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

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  • From: Glenn Otis Brown <glenn AT creativecommons.org>
  • To: cc-eyebeam AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-eyebeam] more from Creative Commons
  • Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 17:08:57 +0000

This is my first post to the list, so I want to echo Neeru's thanks to Eyebeam and the StillWater program at U. of Maine for having Creative Commons involved.

(Nice press, by the way, on Eyebeam in the New York Times recently: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/arts/design/09BARD.html).

Here are a couple of responses to some of the specific points raised so far (we're just getting into it, and already it's interesting.)

(1) Rejiquar wrote:

-----

<x-tad-bigger>I do have a problem with the non-commercial types reserving the right to sell my incorporated work while forcing any of their derivers downstream only to offer it for free, as this strikes me as undermining the goal of the SA clause. . . .
So far as I can tell (big assumption, there, I realize) there is no easy way to choose a license that allows me to allow either commercial or non-commercial use downstream. GPL gets around this, so far as I can tell, by not allowing restrictions on commerce. </x-tad-bigger>


----

If you chose a share alike license that did not prohibit commercial use, then anyone could make any use of derived works provided they relicensed them under the same terms. The BY-SA and plain-old SA licenses are philosophically and practically the same as the GPL.

That said, we're about to offer a license that gives the licensor more flexibility in choosing what sorts of uses can be done commercially, and which not. Right now the noncommercial provision acts in a blanket fashion: if you prohibit commercial uses of derived works, you also prohibit commercial uses of verbatim copies (or, vice versa).

This winter we're offering two new licenses, the Sampling Licenses, that let an author invite people to commercialize tranformative derivatives but not to make commercial use of verbatim copies. The idea is to reward transformation, re-creativity. We got the idea from Negativland, Vicki Bennett (Peoplelikeus.org), and Brazilian minister of culture and legendary musician Gilberto Gil. You can read more about the sampling licenses here: <http://creativecommons.org/projects/sampling>.

Does this address your question?

(2)

Joline Blaise wrote:

---

<x-tad-bigger>In a media landscape increasingly dominated
by corporate monopolies,
some netizens have abandoned hope that the
legal system will support
the commons of ideas and culture that gave
rise to the early Internet.

Instead they propose a distributed approach
to legal innovation: open
licenses, tools for community activism, and
consciousness-raising exhibitions.

Will these innovations suffice to ensure a
creative commons for current and emerging
culture?

---

Like Neeru said, this is definitely our ambition, but I think we're realistic that our effort alone -- and just as important, our *kind* of effort alone -- won't be enough to protect the commons. It's one tool among many others: there are great groups like the EFF and Publicknowledge.org taking the good fight into the courtrooms and halls of policy out there; there are journalists' and consumer-rights groups fighting for independence in media; and, just as important, there are savvy and gutsy entrepreneurs fighting to establish new, viable business models that will allocate our cultural resources more efficiently while breaking up the stagnant old order at the same time.

The Creative Commons approach, like the free software and open-source approaches, is different: It's not about changing the law (directly anyway). It's about changing attitudes about copyright, about educating people how it works, about injecting a much-needed dose of sobriety and balance into the debate.

And more important, it's about meeting various kinds of unmet demand out there: (a) to offer a very easy way for people who aren't obsessed with "all rights reserved" to say so, (b) to cut out unnecessary middlemen and legal doubt, and ultimately, (c) to build a huge body of culture that is free to drawn upon. People crave this kind of stuff, and we hope we've begun to provide it. That's our role in this whole topsy-turvy world of media change; it's a necessary effort, but by no means sufficient, standing alone, to cure all our ills in this area.

Thanks again for having us participate in the forum. Looking forward to more comments . . .


Glenn


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