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cc-eyebeam - [cc-eyebeam] validating cc licenses? (question for neeru/glenn/wendy)

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Subject: Creative Commons-Eyebeam Forum 2003 November 12-19

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  • From: jippolito AT guggenheim.org
  • To: cc-eyebeam AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-eyebeam] validating cc licenses? (question for neeru/glenn/wendy)
  • Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 13:36:19 -0500 (EST)


In the face of legislation proposing to mandate copyright-sniffing DRM chips,
I often wonder whether open licenses will be sufficient to protect innovative
approaches to recording, playing, cataloging, and distributing art. It won't
do artists any good to copyleft their movies if personal computers can only
play videos produced by Hollywood studios.

To fend off such draconian propositions, Neeru tells me that Creative Commons
is investigating ways to demonstrate that file-sharing and its ilk have
legitimate uses. I think this is a great idea, but I'm concerned that the
mutability of digital media may create a liability for voluntary licenses
that is hard to overcome.

Suppose digital artist Geoff Kuhntz scans a copyrighted postcard of seven
puppies on a cushion, then uses Photoshop to replace all but one with a
flowery background. Suppose Kuhntz then posts his image with a CC license.
He's free to do that--at least in America--because his "transformative use"
of the original image qualifies for fair use protection against a copyright
suit.

Suppose then that another artist downloads it, agreeing to abide by the terms
of the license. She decides it would look better if there were seven puppies
instead of one, so she clones them--and wham, gets hit with a copyright
infringement suit by the original artist.

You can imagine the same scenario taking place in other media--for example,
if an excerpted Philip Glass riff were re-sampled into a minimalist
composition that rivaled the original, or if a work of online art that
depended on random combinations of image and text from other pages
accidentally re-created something dangerously close to one of its victims'
Web pages. For digital culture, fair use is a porous category, which makes
open licenses no guarantee you won't be sued.

I would love to know whether Neeru, Glenn, or Wendy have any thoughts on this
thorny issue--thanks!

jon




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