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Andrew Orlowski Answers Mail on Creative Commons
chronicon writes "Andrew Orlowski takes another swipe at Creative Commons licensing with a look through the mailbag of responses he received from a previous diatribe on the subject. It's obvious to Mr. Orlowski that creativity is 'all about the benjamins.' Yet one interesting point he throws out has me pondering, is a Creative Commons License permanently irrevocable once it's put out there?"
Don't feed the trolls. Andrew Orlowski is not simply failing to understand with an open mind and a desire to learn, he is choosing to not understand in order to incite. Don't let yourself be baited.
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Mr. Orlowski's arguments are the same ones as get trotted out time and again against open source. Regardless of whether you think open source is awesome or overrated, it's tough to argue that open source is irrelevant, which is how Mr. Orlowski paints the Creative Commons.
For example, you could easily convert:
into
Similarly:
Is the Creative Commons going to become huge? Perhaps not. But Mr. Orlowski's gotta come up with better arguments than these tired ones.
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What is the whole point of his diatribe? It's not like someone took a gun to the artist's head and told him to do it. The artist presumably read and understood what he is doing and did it. Can we just stop this paternalism? If Ray Charles wants to keep his music royalties and rights, he can. It's not as though CC is being pressed into law. It's your material and your choice. Behind his comment is this assumption that most artists are morons and will want to revoke his decision some day. That's perfectly alright and he can. He can release his work under some other license if he likes. CC is just a convient template to use if that's the road you want to take.
And guess what? It is through the sampling of CC music from iRate radio that I discovered new music and purchased copies of artists' other songs. You can give some of your music away for free and keep the rest under copyright. You can do whatever the hell you want with your work. CC is just one option out there. Having choices is usually good.
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As I remember it, creative commons does not involve giving up copyright, but simply telling others you are exempting certain activities from litigation, such as noncommercial sharing, remixing, etc. http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
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According to sources on the CC mailing list, Creative Commons licenses can be changed (for future downloaders) but not revoked (for people who downloaded your CC licensed work in the past).
You retain ownership of the copyright and as such you can choose to change the license at any time.
You can't however revoke a license you have already granted. That means if you relase something under the Attribution-Sharealike license, and someone downloads it that same day, then they are free to use it under terms of that license for ever. If you change the license to 'All Rights Reserved' the very next day, then future downloaders can't use it at all.
To complicate things though, someone *could* just download it from the original downloader who is forced to always make it available under terms of his or her BY-SA license (brain explodes).
The challenge is going to be proving what license you downloaded something under. One way to potential prove what CC terms you D/L'd something under is the Internet Archive, another is Yahoo Myweb (although IAMNAL etc).
IMHO I think the CC organisation has done a poor job of explaining things like this and other similarly complex issues. They don't have a message board on their website, and emailed questions are never answered.
Creative Commons certainly aren't helping diffuse the misinformation out there which is a shame, and makes attacks like this one hardly suprising.
but i didn't see anyone buying 'good' music. what was that point about comnpusa again? oops, never mind.
sum.zero
US Copyright law is basically just a bunch of restrictive default rules about what people can & can't do with somebody else's work. The author can change these rules, typically by granting a license for other uses. But, if the author fails to do this, then the default rules still apply.
Writing license agreements, though, is generally the purview of lawyers. Because lawyers are expensive and time-consuming, many creators do not go through the trouble, even if they do not want to retain all the default rights. As a result, earing serious liability for infringement, few people subsequently use these works.
With Creative Commons, there is no need to see a lawyer if they don't want to use the default rules -- they have a set of standard agreements already pre-packaged for the layperson to use. As a result, there's virtually no cost to letting people reuse your work.
There's another benefit -- because the agreements are standard, users only need to understand them once. There's no need to see a lawyer to explain each license agreement that comes in through the door.
I think this guy is hardly one to be considered an "authority" on either copyright, the internet, or creative commons for that matter.
I trust Lessig, a law professor, in his administration of creative commons, and consider his support for the viability of it's license a lot more valuable than that of a journalist who seems to believe "audible magic" would actually work in "on the ground" p2p filtering situations.
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Or if you prefer, you can sign away all your rights to an agency and take whatever they are willing to give you in return. The point isn't that writing licences is easy (I wouldn't know - IANAL) but that you are free to licence your work as you choose and the CC does expands your choices rather than restrict them.
As such, it seems like a good thing.
If it were that simple would we have bi-weekly postings on slashdot about the legitimacy of the GPL in court?
Well we don't really; not since Harald Welte won a case for violation of the GPL. There's still wriggle room for GPL detractors in that (as far as I know) there has yet to be a US test of the licence. But one of the SCO cases should supply that test real soon now. No one seems to think the GPL will be overturned.
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No problemo, there is a "no commercial use" type of Creative Commons licence available.
To quote them:"Offering your work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any taker, and only on certain conditions."
And specifically, you can choose as part of your licencing conditions: "Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work and derivative works based upon it but for noncommercial purposes only.
Examples: Gus publishes his photograph with a Noncommercial license. Camille incorporates a piece of Gus's image into a collage poster. Camille is not allowed to sell her collage poster without Gus's permission."
Linky
CC licencing was created (I think) to bridge the gap between the full copyright laws and the public domain. It enables people who want to have a bit of fun with something (music, writing, graphics etc)to be able to release it into the wild with some re-use provisos attached.When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
In practice, the Creative Commons license seems to mainly appeal to people who want to spread their own creative works in some kind of "viral" way. The license is a public statement: Go ahead and take this, use it, don't worry about it, I won't sue you. (And there may be a couple of additional clauses, such as "I won't sue you unless you try to profit from it.")
But how do you define "profit"? If nobody would benefit in any way from the use of your work, then why would they want to use it in the first place? To my mind, benefit and profit are synonymous here. Maybe they don't sell your song. But maybe they post it on a Web site that accepts advertising. Are they profiting from your song then? It seems to me that if you want to set up all these profit/don't profit clauses, you need to write a little bit more fine print than your average Creative Commons license gives you.
Second, copyright law already gives the author of a work absolute and complete control of how it is used. I'll give you an example of how this works. I am the author and copyright holder of a comic strip called The Adventures of Action Item. Since I first drew it in 1999, this comic strip has had a fairly storied existence. It's been e-mailed around the known universe, printed up in magazines, used as a print sample, and it's constantly available on the Web page above. Every now and again someone writes me to ask if they can use it in one way or another, and my response varies.
The point of all this? Every case is different. But that's just the thing -- existing copyright law gives me that right. I can really do whatever I want with my own works, and I can grant that other people can use them for whatever
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I should have pondered longer ;-)
Of course it would have to be irrevocable until the expiration of the copyright term otherwise it would be useless, even dangerous to the consumer.
The bigger wonder is just why (besides trolling for hits) are Dvorak & Orlowski so against CC licensing? It's the simplest avenue currently available to let interested parties know what rights you as the copyright holder are granting to them as consumers. Really. *What* is the big deal??
These advocates of keeping everything locked up tight via the ominous and all-powerful notice "ALL RIGHTS RESERVED" make it sound as if you are signing over your copyrights to the CC organization in their articles. They should (you would think) obviously know that this is not correct at all. Therefore, if they *aren't* just trolling for hits, what is their motivation in these attacks?
If I want to license my writing or music or whatever to anyone who is interested, CC certainly gives me easy tools to use to do so without the need for a lawyer, etc...
Orlowski seems to be of the opinion that if you release under a By Attribution - Non-Commercial license that you've already given away the store and can never make any money from that creation again. After all, who's going to buy something that is free?
Magnatune (at least) has clearly shown that this argument is not the case (otherwise they would no longer exist and/or artists would stop returning to them to market their works on the site). Musicians who never would have gotten any exposure otherwise are at least out there. And, I know some are making money from their CC licensed works, at least from me anyway--as I have purchased more then one Magnatune album myself.
I guess I don't really care if they are trolling at this point. The more that copyright issues are discussed, the more consumers are going to become aware of how it all works (and how all the big-media driven congressionally imposed restrictions are becoming a royal pain). And they will learn what they can and cannot do with these materials. Calling CC a fad is fine. But the more it's out there, the more the mainstream is going to take notice of things they may never have considered before. You want to stop piracy? Stop making people criminals with ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
In the long run, the more we understand the issues at hand the better off we are, IMHO...
So clearly it *is* permanantly irrevocable, which is a good thing.
Exactly...that's the *point* of the Creative Commons that he doesn't get. So you fork your work private at some point (book-only update to an essay or something), the older stuff remains under the CC license. This is what he can't get his head around, that anybody would even want to be able to do this. He thinks the old version of the essay would devalue the book-only update, which is silly.
He also equates compensation with perfect control over the work's use. This is the attitude of such an ivory...well, not so academic...*platinum* tower of entitlement addiction that it basically translates to, "How'm I gonna buy a Jaguar *now*?" He doesn't know, he's behind the curve, he's spent too much time writing puff pieces for ad clicks that he finds himself out of touch with what's happening. Poor Andrew!
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
When you tack on the non-commercial restriction, you're making people jump through hoops to make sure they don't make any money with the new work that has been created. Let's look at an example of a blatant commercial use of a work, such as using a song in a television commercial. If a company uses a Creative Commons licensed song with the ShareAlike and Attribution requirements, that means the resulting commercial will be shared as well, allowing other people to make derivative works as well.
So what is the problem? If you are going to make a profit from your use of their work, why is it so terrible to kick some of that back to the guy who did the creative work you are using? If you instead derived your work (an advert, say) from a commercial-only work, you would have exactly one option - approach the copyright holder and ask for permission to use the work (I will leave aside several compulsory-licence schemes some countries have for derivative works)
If you suddenly find you must now approach the copyright holder for a commercial-usage licence, where is the foul? You are not prevented from using your own talent to produce Works, but *are* prevented from using the fruit of the copyright holder's talent (with or without additions of your own) in order to produce works with commercial value to you.
Ok, you *do* have a second option. you could ensure the produced Work is not for gain; in practice, this is *not* going to mean an advert, as the CC defines gain as "commercial advantage or private monetary compensation" and any advert must by definition be for commercial advantage. However, I still can't see the problem here. NC/CC is no licence at all *for the purposes of making money* - you aren't prevented from using the Work, you just don't get a free ride. Just do what you would do with any other commercially-published tune or image you came across - assume it is copyrighted, that you will need some sort of licence (and that the CC isn't going to be a get-out-of-jail-free card) and negotiate royalties with the original author.
-=DaveHowe=-
Well I agree it does look like that on the face of it. Certainly the arguments resemble the ones used against the GPL. Comoditise the product and it's value is undermined universally. That might have some small validity with software, but not creative or information content, eg. journalism.
There are great writers, there are even great journalists. Their writing and insights will be sort out because of the quality of the writing or the deeper understanding gained by reading it. Because of this their work will always have an intrinsic value.
Then, of course, there are the hacks. People with no special talent or deep knowledge. In fact a fairly ordinary person with some experience and maybe some training. Given that and the right information there are plenty of people that could do just as well. OK, so most CC isn't going to be even that good, but some of it undoutedly will be. There are plenty of hacks that may be given quite a run for their money by CC material.
So as I see it there is FUD, yes. Not just the stuff people like Andrew Orlowski are trying to spread, but their own. Their doubt in their own ability, their uncertainty over a continuing market, and ultimately their fear.
When Valenti, that MPAA shill, was on the news touting extending copyright and copy-protection, he often asked "Who does it hurt?" It hurt Clayton Moore. It hurt the Lone Ranger.
Actors may not originate the roles they play, but they bring a lot to the table if you're talking about creativity. No, they don't own the characters they play. I believe the Creative Commons movement is a reaction by creators of "intellectual property" against the owners of said property.
Creating isn't "all about the benjamins", but ownership most assuredly is.
Apparently, Toone is one of the handful of people willing to provide Orlowski with deliciously inflammatory quotes at a moment's notice. From this article:Sure, Wikipedia has been an unmitigated economic disaster, chewing up hundreds of millions in startup capital while providing no benefit to anybody... no, wait. That was pets.com.
When Toone says, "[geeks think] that the geek experience somehow supplants all previous culture and creative expression," it's clear that he is either making stuff up to get under peoples' skins, or is basing his impressions on the extreme fringe. Either way, he and Orlowski both seem to feel personally threatened by the idea of open culture. My theory is that they've both got too much invested in the idea that "quality is paid for". For Orlowski, the fact that he gets paid to write his drivel is the very thing that raises it above the drivel unpaid masses to the level of "Good Culture". So if a significant number of people prefer the work of "amateurs", then what is it that gives him a right to a paycheck?
Okay, nothing good comes from armchair psychoanalysis. But if you saw the hatchet job he did on Lessig, well, the bastard deserves far worse.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
The bigger wonder is just why (besides trolling for hits) are Dvorak & Orlowski so against CC licensing?
They are both content producers who have a substantial vested interest in restricting entry to the market. CC licencing makes it simpler for talented amateurs or other new starters to dabble in the fields Dvorak & Orlowski make their income from. Once they are producing competing works through competition, reduce their ability to demand high fees for their works.
There's no real difference in motivation between Dvorak & Orlowski trying to scuttle CC licensing and Microsoft's attacks on the GPL and Linux.
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