creative commons and copyright

On 23 Dec 2004, at 18:47, ryan griffis wrote:

> "Creative Commons advertise their licenses as the best-of-both-worlds
> between copyright and the public domain.

No they don't. They advertise their licenses as a way of producers
managing their rights.

> But is the word 'commons' then a misnomer,

No it isn't. A commons is a shared resource managed for the good of a
given community. The CC licenses achieve this for various values of
"shared" and "common good".

> and can such licensing be subjected to the same abuse as copyright?

No, since its provisions are clearer and less restrictive. There are
flaws with the CC licenses as they stand, particularly with iCommons'
mishandling of moral rights, but on the whole CC does good.

In my experience CC are responsive to input and the licenses will be
revised again starting next year, so if anyone would like to improve
things they should join a mailing list:

http://creativecommons.org/discuss

> Saul Albert raises the question and a discussion within the University
> of Openess Wiki follows."

The UOW mostly just point out the flaws in his polemic…

- Rob.

I agree with Rob, the criticisms are nothing but either/or radicalism
that does nothing to solve current existing problems.

Just one example from the responses to the criticism
(http://www.metamute.com/look/article.tpl?
IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=1&NrIssue$&NrSection=5&NrArticle45):

> > You are more free to use a CC licensed work than if no such license
> was used.
>
> But less free than if the work is in the public domain. If you want
> to play, contribute to the public domain. If you want to reserve your
> rights, do

So his stance is either make your work completely free in the public
domain (CC provides methods to put your work in the public domain
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/), or use copyright.
But there is a *huge* middle ground
(http://creativecommons.org/images/spectrumofrights2.gif) which the
reviewer just disregards. Why can't I reserve some rights? He never
gives an answer.

On Dec 23, 2004, at 3:15 PM, Rob Myers wrote:

>> Saul Albert raises the question and a discussion within the
>> University of Openess Wiki follows."
>
> The UOW mostly just point out the flaws in his polemic…
–
<t.whid>
www.mteww.com
</t.whid>

Just to be clear: i didn't write that blurb about Albert's criticism.
and the main reason for posting it was the posted responses to his
jabs, which i have read/heard in other venues. certainly, Albert's
critique is one always leveled against reformist practices, which i
think are good for at least keeping the fact that it is a process of
reform, rather than an outright overhaul, in the discussion.
take care,
ryan

On 23 Dec 2004, at 21:18, ryan griffis wrote:

> Just to be clear: i didn't write that blurb about Albert's criticism.
> and the main reason for posting it was the posted responses to his
> jabs, which i have read/heard in other venues. certainly, Albert's
> critique is one always leveled against reformist practices, which i
> think are good for at least keeping the fact that it is a process of
> reform, rather than an outright overhaul, in the discussion.

Yes, it is important to remember that the Commons and Free Software
movements are *reform* movements.

I would argue that they are progressive reform movements, seeking to
make new methods of production work for rather than against producers.
This is in contrast to would-be regressive reform such as
Adbusters-style anticapitalism, which seeks to reform other people's
consumption. These are historically precedented reactions to changes in
means of production. Consider Bauhaus and the Arts & Crafts movement as
reformist reactions to mass production.

On 23 Dec 2004, at 20:42, twhid wrote:

>> > You are more free to use a CC licensed work than if no such
>> license was used.
>>
>> But less free than if the work is in the public domain. If you want
>> to play, contribute to the public domain. If you want to reserve your
>> rights, do

This is a very common straw man. Yes, it's easier to rip off the public
domain than it is to rip off licensed work. That's what freedom means
here, the freedom to lose freedom! Licenses protect against this,
safeguarding freedom.

SCO and Microsoft like the public domain, and love PD-like licenses
such as BSD. Why anyone who wishes to be any kind of radical would side
with those organizations is beyond me.

And as an artist who's trying to find public domain images, I must say
that what little of the visual public domain that is untouched by
contracts or licenses is very hard to find.

> So his stance is either make your work completely free in the public
> domain (CC provides methods to put your work in the public domain
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/), or use copyright.
> But there is a *huge* middle ground
> (http://creativecommons.org/images/spectrumofrights2.gif) which the
> reviewer just disregards. Why can't I reserve some rights? He never
> gives an answer.

Good resources on this sort of thing:

http://notabug.com/2002/rms-essays.pdf
http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/

- Rob.
–
http://www.robmyers.org/ - A decade of art under a Creative Commons
license.
http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/ - Art, aesthetics & free culture weblog.

Another extremely valuable thing that (and perhaps is one of the main
reasons they were created) CC licenses do is provide legal
legitimization for P2P networks. One of the reasons that Napster went
down was because the no one could point to a good amount of
non-infringing content on the network. If CC had been around before the
Napster decision, Napster's defense could have pointed to the large
amount of share-able stuff on the network using CC licenses.

On Dec 23, 2004, at 5:52 PM, Rob Myers wrote:

> On 23 Dec 2004, at 21:18, ryan griffis wrote:
>
>> Just to be clear: i didn't write that blurb about Albert's criticism.
>> and the main reason for posting it was the posted responses to his
>> jabs, which i have read/heard in other venues. certainly, Albert's
>> critique is one always leveled against reformist practices, which i
>> think are good for at least keeping the fact that it is a process of
>> reform, rather than an outright overhaul, in the discussion.
>
> Yes, it is important to remember that the Commons and Free Software
> movements are *reform* movements.
>
> I would argue that they are progressive reform movements, seeking to
> make new methods of production work for rather than against producers.
> This is in contrast to would-be regressive reform such as
> Adbusters-style anticapitalism, which seeks to reform other people's
> consumption. These are historically precedented reactions to changes
> in means of production. Consider Bauhaus and the Arts & Crafts
> movement as reformist reactions to mass production.
>
> On 23 Dec 2004, at 20:42, twhid wrote:
>
>>> > You are more free to use a CC licensed work than if no such
>>> license was used.
>>>
>>> But less free than if the work is in the public domain. If you want
>>> to play, contribute to the public domain. If you want to reserve
>>> your rights, do
>
> This is a very common straw man. Yes, it's easier to rip off the
> public domain than it is to rip off licensed work. That's what freedom
> means here, the freedom to lose freedom! Licenses protect against
> this, safeguarding freedom.
>
> SCO and Microsoft like the public domain, and love PD-like licenses
> such as BSD. Why anyone who wishes to be any kind of radical would
> side with those organizations is beyond me.
>
> And as an artist who's trying to find public domain images, I must say
> that what little of the visual public domain that is untouched by
> contracts or licenses is very hard to find.
>
>> So his stance is either make your work completely free in the public
>> domain (CC provides methods to put your work in the public domain
>> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/), or use copyright.
>> But there is a *huge* middle ground
>> (http://creativecommons.org/images/spectrumofrights2.gif) which the
>> reviewer just disregards. Why can't I reserve some rights? He never
>> gives an answer.
>
> Good resources on this sort of thing:
>
> http://notabug.com/2002/rms-essays.pdf
> http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/
>
> - Rob.
> –
> http://www.robmyers.org/ - A decade of art under a Creative Commons
> license.
> http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/ - Art, aesthetics & free culture
> weblog.
–
<t.whid>
www.mteww.com
</t.whid>

On 24 Dec 2004, at 15:25, twhid wrote:

> Another extremely valuable thing that (and perhaps is one of the main
> reasons they were created) CC licenses do is provide legal
> legitimization for P2P networks.

Yes, the sampling and NC licenses are very good for that. Detractors
have called NC "free advertising"> I prefer to call it "Free
Circulation".

CC talk about a "spectrum of rights". They do public domain and
noncommercial licenses as you've pointed out. They do copyleft and they
do BSD-style attribution-only licenses. They're working with the BBC to
write an license for the Creative Archive. The Developing Nations
license is very interesting. They're working on a "Science Commons" as
well.

So there's a lot more to CC than the fact that they aren't aligning
themselves with the Wolfie Smith* end of the "copyright warrior"
tendency. :-)

> One of the reasons that Napster went down was because the no one could
> point to a good amount of non-infringing content on the network. If CC
> had been around before the Napster decision, Napster's defense could
> have pointed to the large amount of share-able stuff on the network
> using CC licenses.

Viewed from the wrong angle, "Free Culture" activists are just useful
idiots for the next generation of big media companies that will spring
up around p2p and very fat network pipes. :-)

- Rob.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Smith