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cc-sampling - [cc-sampling] Re: Questioning Legality...

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Subject: Development of the Creative Commons Sampling license (or license option)

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  • From: mark / negativland <markhosler AT charter.net>
  • To: David meme <david AT locarecords.com>
  • Cc: cc-sampling AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-sampling] Re: Questioning Legality...
  • Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 23:59:29 -0700

David -

I am glad you went back and read the older posts. Your questions
are great and we ( Negativland) have had the same concerns throughout
this process and have had some small amounts of frustration. In turn,
the lawyers involved have had some small amounts of frustration with
us as well!! The fact is, they *are* writing a contract. That's
what this is about.

You are in the UK., yes?? When art and cultural ideals and US law
collide, it's an awkward fit.

For Negativland, idealism is what counts. We arent realists. We
aren't lawyers. We aren't good business men. We've made this collage
stuff for 23 years, and we;ve been sued twice for it. Because of that
experience, I don't happen to even believe in our US legal system.
Set up a long time ago by land and slave owning rich white men to
maintain their power, property and privilege, it has never been a
level playing field (They never set it up for us to have real
democracy either, but that's another list serve!). This screwy legal
system is what we are stuck with and what we are challenged to work
with in this particular project. With this license, it's the
legality (tempered by as much idealism as possible) that counts.

But what CC is doing is very very commendable, and certainly worth
supporting. We got involved because they had no license that applied
to the way we ( and our audio collage friends) actually work!

When we first encountered their licenses we thought it was a shame we
couldn't use them and let them know that. So now they have tossed to
us the challenge of "managing" the creation and birth of a license
that suits what we and others actually do......the trouble is, it's
supposed to be a real legal thing, and some of what we wanted to see
it say literally can't be done unless the laws in the US are
changed!

Its been a very eye opening experience. Ultimately, the greatest
value it may have is as a statement of intent and attitude and
exists as a real world public example of another way of doing
cultural work. As to its legal value, we'll see what happens if it
actually ends up in a court of law.

mark

P.S. For us, we've always just ignored copyright laws because they
are silly and we've done whatever we wanted. We haven't been sued
since 1991.







At 7:00 AM +0100 9/17/03, David meme wrote:
Thanks that is an extremely useful link (and maybe it would be good
to get it added at the bottom of the CC list signature for all
newbies that join the list?

But I still wonder about this process..

1. The legitimacy of this process is itself problematic as it has
not itself been democratically formed, it is rather the work of a
benevolent dictatorship. How can we challenge this process and
improve its participation... why only public participation at one
stage? Who decided?
2. By getting the process right it helps to improve the license as
it carries more legitimacy.
3. I echo the poster who calls for a website to help clarify and
lock down where we are in the discussion.
4. I personally wonder about the project in that fundamentally I see
this as an ideal. Contributing to the public domain and allowing
reuse, transformation, sampling what-have-you is a conception of a
social good. Locking down the licenses so hard seems legalistic and
maybe loses the idealistic moment (but understandable of course).
5. I have looked through the list and watched how excellent ideas
and ideals are slowly lost to the need to be legally tight.
6. This bias to the American legal system is strange.. but I suppose
a side-effect of the fact that it has been created by an American
lawyer?

To sum up I think I am worried that the good ideals for sharing and
co-operating are getting lost and instead we are writing contracts...

The GNU GPL license is questionably legal (and that is putting it
lightly), hardly internationally binding legally - yet it still
works. Why? Because the people involved believe in it, somewhat
oblivious to the legality...

Maybe that is the important thing..?

Maybe we need to lose the lawyers (useful as they are ;-) and write
a GNU GPL for sampling....

Cheers

David


On Wednesday, September 17, 2003, at 03:58 am, Glenn Otis Brown wrote:

FYI, this is the model for public participation, announced long ago:

http://creativecommons.org/discuss

I am a "more speech" kind of guy. So I echo Mark's call for patience.

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 17:14:57 -0700, "mark / negativland"
<markhosler AT charter.net> said:
At 12:25 AM +0100 9/17/03, David meme wrote:
Round and round is good. We have time. Discussion is fine.

Like I said, I'm happy to take all these names to the team, and I'll do
so on an ongoing basis.


Yes but if we are all spending time discussing names and then they
are just taken to a team who pick one then it is hardly a legitimate
and participatory method of choosing the name. Why not start to
narrow the field, or somehow allow us to take stock of what we are
talking about, otherwise this is starting to resemble a talking shop
that gives the *impression* of participation but lacks any real
power.


I don't think we can take a vote and decide that way,, though...we
have lawyers involved and CC wants this thing to be legally workable,
so it cant just be what the musicians want...Glenn will have to chime
in here to be more clear.......


It certainly makes me wonder what the point of contributing if there
is no end in sight and newbies start us right at the beginning
again.. There surely needs to be some structure to how we are
forming some kind of consensus or decision..

Indeed, there are multiple levels to this discussion, my
understanding (possibly misplaced) was that we were able to not just
*influence* with its implications of a small group of technocratic
'experts' distilling the ideas into 'sensible' solutions. But more
radically we could direct, write and hey maybe even name the license
so that it reflected the needs and wishes of musicians rather than
lawyers... and who is best to make the decisions if about a license
that is for musicians to use... not the lawyers thats for sure!

And that's not to say I disagree with discussion, its just
unstructured, never ending, non-chaired, round and round discussion
that I have a problem with...


Ummm....as one of the chairs/project managers of this list my
suggestion is that you stop reading the "names" e-mails and stop
driving yourself batty! :) :) We just started this "names"
discussion a few days ago and Negativland member Don Joyce (DJ), who
is one of the other chairs, only just chimed in for the first time a
few hours ago. So please be patient.

And in case not everyone new to this list knows, though he isn't a
project manager here, Chris Grigg was also an equal part of the
Negativland team back when we were sued for the "U2" single....his
contributions back then were crucial, brilliant and invaluable and
his contributions here have also been insightful and invaluable. I
will now refer to him as "Mr. Arty Smarty Pants". He does a mean
butt dance too.

David- I think a lot of what you are looking for on this list was
actually discussed and mostly sorted out a few months ago....not sure
if you were on the list then.

Dont forget- trying to satisfy a lowest common denominator usually
pleases no one. For me,trying to reduce Negativland's IP ideas to a
workable license has been an interesting challenge, but ultimately
the real world of US contract law will never quite live up to our
collage-art ideals.... I am reminded of why I'll never be a
politician or an IP lobbyist! Yikes. But we're doing the best we
can here....



mark


David meme


--------THE OPEN SOURCE RECORD LABEL--------

L O C A R E C O R D S
Stick to What You Don't Know?

http://www.locarecords.com

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--
_______________________________________________________
*******************************************************

HEY!! LOOKEE!! Please note my new e-mail address that I am writing to
you from -

mark / negativland <markhosler AT charter.net>


My old address at attbi.com is no longer being used.
---------------------
Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director
Creative Commons
glenn AT creativecommons.org
+1.650.723.7572 (telephone)
+1.415.336.1433 (mobile)




--------THE OPEN SOURCE RECORD LABEL--------

L O C A R E C O R D S
Stick to What You Don't Know

http://www.locarecords.com


--
_______________________________________________________
*******************************************************

HEY!! LOOKEE!! Please note my new e-mail address that I am writing to
you from -

mark / negativland <markhosler AT charter.net>


My old address at attbi.com is no longer being used.




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