Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand discussion

[Damian Stewart <damian AT frey.co.nz>]

strypey AT riseup.net wrote:

> The point of the above is clear, the Creative Commons, is to help "you"
> (the "Producer") to keep control of "your" work. The right of the
> "consumer" is not mentioned, neither is the division of "producer" and
> "consumer" disputed. The Creative "Commons" is thus really an
> Anti-Commons, serving to legitimise, rather than deny, Producer-control
> and serving to enforce, rather than do away with, the distinction
> between producer and consumer.

This view is overly simplistic, misses the point, and ignores the fact 
that Creative Commons as a system implicitly includes the rights of 
consumers. The ultimate right to decide whether or not consumers have 
the right to do particular things rests with the artist/producer, yes, 
but this is true with the GPL as well. As the author of a piece of code 
I can choose whether to release it under the GPL (derivates must also be 
GPL'd) or the LGPL (derivates need not be GPL'd), and this reflects the 
producer/consumer dichotomy also: the producer of code is the one who 
decides whether it will be GPL'd or LGPL'd (or full-blown copyrighted, 
or released to the public domain, or whatever).

It's all very well to do away with the distinction between producer and 
consumer in theory, but in the real world there is actually someone who 
makes something, which they then release to other people. Other words 
like Artist or Musician and Audience could do the place of Producer and 
Consumer here but the division is still there.

The biggest advantage of Creative Commons in my mind is that it adds 
another choice to the artists. If an artist truly doesn't believe in the 
producer/consumer split they can release their works to the public 
domain. Creative Commons is there for artists who believe that, because 
they have made something themselves, they ought to hold some special 
kind of privileges of 'ownership' (there's /that/ word) over it.

--
Damian Stewart
+64 27 305 4107

f r e y
live music with machines
http://www.frey.co.nz
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