Copyright and licensing of new media art

On 19 Mar 2006, at 19:38, Jon Meyer wrote:

> How do you create an artwork which can be sold in the fine art gallery
> context (e.g. in limited editions of ten or twenty), but which can
> also participate in the remix culture (be published on the web, open
> source, granting freedom to other to mash, etc.).

You could use the Street Performer Protocol and release the work as
Free Software or Free Culture once some or all of the edition has
been purchased:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_performer_protocol

Or you could follow the GPL to the letter and allow the people who
buy the edition to share the source code with others:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL

> Is it possible to have a single work exist in both contexts? Or must
> you make the web version a poor cousin to the version sold in a
> gallery? Also, when a collector buys a work through a gallery, what do
> they actually get? A PC? A CDROM? A contract? But then what if the
> object exists on the web?

A CD ROM is always good. With a certificate. Fetish, fetish. :-)

> I'm asking because I've recently started pondering whether some kind
> of special new media art copyright could be created which would let
> you address both contexts with a single work.
>
> The Creative Commons Sampling Deed is an interesting place to start.
> The Sampling Deed grants remix permission - it gives anyone freedom to
> mash-up or transform your work both for commercial and noncommercial
> purposes. It also grants people the freedom to perform distribute or
> copy the whole work in a noncommercial context.

Sampling is an interesting license. To my mind it is the only one of
the CC licenses that embodies an existing "social contract" (that of
sampling musicians), and it is the only CC license written by the
people who wanted to use it (Negativland). It is closest to how
artists actually want to use art.

But it is not "Free" in the Stallmanian sense, and it does not solve
many of the problems Lessig identifies in "Free Culture":

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

http://www.free-culture.cc/

> For any commercial use - it's back to a one-on-one negotiation between
> the creator and the licensee, which is great for a piece of music, but
> doesn't address what you sell in an art gallery.

So possibly use Attribution-Sharealike (BY-SA), which is a copyleft
license:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

> Is it possible to start with the sampling deed and create a new
> copyright with a commercial use clause that achieves something like:

It is a bad idea to write a new license. There are too many already. :-)

> 1) This work exists freely on the web, anyone can look at it, the
> source code is published, people can remix, modify and mash it.
> However, use of the free work cannot be labelled or presented as an
> artwork, in a gallery, museum, or other art context.

Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial comes close to this, although a
nonprofit gallery could show it.

And NonCommercial sucks. It just adds an extra layer of permission
culture. :-)

> 2) There are N certificates/shares(?) which are fungible (i.e. which
> can be bought and sold without getting the artist involved) and which
> grant the holder permission to label their use of the work an artwork
> and present it in an art context.
>
> Obviously the wording is pretty fuzzy, but is this a crazy notion?
> Anyone with other ideas/suggestions?

There is a mailing list for CC license questions (cc-license-discuss)
which has CC staffers and various self-appointed experts (hi ;-) ) on
it:

http://creativecommons.org/discuss#license

If you want to keep economic control over the work (and not get to
use derivatives commercially), either BY-NC or BY-NC-SA is
appropriate. If you want to actually make your work part of "the
commons" or "the gift economy" and get modifications back, BY-SA is
appropriate. If the work is code, the GPL is best for that.

But wanting to have a work that is displayed online and sold for
presentation in a gallery is a separate issue from taking a position
on how art should be positioned socially in a free culture. Can you
explain why you want the work to participate in remix culture and
what you hope to get from or contribute by this?

- Rob.