[cc-community] cc license use on participatory art sites, infringement and confusion
Alek Tarkowski
alek.tarkowski at creativecommons.pl
Mon Nov 27 07:13:48 EST 2006
Hello,
A friend of mine has sent me a link to a person complaining that a site
called Buzznet allows people to upload works by others as their own, and
on top of that mark them as CC licensed. The gist of the criticism is
that though uploading somebody else's work is bad and immoral, at least
uner normal copyright you do not make it easily available. So this is, I
think, an important argument for us - that infringement with the later
use of CC licenses is worse for the original artist than just infringement.
http://kmye-chan.deviantart.com/journal/10844224/
I write about this for two reasons. Firstly, I am a bit shocked by how
this person, clearly knowledgeable just a bit about copyrights, gets
confused about CC - at some point s/he mentions a license called "Common
Creative - Paternity 0.1" - no idea what that's supposed to be.
Secondly, the person is right that on Buzznet, a site where people
basically set up account to post things, a bit like flickr, but more
youth / fan oriented, people will post anything - game screenshots,
anime fragments, you name a copyrighted work they might have it, and
then license it away under CC (as it also seems that CC licensing is a
default option, but I did not check). So this is a problem, because we
have an interface that sort of supports batch infringement and confusion.
So I think CC needs to really work with platforms that offer CC
licensing in the interface. Flickr finally managed to improve licensing
description to make it a bit more clear, but when you upload, you don't
get relevant info that helps you understand what you're doing with CC
licenses, the way you get with the normal CC licensing engine. And even
that engine could be improved - this has been mentioned several times,
that the selection process should include a reminder about not licensing
other's works and so on (this piece of advice is currently burried
somewhere in the FAQ).
Otherwise we might reach a point where CC is recognized as "something to
do", the license use counter will be ticking like crazy, but the whole
pool of works will be slightly spoiled, not a good situation. I think
education needs to be tightly coupled with technical means (as always!!).
best,
Alek Tarkowski
--
koordynator / Public Lead
Creative Commons Polska / Poland
(+48) 889 660 444
http://creativecommons.pl
skype:alektarkowski
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: alek.tarkowski.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 233 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/attachments/20061127/d7bc3dc3/attachment.vcf
More information about the cc-community
mailing list