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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?"
Does CC improve the enforceability? I mean, what's the incentive to claim/release/share a copyrighted article if there is no way of protecting it properly?
If a work is released under a CC license, will it be brought to court and judged accordingly in a quick manner?
What's the difference between CC and common laws in terms of enforceability. It seems nowadays, lawsuits are about financial depth, whoever has enough cash to burn in court for the next 10-20 years will be pretty safe from any litigation, regardless of the right or wrong.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Yet one interesting point he throws out has me pondering, is a Creative Commons License permanently irrevocable once it's put out there?
In answer, this is from the CC Attribution-NonCommercial license (bold and italics added for emphasis):
So clearly it *is* permanantly irrevocable, which is a good thing. If it weren't, how could the end user be assured that her or his freedoms to use the software (or whatever) under the license would still be there in the future? This way, an author can't just say "this isn't working out for me, now you have to pay me $10 to keep using [whatever]," as that would be tantamount to extortion.
Additionally, from the linked Register article:
This is why there is a Non-Commercial version of the license. And this is also why having a work distributed under a CC license doesn't prevent you from ALSO licensing it under other licenses! That's the whole idea of the NC versions of the license: if someone wants to use your work commercially, they can contact you to work out another arrangement so that you would get some form of compensation for the profits that they might make off of your work.
But seriously, if you don't like the license, make your own! Nobody's forcing people to use these licenses and I don't see why this person seems to think that they're creating a "crisis" of sorts. Creative Commons licenses are just an easy way of having your work distributed the way you want, and with a license written by a lawyer so that there are no possible loopholes for which someone could take advantage.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
his professed confusion is entirely intentional. he even trolls for more hits/letters in the final paragraph.
it's one thing to open up a real discussion on a subject. it is another to twist the existing facts to push your own sensational opinion...
sum.zero
his nick is the pitbull isn't it? so those would be dog canines, not vampire teeth.
sum.zero
And here I thought it was all about the Pentiums.
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.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
cc licensed works retain their copyright. same with gpl and bsd.
just because you issue something under a license does not mean that copyright vanishes. as an example, under the gpl you are using someone's copyrighted work. without the gpl, for example, you have absolutely no permissions [outside of fair use, etc] to use that work. same with cc licenses. without the cc, you can't use the work at all [see previous caveat].
what the licenses do is give you more rights then you normally would have and expedite the process you would have to go through in order to obtain such permissions, provided you obey the restrictions imposed by the license. if you violate the those conditions, you no longer have thsoe permissions and are commiting copyright infringement.
you also seem to confuse open with public domain. just because you can see something, does not mean it is the public domain. it is not, unless the copyright has expired or the rights holderhas specifically placed it there.
lastly, plenty of people/companies make money off of gpl/bsd/whatever software. why shouldn't an artist be able to do the same with the cc [especially if they use a non-commercial cc license]?
sum.zero
You call it "exploiting", but guess what, the person who released their code under the BSD license knew that was a possibility and released it anyway, indicating that they find NOTHING wrong with that. So why is this bad again? It's their choice to release it under whatever license they choose.
Choice=freedom!
Monstar L
Second, there is a non-commercial version of the CCL. This lets the author/artist sue anyone making money from his/her work, while still releasing it under the CCL.
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.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
The problem you cite (and, come to think of it, Orlowski cites as well) doesn't exist, because the Creative Commons offers both "commercial-ok" and "non-commercial-only" versions of its license. If you're not okay with commercial entities picking up your work, it's pretty obvious which one to use.
You can also choose whether or not the license is "GPL-like", in that you can say that anyone republishing or modifying your work must make the work available to others under the same terms and in an editable format. If a corporation can pick up your work and improve it, but can't demand exclusive rights to those improvements, it's a huge check on their power.
In essence, there is no single license, even though the author of the article gives no indication that such fine-grained control exists.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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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However, the trouble is that some commercial entity will inevitably pick up the artist's work and use it for making money, exploiting the fact that the work is not protected by copyright. Surely an artist who donates his work to the public without any expectation of compensation does not intend for someone else to profit off of his work.
This is why there are non-commercial licenses such as this one.
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.
It DOES parallel the GPL vs BSD scheme. There are two versions of the license. One allows any use, one allows only non-comercial use. If you don't want a comercial entity using your work, release it under the non-comercial version.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
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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According to the Andrew Orlowski, those that are lobbying hardest for CC licenses are neurotic Aspies, pleading for their pet project but uninterested in helping creators.
/.
:)
Ad hominem, impuning motives and infantilization of those you don't agree with. That's no way to argue.
Except maybe on
Oh... never mind then. Way to go editors, we need more troll posts!
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I put this out here partly on a dare, and partly because it relates. The key flaw in all these systems is that the creators are assuming that the people that use them will click a "donate" button on their website. But that's not the case, and in situations like the GPL or the CC-C-SA, you're effectively letting others buy Ferraris off your hard work. It doesn't seem to occur to many of these good-natured folks that they're being taken advantage of by less-scrupulous companies.
- our-gpl.html
Anyway, my fuller postulation on the subject is here: http://dustrunners.blogspot.com/2005/08/chains-in
(Mr Fitch: consider it done)
The world's only surviving livewriter.
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."
We recently created a website for collaboration in creative writing - Collaze that uses cc licence. We wanted the contributors to write freely for the public domain without losing the rights to commercially utilize their work later. CC seemed to be custom made for this purpose. So, tomorrow if some entity wants to commercialize the collaborative work, it can do so provided it has the permission of the contributors. Writers can agree and give thier permission to the publisher with or without taking royalty - this depends totally on the writer. I think this is just the beginning. CC will be great for a variety of collaborative work in the future.
Explore your creative side
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
Breakfast served all day!
Two comments jumped out at me in Orlowski's article. The first seems unable to distinguish the exercise of speech from the act of listening:
Another article, responding to Orlowski's absurd claim that geeks believe the technology, not the artist, is responsible for creativity, claims that geeks believe:
Implicit in this rejection is an incredibly elitist conception of creativity as an inborn talent. It's a short step from here to saying it's a waste of time to teach writing (or painting or what have you) because the great writers are born and will write regardless.
For some geniuses that is surely true. For others, the lack isn't tools but practice: creativity, like most skills, can be improved through use. Easy access to technology helps. Easy access to culture which can be built upon, which building is essential to all art from Shakespeare to Warhol, helps even more. It is this latter lack that Creative Commons targets, and which the $20 for "speech" (i.e. passive listening) doesn't address. But these folks are too blinded by the silly "blue LEDs" to see past the technology.
Wherever do you get the idea that someone using a CC license (or GPL) is expecting people to donate money to them? And where do you get the idea that someone is going to be "buying Ferraris" by republishing something that was published under such a license? If there's that much money to be made from it, then competitors will pop up and drive the price down (which is easy, since the cost of production is close to zero). Oops, there go those Ferraris!
I feel from the article that it appears many people do not see the computer as an artistic tool. The same way a painter sees a brush. A writer a manuscript. A musician an instrument.
They see it more as a TV, a stereo, a delivery system. They see the computer as the end point of creative media, not the beginning. "So DRM must be enforced in the end point."
But to many of us techno-utopians who have grown up around computers and could see the machine without limitations, DRM presents a threat to our creativity. It limits what we consider a limitless machine.
Would a painter feel threatened if some colour paints would not work with his/her paint brush?
Would a musician feel threatened if certain rhythms and melodies could not be played?
I see my computer not as a burden for working life, but a portfolio and canvas of all my creativity.
The article seems to think they know 'us techno-utopians' but I feel that I have been misrepresented.
--
"self confessed techno-utopian computer artist"
www.groklaw.net (Groklaw)
:P
It is a VERY major work, and it's under the Creative Commons liscense.
en.wikipedia.org (Wikipedia)
It is also a VERY major work, and is also under the Creative Commons liscense.
So.. um, you're not only a bad bad AC, but you're also a wrong, wrong AC
It's not that someone expects that people will donate money to them, it's that they probably don't expect that a large company that earns millions of dollars off their work will not even send a thank-you note in return, because the sense of common courtesy that we take for granted doesn't envelope the whole world in a bug, lovey commonsfest.
As for buying Ferraris... I admit this applies more to CC than GPL... but all it takes is for Sony Music to pick up a set of tracks from an artist and make a sudden marketing blitz around the world, and they'd be quite wealthy indeed. Sure, the competitors could sell the same songs too, but first-mover advantage would still help Sony win the day.
Once you go outside the well-connected world of the internet, lots of people don't understand what a CC license is, or that you could just download that song rather than buying it for $25.00 at HMV. A huge market waiting to be exploited.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Good lord. This article and its predecessor are nothing but "these people hold such-and-such-overly-simplified-obviously-stupid opinion. Aren't they stupid simpletons who just want to pirate the golden dripping of Awesome Artists?"
Whatever. This guy has a stick up his ass. Ignore him. CC is it's own thing for it's own class of people. They should sink or swim on their own without the hindrance of stupid "pundits" like this.
[delete rant about proper spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, along with a WTF regarding your use of the "double period".]
1) A Creative Commons license is not an EULA. The Creative Commons licenses does not say anything about how the end user can use the work being licensed. Like the GPL, the CC licenses only grant additional rights to potential redistributors, which is a distinct group.
2) Not all EULAs are equally enforceable. For example, good luck trying to enforce mine.
3) An EULA is NOT necessary for enforcing copyright. Quite the contrary, EULAs are generally where people shove stuff that they know damned well wouldn't be enforceable under simple copyright.
4) Okay, I have to know. What is it with those double-periods?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
This is the most concise and deep description of the true nature of the divide between true e-generation members and so called "representatives and lawmakers". I know at least 4 people directly who use thier computers to create mashups, remixes, political satire, funny shorts, parodies, etc. I refuse to divulge details, but I know this kind of personal creativity with computers has already begun to spill into main stream tv, and this is all threatened by stupid old men who see computers as nothing more than a glorified TV rather than the limitless tool for creativity it really is.
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So *what* is the big deal with these guys that they so despise CC and act like it is something that it is not? I want to think it is more then trolling for hits, but there doesn't seem to be any other motive that I can tell...
The point is that those whose livelihoods depend upon acting as go-betweens between the creators of "IP", and the consumers of "IP", feel threatened by the possibilities of the internet in general, and the FOSS movement in particular.
For two thousand years, creative people wrote books. THey wrote these books because they wanted to write them, and because they wanted people to read them.
How much money do you think Livy made for writing "Discourses"? How much money did Julius Ceasar make from writing "The Gallic War", and "The Cival War"? How much did Machiavelli make from having written "The Prince"?
In all three cases, the answer is not very much. They didn't write those books to make money from renting out puplication rights... they each had other motives that did not involve money.
So now we fast-forward to 2005, where there is an ingrained cultural meme that ALL human interaction MUST be motivated by the exchange of folding money... except there are many creative people who have the same motives that the authors and creators of past centuries had. Thier motives for writing a book, or a play, or a computer program may not involve money.
This, of course, is very worrisome to those whose entire existence is predicated upon their ability to stick themselves inbetween creators and viewers, and to leech a living from that position.
The leeches see that their two-century-long free lunch on the blood of creative people may soon be coming to an end.
So they wiggle and whine about any liscense that cuts them out of the transaction. Oh, boo hoo hoo, the GPL will end the world, or boo hoo hoo, the CC liscense will end all existence. Heh, and for the leech-like middlemen, they're correct :)
Orlowski seems to inhabit a world of his own.
One of Orlowski's earlier articles claimed that Gary Trudeau was specifically lampooning the Creative Commons in Doonesbury. I wrote the editors to point out that the comics in question were two years old, and that I found it highly unlikely that Gary Trudeau had even heard about a movement that was at the time only six months old. Unsurprisingly my mail was forwarded on to Orlowski. More surprising was the bizarre response I got from Orlowski.
In his response, he claimed that the article in question was written by somebody else and that he didn't know what to make of it. I pointed out that my message was a standard angry letter to the editor on a story he wrote and that he should take it as such. His response was further disconnected, apparently having no idea what was being discussed and asking how he could help me.
Perhaps some inner hatred of the Creative Commons has driven Orlowski off the deep end?
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As long as Disney has enough money to bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobby Congress into extending the copyright term every time Mickey Mouse's copyright is about to expire, then GNU/Linux is going to be copyright protected for the forseeable future.
Ok, so it'll probably happen one day, but by then I'll be long dead.
Quote from Wikipedia "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License".
Think you might of got that 2nd one wrong?
You are correct that the text (excluding quotations, which are copyrighted and an almost-universally accepted form of fair use/fair dealing) is available under the GNU free documentation license.
However, other media types (pictures, sounds, movies) can be under other licenses. In my experience, the most common license for those types of files is the GFDL, and CC-by-SA is the second most common. Public domain (which is not a license) is also fairly common, mostly thanks to the US government (nearly all work produced by/for the US Gov't is public domain)
--A Wikipedia Administrator
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
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.
I think that what he forgets is there are entire economies of creative works that don't depend on collecting the five cents in royalties on every copy. I get a grant from the government to do some research. I get a grant from a school system to design a course. I a contract to create some materials.
Nobody sees my work until I've been paid for my time. I don't care about collecting royalties because by the time anything makes it out into the world, I've moved on to the next project.
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.
Guess I was wrong about Wikipedia's liscense.
But, um... Groklaw is under a Creative Commons liscense, and it's pretty large and well-done.
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!
Did Lawrence Lessig personally insult Orlowski? Did the Creative Commons run over Orlowski's dog? Because I can't think of any rational reason for Orlowski's bitterness toward the Creative Commons. I like the Register, I like it's aggressive, cynical point of view. And some people are promising that the Creative Commons is The Ultimate Answer that will Heal the Sick. They deserve some mocking. But to generalize a few overly enthusiatic supportors into a general statement about Creative Commons is stupid. Worse, he makes up entirely straw man arguments, like CC supports are just looking for a thin excuse to make infringing copys of copyrighted works. Congrats on missing the point; you might as well accuse Stallman of starting the Free Software Foundation because he wants an excuse to make copies of Microsoft Office. Maybe the supporters do want things to be Free, but so what? They've chosen to do so honestly, by making their own work free to varying extents. Orlowski's coverage normally doesn't bother me, but when he gets on the Creative Commons he steps into la-la land. Feh.
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"Engineering recipes, or source code, aren't the same as works of art."
I believe science IS art. Art IS science, and anyone who cannot see the connection most likely isnt neither a scientist or artist. Einstien's formula was art, his methods were scientific. Source code is art, the methods, formulas, and algorithms are the science.
When I listen to music I listen with the exact same critical ear and attention to detail that I give to sourcecode I'm reading.
Second, music is not a business, hacking is not a business, its an art first and a business second because all the elite programmers, hackers and composers were both artists and scientists. Bach was to music what Carmack is to programming and as Einstein was to physics. They used science to create works of art.
We need to promote sci-art. Mixing science and art.
Orlowski seems to be thinking of the worth of reusing existing works solely from the perspective of music, and he seems to be asserting that it is old news and only computer nerds don't know about it. Frankly, I couldn't care less about "remixed songs", which I agree is not much more than a dated gimmick; I think it is far more important to allow free access to significant literary works. For example, it might be interesting to write a book set in Middle Earth but presenting it from the Orcs' perspective, much like Gregory Maguire's retelling of the Wizard of Oz from the witch's perspective. In a sane world, there would be no problem with that, but in reality the Tolkien Estate ("protecting the rights" of a man dead 30 years ago) probably would either halt publication or demand a hefty fee.
However, the trouble is that some commercial entity will inevitably pick up the artist's work and use it for making money, exploiting the fact that the work is not protected by copyright. Surely an artist who donates his work to the public without any expectation of compensation does not intend for someone else to profit off of his work.
Scenerio 1: No open license
1.) You create something that you don't intend to profit (monetarily) from.
2.) You don't license it.
3.) You fail to profit.
Scenerio 2: Open license
1.) You create something that you don't intend to profit (monetarily) from.
2.) You license it with an open license. People around the world use it for their various projects. One of these projects is commercial. Someone with the ability to leverage the resource you provided takes the opportunity and profits from it.
3A.) You fail to profit.
Outcome:
Both scenerios 1 and 2 appear to have the same outcome, which is to be expected as per step 1. You do not profit.
Conclusion
Since, in both cases, you were unable to create direct profit through your own actions. Why should you be owed in the second scenerio by those who have done well by their own profitable abilities?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
I see it as more a matter of this, the free licensing allows wider penetration of the creative work. The more that people embrace the work, and the other work of the artist in question the greater the chances for the artist to succeed with their art.
Bingo.
Eternal copyright is only really backed by the fear that whatever you're copyrighting is THE ONLY SALABLE THING YOU WILL EVER CREATE! Copyright is used to level the playing field between physical and idea-based economies. Just as physical objects crumble and deplete, so must copyrights.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
But still, it illustrates that the fact this licence is irrevokable is a very good thing. You don't want something like that happen to you.
Jan
The fact that it has failed can easily be demonstrated by the fact that there is no major work released under the CC
Flickr, 4,202,909 creative commons photos as of now.
-Colin
The fact that it has failed can easily be demonstrated by the fact that there is no major work released under the CC
Whoops, also forgot the BBS: Documentary.
-Colin
Better communications have all but removed some hideous inequities. It's no longer the case, for example, that Northern Soul artists were dying in poverty ignorant of the fact that thousands of people were celebrating their music on the other side of the Atlantic at all night parties.
Well, nowadays orthern Soul artists were dying in poverty absolutely aware of the fact that thousands of people are celebrating their music on the other side of the Atlantic at all night parties. Communication transfers information. Not legal rights associated with it. And money follow the legaleese transfer channels, not data transfer channels.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
...he does like complex solutions and is suspicious of simple, elegant solutions. He also likes getting more readers for El Reg. He is a business guy, ultimately, and his biz is bringing eyeballs to El Reg.
Andrew and I both live in SF. I met him for lunch one day at a pasta restaurant on Kearny between Bush and Pine. We talked about a film I'm producing, the Digital Tipping Point, which is a film about the free open source software's part in the cultural benefits of bringing more minds on line. My point was that bringing more minds on line means, more noise, but more quality creativity, too.
In that discussion, he panned both Lessig and Clayton Christensen, both of whom are influential in the upcoming DTP film. He doesn't like what he views as "economic determinism." He thought that the cc relies too heavily on the belief that more access to technology will create more art works of genuine value. And he thought that Harvard Biz Prof Clayton Christensen's work was too simplistic and a form of economic determinism. He actually became quite peeved at Christensen's line of thinking during our discussion. He kept insisting that both Christensen and Lessig are pushing simplistic ideas, and I kept thinking to myself that he had not spent enough time trying to understand Christensen and Lessig, and was dismissing them merely because they both are popular now.
I also kept thinking to myself that Andrew values complex ideas, and I think that he believes that as a journalist, he needs to very visibly display his independence of thought for fear of being labeled a party-line thinker.
Ultimately, it is there that Andrew makes his greatest mistake, IMHO. He's so eager to display his independence of thought that he sometimes will have a knee-jerk reaction against popular ideas, such as the cc or Christensen's theory of disruptive technologies.
So no, Andrew was not trolling with his two stories on the cc. That was the real Andrew O, IMHO. I like Andrew's writing a great deal. I think that he's often right on target, and quite funny. I also think that he is overly concerned about appearing to be an independent thinker.
So Andrew, please relax. You often write great stuff, but this rant about the cc is not one of your best pieces. Please let it drop and move on to something else.
Christian Einfeldt
Why would you be owed anything in the second scenario?
And who is paying him? I really like his idea of living in a world where I cannot give people rights to use my work freely. (and optionally stop people selling it for profit).
CC has some very good well described licenses, that are brilliant, and I hope sxc.hu uses the most open one as its default, and deviantart.com also incorporates it.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
"Want to use a sample? Go ahead and use it. With a nudge and a wink, you'll probably get away with it. If you reach number one with that sample, expect to hear from the original artist."
No. Expect to hear from the labels' lawyer. And prepare to pay thrice what you got from that piece, even if that was just one sample in a big original work. If there's a chance for money to be had from someone who did something vaguely like what someone else did, be sure someone will come to claim them. By copyrigt fees, by settlements or by lawsuits, not necessarily in that order.
"Beethoven doesn't need to be re-mixed - he needs a good orchestra."
So that means, that if I do remix Beethoven nevertheless, his grand-grand-grandchildren are entitled to sue me, because it was their grandpa's heritage, so I owe them money? If something according to someone, isn't needed (and to someone else, is), should it be forbidden by law?
"Defenders of the licensing approach say it simply adds to the range of choices an artist has available to them"
More importantly, it removes from the pool an artist is forbidden to use. Nowadays it's getting harder to find an original, uncharted, untouched territory. More and more often you stumble upon repetitions, intentional or not.
"And why the reluctance to think about social agreements that reward the gifted people who give us such pleasure?"
It's reluctance to reward people who create crap AND stop really creative people from giving us such pleasure. Talent should be rewarded. Not just "being somewhere around there first".
"Why the recourse to mechanism - the need to have every T crossed, every i dotted, and a license for every possible occasion?"
Because if you don't, someone else will, and then they have all the legal system behind them to screw you as they only desire.
"Finding a way to reward creators, which the project doesn't even attempt to address, remains more urgent as ever."
Yes, it does. Now, when problem of protecting the creators from unjustly punishment has been solved by CC.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Let's say you have a farm with an abundance of carrots. So many, in fact, that you put a sign out by the road saying: "If you're hungry, take one!". Free-for-all. Maybe someone's gone without lunch, and this'll help them out. It's good for the community, and it makes you feel good.
...the person doing the selling may be providing an important service by marketing the product, but their contribution cannot stand on its own. I can't sell carrots if I have no carrots.
You wake up one morning to find the local Safeway loading half your crop onto a truck. They're going to sell it all in their stores, and make a handsome profit cause it was free to begin with.
Can someone take a freely-licensed work and sell it without remitting anything to the author? Sure. But is it right?
The world's only surviving livewriter.
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.
Well, from what I got from the article the writer thinks that the problem with the CC crowd is they think of creative work a lot like code, and think a solution that works for code will work for artistic works.
If you accept that, then pointing out these arguments did work for Open Source doesn't really help you, since you have already accepted the situation is different. So Open Source can be relevant, but the Creative Commons may not be.
Copyright is great, I have it you have it, we all have it!
Hello Copyright, my name is license, in case you haven't noticed we are not the same thing, now fuck off 'bloggers' who get 'jobs' writing 'articles' with names like Dvorak - THINK before you write.
Once again, for those at the back:
Copyright != License!
Write it down.
(In case that wasn't enough I am implying that Creative commons gives licenses for people to class for their copyrights works. Creative commons has nothing to do with copyright, merely licensing. And as Dvorak spasses on about, current copyright laws do not actually address licensing, partly due to the fact that they are copyright laws. Not licenses.)
Captain parenthesis.
I will continue: thanks to a world of meaningless words (blog, podcasting) people who perpetuate this bs words are incapable of the basic rudimentary deducations in langage, such as copyright, and license.
So, in closing: Creative Commons: Public Domain
While this is 'trendy', it also completes the set, and public domain is a 'license' and furthermore, they provide (see earlier) the service I nodded to: they provide the system that someone can link what to the explaination of the license, and also a few words to help someone convey they are the author and they are signing over this work.
OK. Lets all listen to a pod-fucking-cast of the blog shall we? troll flamebait? I don't care, this is releases under a CC 2.0 share a like license.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Your post is remarkably clueless on many fronts, but I'll just address one issue:
but all it takes is for Sony Music to pick up a set of tracks from an artist and make a sudden marketing blitz around the world, and they'd be quite wealthy indeed.
There are thousands of artists out there who would absolutely LOVE for Sony to take their music and market it around the world without signing them to a pesky contract. Sure, the artist might not make any direct compensation for the tracks Sony grabbed, but the exposure would be invaluable. Why do you reckon Sony signs artists to contracts BEFORE they market the music? You think they do it out of the goodness of their heart to benefit the artist?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
I wonder what Andy Warhol would've done if the Campbell's Soup label was published under the same licence?
These guys make a living out of publishing attacks on things they don't understand. It's just all money to them.
This basically deeds the rights to the Creative Commons, who then license it back to you for a period of time, after which they will deed it to the public domain.
So, through the Creative Commons, a fully exploitable, but more reasonably termed option also exists.
I produce a short fiction podcast called Escape Pod. We buy science fiction and fantasy stories from authors, narrate them, and release them on the Web. Our authors receive a real contract for nonexclusive audio rights, and get a real check. Our listeners get free content. We release our MP3 files under a Creative Commons license. (Attribution/non-commercial/no-derivatives.)
In turn we ask for donations. Within three months, we were bringing in more money in donations than we had paid for stories. We're putting that money back into the podcast.
My choice to use a CC license was not based on any sort of idealism or geek philosophy. It was a business decision: I wanted the audio files to be distributed as widely as possible, to grow our audience and our donor base as large as possible. CC is a useful shorthand to encourage that sharing while making it clear that people can't alter the content (our authors still have copyright) and they can't sell it without our involvement.
It's impractical to charge money for a podcast, and I don't intend to try. Giving it away and asking for money, however, has worked out very well for us. Creative Commons doesn't make that possible, but it facilitates it. It makes my life easier by not forcing me to write the necessary legal boilerplate on my own, and by allowing me to communicate our terms in a few phrases that many people understand.
So that's how CC has been useful to me. No "theory of art" or any such fluff: it's just about putting out content that people enjoy, and finding a way to make back what we put into it.
ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine
How is writing code any different from writing poetry or composing music? Thats code too and people consider that art, why?
There are thousands of artists out there who would absolutely LOVE for Sony to take their music and market it around the world without signing them to a pesky contract.
The assumption being that the artist has any way to cash in on the craze Sony creates. Many artists would believe they could, I'm sure, but it's not as easy as it sounds. And Sony is under no obligation to tell the public about your own personal website when they sell your music, so you might end up a long way down a Google search... IF the end-user bothered to check for you in the first place.
Let's say that first CD went platinum... next track you put on your site'll be on Virgin Radio before you could blink, and the song after that, and after that, and so on. And if you're still CC'ing them, NONE of those songs would earn you money either. You don't have the marketing power that Sony has. And the few dollars you earn from a few local gigs you land because you "sound like that song on the radio" won't come close to matching what the label execs are raking in from your work.
On the other hand, if you view a recorded song simply as marketing for your live performance, this is all good. But I'd think that anyone who's actually gone into a recording booth for hours to fine-tune their track wouldn't think that's just some disposable set of bytes. There's no problem with INDIVIDUALS shuffling around your track for free, in my view, because THAT is marketing. But as soon as someone starts to charge money for it, they've crossed the line into pure commercialism, and they do not deserve a free ride on your back.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
You forgot the fact that there are infinite copies of those carrots. (Me? Of all people? Pulling the "Copyright isn't theft" card?) You, Safeway, the lunchless, and Bob down the street all have the same chance to use or profit from the "carrots".
When you a relatively loose free license, the content becomes, in essence, a static resource, no longer your controlled expression. If a licensor can't handle that fact, which is a valid position, then they should really think twice about approaching free licenses. The warm fuzzy feeling is just so much better when you're actually putting something on the line.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
the content becomes, in essence, a static resource, no longer your controlled expression. If a licensor can't handle that fact, which is a valid position, then they should really think twice about approaching free licenses.
I agree completely, yet I still think it's a failing of the licensing schemes that they are incapable of playing ball with the copyright world. It should be possible for someone to promote a free license for their work, permit remixing and adaptation, and expect no compensation except where profit is being made from their art. Safeway owes a debt to you for the carrots. Sometimes you'll set a price for them and demand payment up front, sometimes not. My argument is that it's fundamentally wrong to profit from someone else's efforts and give them nothing; and the free licences are absolving those doing the selling of any sort of guilt. I would think that even supporters of fully free culture would think that putting a check on corporate greed and exploitation would be a good thing...
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Let's say that first CD went platinum...
Let's say that you'd need to hire an agent right away to deal with all of the contract offers you'd receive.
Nothing says that just because you release something under the CC that everything you do for the rest of your life is covered under the CC.
The reason that many artists release works under the CC is becuase they want to get exposure so they can get discovered. If you have an album that goes platinum, even if you don't earn a penny from the album, you can consider yourself discovered.
Like I said, there's a reason that record labels sign acts to multi-album deals BEFORE they promote the music. I'm sure that Virgin would be happy to sign you up and put out your next few records after Sony has gone to all the trouble and expense of making you famous.
The bottom line is that the scenario you're describing is so far from reality that it wouldn't even make good fiction. The plot would be too unvelievable.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
yeah, sorry, I meant to do it, but got distracted, and then it seemed like I was trying to antagonize people twice in the same thread.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
In this case you provide a CC-NC license, and for anyone wishing to commercially exploit it, you rely upon them approaching you for a bespoke license.
However, why should your particular work ethic prevent a more Christian one?
Hence:
I donate my work freely to the world and anyone who would make use of it, on the proviso that anyone who does so, whether or not they make money in the process, must donate their work to the world on the same basis.
You may believe in denying your fellow man a living from your gifts, but not everyone shares that approach. Be careful before you denounce their work ethic.
You may believe in denying your fellow man a living from your gifts, but not everyone shares that approach. Be careful before you denounce their work ethic.
I don't believe in denying them that right. In fact, I want people to take my art, shake it around in their brains, and create something so fantastic it amazes the world how brilliant they are. I've put quite a lot of my money where my mouth is in this regard, with no regrets. I fully believe in the CC-SA fundamentals.
On the other hand, the work that I kicked off and some other person perfected is still a collaboration. They wouldn't have had the basis to make their product without mine as a foundation, so to some degree (and it's all relative), we're in it together, as authors.
I would think that anyone who believes in CC-SA would also gladly donate a portion of their earnings to those who helped make the money possible... not out of necessity, but an unforced moral obligation, almost. As a recognition of the collaboration that took place.
My concern (and we've gone round this block before, you and I) is that not everyone is as good-natured as a CC-SA fan, and that any CC license that doesn't try to address the question of commercial exploitation is putting artists at a disadvantage against the forces that are most likely to abuse CC.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
There is nothing inherently wrong with commercial exploitation, just as, for example, there is nothing inherently wrong with racial or sexual discrimination.
The wrong only occurs when you insert the word 'unfair'.
The GPL and CC-SA are commercially permissive 'Share Alike' licenses, i.e. they fully permit any commercial use of the work or derivatives. However, unlike the BSD or public domain, they ensure FAIR commercial exploitation by requiring any re-publishing of the work or its derivatives to occur under the same license.
In this way they do indeed address commercial exploitation. They ensure that it's fair.
There is nothing inherently wrong with commercial exploitation, just as, for example, there is nothing inherently wrong with racial or sexual discrimination.
That was very well done. Very seriously: you should write for a magazine somewhere. You've got a knack for brilliant bits of prose.
In this way they do indeed address commercial exploitation. They ensure that it's fair.
Fair only to those reselling, in that they have an even field. But it doesn't help the artist that created the work in the first place. Now you could argue that the artist should be paid before they work a la patronage, but that's a backward notion not suited to a very large population. Too many great artists would fall through the cracks that way. So then you could say that they get paid for performing the work of art somehow, but that brings me back to my 2nd-grade talent show...
My particular talent at the time was drawing. I was (at the time) really good at all sorts of visual arts. So when it came time for the talent show, others said they'd do dance, singing, skip-rope... I said I would do a painting. "No," said the teacher, "you can't paint in front of an audience for ten minutes at a talent show. You need to PERFORM!". So instead, I learned to juggle at the last minute, and had a miserable time.
Some art is not suited to performance, so the artist falls back on a physical copy of the art. In the digital world, that copy tends to have no value. You can say the first copy gets sold to "supporters" for an exorbitant price, but that's patronage, and it is inefficient and flawed on a large scale.
If we're keeping copyright around as a stick to enforce CC-SA, why not keep it around to enforce royalty payments built on the same principles? Make it simple, generic, and frictionless; don't change the non-commercial rights... just create a structure that lets the artists build upon one another's work in a way that puts food on the table if the work is ever sold. It imposes no restraints on anyone in the system that they would (hopefully) not feel obligated to live by anyway. But, like the CC-SA, it needs teeth so it can prevent abuse.
If someone at the grocery store drops a dime out of their wallet while paying for food, even though it's touched the ground and is technically free-for-all, you DO give it back to them, right?
The world's only surviving livewriter.
"The whole point of sharing something with a Creative Commons license is to allow other people to build upon work that you've created, resulting in more creative works for people to enjoy. "
;-) One can not be so naive as to suppose that people just 'sharing' their work will never have the tendency to ask for money once they see that it's used. There just is no legal certaintity, so in practise, they are ALWAYS going to be forced to ask for permission, whether they give away their film for free or not. Certainly, there is less chance anyone will do the trouble if it's not commercially beneficial (if the film is a financial succes, for instance), but in the end, copyright(infringement) is NOT dependend of the succes someone has with a product based upon the infringement.
Let's see the next paragraph:
"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."
Well, then you don't actually forbid to "build upon" works to create "more creative" works, do you? You just forbid commercialising it.
Sure, this may give problems in some circumstances, but those circumstances are derived from the fact that people wanting to "create upon" them also want a commercial gain. This may or may not be a worthwhile goal, but it DOES indicate that the problem lies not in 'not being able to use the work', but in the commercial aspect of it. This can easily be demonstrated by the fact that, if they make sure it's not for commercial gain, they can use the works to create their 'better' works upon.
"If someone wants to sell a movie with your song in it, they're either going to have to allow free redistribution of the movie, or ask you how much they have to pay to use your song in the movie."
So what are you complaining about? The CC (non-commercial) just makes it sure that you can use it when the film goes for free. This does NOT happen when it is 'shared' without any such licence - because then the normal C applies.
"Both of those options are the goals of someone who is sharing their work."
You've lost me, there. Certainly, it are not the goals *at the same time*?
BTW, I don't think the non-commercial clause forbids *indirect* gain from a cc'ed work in the sense that you describe it. If you actually use the work in your own work, and make that commercial, then, yes, probably. If you set it on a site that has also banners...I don't think so.
I agree they should make this a bit more clearer, though.
"If you're aiming for freedom, restricting usage is a bad idea, especially when it's done in such a way that many people choose to restrict usage without being aware of the consequences."
I can agree to that: the more freedom the better. Yet, one can not deny that 'more free' is also better then totally non-free. In that respect, while a CC NC may be less good then CC without any restrictions, it is still better then regular copyright with all rights reserved.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I work 40+ hours a week, managing a tiny mon-and-pop retail store.
I also spent 17 months writing my first Fantasy/Sci-Fi novel, basically during the nights and on my days off.
I wrote the book, because I *wanted* to write the book, and because I felt a driving need to do something creative and to MAKE something new.
I'm finishing up the final editing, and having a friend photoshop up a nice cover, and then I'll be publishing it through Lulu.com
Personally, my choice for liscensing is to use plain-old regular copyright for my first novel... but once I'm done writing my second novel (a sequel), I might consider the idea of offering the first one for free download in order to drive up sales of the second one.
Who knows? I'll decide on all that, once the second one is done... but since it is MY book, I'll use whatever liscense that I like.
If I actually make any money on the first book, then great. Maybe I'll be able to eventually support myself from my writing alone. That would be nice.
But if not, then I'll still continue writing... it'll just take a lot longer for each book to get finished, because the 40-hour-a-week "pay-the-bills" job cuts into my writing time.
So, yeah, actually making money by writing would be cool, and it'd be nice to actually support myself doing something that I love to do... but money alone isn't the primary motivating factor for creating things.
At least it isn't for me.
"You're not paying for the plastic of the disc or the bits of the AAC, you're (supposedly) dropping a coin in the performer's hat."
Ah, yes, but you aren't paying for an *actual* performance, do you? You are paying for a copy of a performance once done, on a shiny piece of platic. Thus, the distortion of how it was in earlier times, and how it is now with recording, has already happend.
For centuries, even aside the patronage system, the 'performance hat' was filled with coins for the actual performance they did. Thus, they WORKED for it, and were rewarded for the work they did.
Nowadays, they can - in priciple - perform only once, and have an almost perpetual revenue from it, because of the near-zero cost of copying. Now, when demanding fairness...is that being fair? I don't think so. *I* have to work every day to gain a dime, over and over. I have to offer hard work every day, and get rewarded for that, in comparison. I don't see why people should inherently get an almost perpetual income by doing virtually nothing.
If they get payed and get 'bread on the table' by actually working for it - for instance by giving life concerts - by all means. This was how it was done for centuries, after all. And how many artists still get payed and afloat today, actually.
But getting payed over and over again, for doing basically nothing apart from that one recording...pfff, forget it, I don't call that fair. And *THAT* has been the true distortion which shifted the balance - but only from the 20th century onwards. I say: get rid of it, and may artists get payed for their actually performance and work, just like all the rest of us. Artists won't starve to death (i they are any good), rest assured.
"So back to the point: a CC-C-SA or GPL product requires a re-user to give proper credit, but it also frees them of the responsibility to support the artist they're using."
Yes, and? The artist agreed to it.
"And these days (as in all days, really), if you don't have some force of law at your disposal, trusting people to do the right thing is a flawed concept."
The 'right thing' in this case, is the free use of the CC'ed works under the restrictions you appointed. There is already a law for that: copyright-law. (CC is based on that law too, after all)
"It's telling the kids the cookie jar is open, and assuming they'll only eat one."
Now I'm beginning to see the parents' poster reference to 'paternalism'. Look, I've offered work under the CC-A myself and I tell you this: the cookie jar IS open because *I* opened it, it's meant to be open, and everyone can take as much as he wants (which is quite possible with digital copying, which I pointed out earlier). I *DO NOT CARE* if people use my work and don't pay me, in fact, that's just the gest of it. I WANT them to use it, and they don't have to offer me a dime, ever.
Aside for the attribution, the 'kids' can take as much as they want, the way they want it, at the time they want it, and can becoming stinking rich with it if they can, and still I won't demand them to pay me one lousy eurocent!
I hope I made it clear, as incomprehensible as it may seem to you: I do not *want* to get any financial compensation for the works I give away. If I wanted that, I wouldn't have given it away. What's so difficult to understand? Why the patronising, as if people that wish to give their stuff under the CC are idiots, who are not aware and consient of what they are doing?
Your whole reasoning is skewed and biased with the idea that authors always want financial compensation for what they create. You're knowledge of artists is seriously screwed, if you think that. I repeat: we have no problems with an open cookie jar; we WANT it to be open, and we WANT 'the kids' to take as much as they want. That's the wole point of it, actually.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I see what you mean about inserting references to slashdot. That'd almost be clever if it wasn't so pitiful,
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!