Development of Creative Commons licenses

[rob AT robmyers.org]

Quoting Greg London <email AT greglondon.com>:

> I realize that something like an original oil painting is
> not something that easily scales to mass production,

As well as Chinese art sweatshops and Thomas Kinkade, many artists do mass
produce work eg for corporate settings. And then there's Andy Warhol. But none
of these are entirely mechanised reproductions, that's true.

> which
> limits what the artist can do to make money. If you can
> only create one copy, you can only sell one copy. Even though
> the artist holds the copyright to the original work, it
> is an equal amount of work to paint the first one or the
> second one or the millionth one.

Art can be reproduced mechanically or digitally, for postcards, posters,
t-shirts, chocolate boxes, etc. Some artists get their work used on CD covers
or on books. So you  can sell many reproductions of an artwork, much like a
musician can sell many CDs of a concert.

As I say, you can get art reproduction revenue on artworks you retain the
copyright to (and an artist should never, ever, ever sell the copyright to an
artwork) through a collecting society much the same as with music rights
collecting societies.

- Rob.