan decides to take the strips and replace the writing with, say, something you might find in Penthouse Forum. Not to say that there isn't a market for that kind of thing, just that UserFriendly has always been PG-rated for very specific reasons. I also don't appreciate someone else taking years of my own sweat and tears and in minutes turning it into something of which I don't particularly approve.

    Could someone with more legal knowledge than me clear something up: wouldn't such use of Frazer's comics be considered parody, and therefore fair use? Or at least, so the "bitter ex-fan" could argue.

  2. Been there, done that. by DigitalWar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Already done that. Myself and several others produced a print suitable minicomic in pdf format that is free to download, read, print, sell. The only restrictions we had were no changes to it allowed. There've been some distributed at various conventions in dead tree format. Watch out for "Deadly Bear Attacks". As for my normal comic, I don't worry about it. It's purely a hobby and I'm not after any compensation for doing it.

  3. Re:Hold on a sec by lucas_picador · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I think you're right. The courts seem to think you're right, for the time being. The problem is that the copyright statute says you're wrong, and only the vauge fair-use balancing test stands in the way of the statutory language. The House Report on the 1976 Amendments is ridiculously broad in its characterization of unauthorized derivative works: reading their comments, you start to realize that a personal discussion of the plot of a movie you just watched with a friend would constitute copyright infringement.

    But, as you say, the courts have so far refused to take them seriously, because of a little thing called the First Amendment. Unfortunately, fair use is an affirmative defense, which means that plenty of people can be bullied into compliance by the threat of litigation even if they think the courts will side with them. And the courts are pretty fickle when it comes to copyright infringement and the Internet: the DMCA safe harbor provisions, which should have applied to Napster according to the statutory language, were ignored by the court because they decided they didn't like Napster's "unfair" model. Similar notions of "fairness" might influence a judge to prop up ad-based online publishing against ad-filtering software or services. Do I think it's likely? No. But I also don't think it's impossible. And I'm certain that publishers will try to bully anyone who threatens their revenue model by taking ad-blocking mainstream, if they haven't already.