Embracing Chaos » Intellectual Property

Creative Commons Notification Required

leodirac — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:38:23 +0000

I love the Creative Commons licenses. I use them for most of my photos and rely heavily on other people’s CC licensed material. As a result, my photos have ended up in all sorts of fascinating places — in magazines, on liquor bottles, and who knows where else! A great feature of CC licenses for me is that my creative work can make itself useful without my effort. They can go out and find work for themselves and become productive members of society without me needing to shepherd them through the process. The only requirement is that my name stay attached to them so I get some credit. Which is enough for me — photography is not how I make my living nor do I expect to in the future. So recognition is plenty enough for me as a reward. Almost.

The big problem I have with the current variations of the CC license is the “who knows where else” part. Folks are free to use my content, so long as they attribute it to me, without ever letting me know about it. And that removes a big part of the fun for me — I get a huge kick when somebody tells me they want to publish my photo. As a matter of politeness, I’ve taken to notifying content creators when I use their CC license, so they can get the joy. But the license variations can’t require that.

What I’d like to see is a “Notification Required” variation of the Creative Commons License. It would go alongside the current variations:

Attribution
Share-alike
Non-commercial
No derivative
Notification (not yet implemented)

It would be executed similarly to the Attribution requirement — somewhere the content creator needs to explain to re-users how to attribute, and in this case how to notify. In fact, I’ve updated the CC notice by my photos requesting notification. I’m asking people to jump through some small hoops to contact me as a form Turing Test. But if you understand English, they’re really pretty easy.

I know others would like to make similar requests when their content is re-used, so I think this should become a part of the standard array of options for CC licenses.

Creative Commons Licenses

leodirac — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:01:00 +0000

Creative Commons is a type of license, which is somewhere between a traditional all-rights-reserved copyright and public domain. There are many variations of CC licenses, and they’re onto the 3.0 version of the licenses, so expect more soon. Generally CC licenses require Attribution, which is to say, you can do stuff with this content, so long as you say where you got it from. Often this is in the form of a hyperlink back to the original author’s website. Flickr popularized this by making CC licenses an option on all their photos. You’ll see that almost all of my photos are CC licensed.

Creative Commons licenses can either allow somebody to make commercial use of your material, or not, at your discretion, assuming you’re the one who created the license. Independently, you can allow anybody to modify, adapt, or remix the content. Or not. Or you can allow modification so long as the modified content shares the same license, a so-called “Share Alike” license. Here’s a nice page that shows you the options and allows you to pick a license appropriate for your material.

A CC attribution license is in many senses more realistic in the modern world than an all-rights-reserved license. It is practically impossible to stop people from using or distributing your work. The all-rights-reserved license is a threat to take legal action to prevent somebody from using your work. But suing somebody is such a hassle that it almost never happens for personal content. Asking somebody to put a link to your website is a pretty reasonable thing and easy to accomplish. An all rights reserved copyright is for most individuals a bluff.

CC content is also easier to use. Negotiating terms of licensing under a traditional copyright is daunting. It necessarily requires a back and forth with the author and probably a whole lot. The underlying mindset is that content costs money, so if you’re going to use my content, then you’re going to sell it and I deserve some of that money. As the music industry is slowly, painfully learning, in modern times this model doesn’t work so well. Access to information is generally free, and those who are making money here are doing so by providing value-added services on top of merely distributing the information. (Think ads by Google, or concerts for music.) With a CC license the terms of use of the license are right there. No need to negotiate. Just follow the attribution instructions and do what you will. Instead of requiring negotiation and payment in the traditional economy, this is payment in the nascent reputation economy.

Creative Commons Licenses on Books

leodirac — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:01:00 +0000

A few weeks ago Lawrence Lessig showed up The Colbert Report to plug his new book, Remix. The interview itself is quite funny. Lessig talks a bit about how traditional copyright laws don’t make sense with modern technology. My favorite part is when Colbert dares the public to remix that interview with “a great dance beat” by saying he will be “very angry and possibly litigious” with Lessig periodically interjecting saying “I’m totally fine with that” and “I give you permission.” Of course, the great dance beats have been showing up. Lessig blogged about a bunch of them. The one that IMO comes closest to having a
great dance beat is this one, at least of the ones I’ve heard so far. I am looking forward to it showing up in clubs across the country, although it probably won’t because promoting such a recording would engender the real risk of being sued by a satirical Stephen Colbert. I expect this would highly amuse everybody involved except the defendant.

Lessig’s book sounds interesting, and since I’m tearing through non-fiction right now, I ordered a copy. I was very surprised to see that the inside flap declares “Copyright © Lawrence Lessig, 2008 All rights reserved.” Below that it says:

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means wihtout the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

(As I write this I half wonder if I have violated the stated copyright by typing that in. But seriously I think it’s a clear of fair use.) I expected the book to be released under a Creative Commons license, as Lessig espoused in his interview. I recently started reading Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother which is available for free download from his website under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-Alike license.

What’s going on? Could it be that Doctorow is ahead of Lessig in the practicalities of modern book licensing? Or was it that the publishers were enforcing something? I bought a physical copy of Little Brother, and saw that it too has a traditional Copyright note at the front: “Copyright © 2008 by Cory Doctorow. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.” Okay that just doesn’t make sense. I can download the book under CC, but the print edition is All rights reserved. What gives?

Maybe I’ll have a better answer after I’ve read Lessig’s book. Or maybe Lawrence can explain himself. His website also says that “The book will be available under a Creative Commons license from Bloomsbury Academic. Stay tuned for launch.” I’m waiting.