[cc-community] Orlowski vs. liblicense

Nick Sincaglia nick at musictbd.com
Tue Aug 21 10:05:11 EDT 2007


I have been thinking about this article a lot in the past day because it is
a familiar argument I hear it a lot. If you strip away all the anger, name
calling and accusatory language, you are left with a perspective or opinion
that differs from this community. I am not sure if there is really much that
can be done to address the difference in opinion because neither side of the
argument can really know the value of a piece on intellectual property a
priori. Let me explain what I mean.

There are many people in the established creative industries who on a daily
basis work with creative people to maximize the commercial potential of
their creative output. On a daily basis these people see the potential value
that is created and sustained over time from a single work or collection of
works. These people also see the abuses that occur in the business. Don't
make the mistake in thinking that all organizations within the established
creative industries work happily together. There are strong adversarial
relationships that span many decades and a large amount of distrust between
organizations.

I will use the music publishing business as an example. The music publishers
represent the song writers, not the recording artists. They have seen abuses
of the people they represent by the record labels. They get particularly
upset when they hear about song writers who sell the rights to their
compositions to record labels for a lucrative recording contract.
Particularly early in the song writer's career. They feel it is part of
their job to help protect the song writer from under valuing their assets.
They feel like it their job to educate and try and prevent the song writer
from making decisions they may regret later on when they better understand
the way the business works and where long term value is created.

Now comes along the Creative Commons. The argument expressed in the Orlowski
article comes from the same protective perspective. Except this time,
instead of a lucrative recording contract, the benefits are even less
tangible and more speculative.

So the difference between the Orlowski view point and that of the commonist
comes down to "What is the potential value of the creative work". From
Orlowski's perspective, the value has high potential value in the future. He
is concerned that the creator may make a decision that has lasting
consequences to that value and he would like to protect the creator from
giving up that value without some tangible benefits in doing so.

The commonist perspective is very different. The commonist understands that
the value of the network is based on the number of people in that network.
The value that this creator can get from this network is significantly
greater than the what they put into it.

I think it all boils down to one thing. What is the future value of a
creative work and to whom? I don't know how to answer this question to
satisfy either side. I think both sides are going to have to agree to
disagree. The only thing I think that can done to counter Orlowski's
argument is to stress the benefits of a commons and provide the statistics
on the likelihood that the creative work will be commercially successful.

tbd

On 8/21/07, Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org> wrote:
>
> Kevin Driscoll wrote:
> > On 8/20/07, jonathon <jonathon.blake at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Including a document that is a crash course in IP rights would be a
> >> useful addition to that tool. (There are a number of fairly good essays
> >> that have CC-BY-SA licences that could be included as part of the
> >> documentation for that tool.)
> >
> > One must be very careful in creating a "crash course in IP" on the
> > OLPC.  Could it not form a dangerous trojan horse to cultures with
> > different understandings of property?
>
> The book "Code" edited by Ghosh contains some very good essays about how
> TRIPS-style intellectual property interacts with tribal or traditional
> knowledge and culture.
>
> http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10459&ttype=2
>
> The commons-law mailing list sometimes covers this kind of issue as well.
>
> http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
>
> Once kids start using OLPC they are dealing with intellectual property
> whether they like it or not so I do believe that they will need some
> education about it. I agree about the dangers of creating an IP
> maximalist trojan horse. It's important not to just do WIPO's work for
> them. So any crash course should be a *critical* crash course,
> presenting the issues and allowing people to take a critical stance to
> IP if they wish.
>
> But then the Orlowskis of this world will complain about CC propaganda.
> ;-)
>
> - Rob.
> _______________________________________________
> cc-community mailing list
> cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-community/attachments/20070821/a148b136/attachment-0001.htm 


More information about the cc-community mailing list