I’ve been in the camp of folks who say Creative Commons is a brand without meaning for a while. The rhetoric has been about creating an creative works version of free software licenses. It simply doesn’t do what people thing it does, it doesn’t create a commons. It lacks both the viral aspects of the gpl, and the freedom of any gpl-compatable license.
Recently Alex Bosworth wrote a nice post about how broken the creative commons license is. It’s worth reading if you are wondering why the CC is broken. Once you get through that check out Lawrence Liang’s guide to open content licenses.
Looking through the guide, i realize that it’s not possible simply to replace the CC with something else. The problem is not that there aren’t good licenses, rather that the cultural war over ideas is being lost. We need a concept like GPL compatible or maybe even the less radical OSI compliant.
So marketing is the critical component, some CC licenses would qualify as free content compliant. Others would not. We’d get a standard which would mean something, instead of the creative commons brand which is substance-less. The trick is getting somebody like downhill battle involved who are really good at radical cultural memes.
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Downhill Battle does well to talk with people like MIA and Ian MacKaye, but those artists have no need for a CC-like license – they make money by selling IP. Which is cool. It’s nice work if you can get it.
CC-relased work has got something like a self-publisher’s stigma about it. If you’re willing to give it away, it must not be any good.
I don’t think CC’s problem is purely a brand issue, though that’s a lot of it. I think the licensing goes too far. In other words, hip indie labels will probably never sign up.
Hip IP barons arein a strange position, culturally. Copyfight, yeah, yeah, yeah, but music is business. And love. But they loved it so much we made it their livlihood. And that’s not something too easily fucked around with.
February 22nd, 2006
you’re so right, i’ve seen lots of criticisms of creative commons, and its true that they have non-free licenses, but there aren’t other projects out there trying to create usable licenses for content that is other than source code.
February 22nd, 2006
Hey marcus, i don’t think we’re understanding eachother. I’m saying CC has a branding problem because it’s too catered to the needs of intelectual property owners already. As long as they aren’t forced to share and contribute in a real way to the commons, then they shouldn’t get the marketing boost about being ‘open’ and having the Creative Commons license.
I’d like two things: First that creative commons licenses all have a share-a-like clause, that makes it viral. They should all allow deritive works, and commercial use. That way you are really opening things up and making a commons. Everything else is just a less evil version of the same old copyright. Then label’s start using it out of self interest, because their artists included samples they can only pay for by releasing something in to the commons themselves. That’s when things start to get interesting.
February 22nd, 2006
I did misunderstand you.
A GPL for cultural media. That’s a great idea.
Hmm…
February 22nd, 2006
I guess I’m one of the OGs of anti-IP, pretty much like the rest of the anarchists. I was putting anti-copyright notices on my zine starting back in 1991. And the Spunk collective was talking about digital copyright issues back in the mid-90s, before it was on anybody’s radar. I remember taking a hardcore anti-copyright attitude, while other argued for a more nuanced approach. One thing we missed out on was getting the gitial rights to Allan Ginsberg’s works.
As a librarian, I kind of think that the Creative Commons is a good idea. In my book, ANYTHING which throws sand into the gears of Intellectual Property has to be good on some level. The CC project is probably helping people think about copyright and the creative commons in a new way.
Frankly, I think that we’ll have total information anarchy in a few years, after this dark period ends. Look on the positive side—ten years ago there was nobody criticizing the existence of IP and copyright. We’re living through a revolution in consciousness.
February 22nd, 2006
CC is a step. A good step. And it’s easy to understand, especially to non-tech types, like artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers, etc.
A GPL for media that’s as easy to understand as CC would be great.
February 22nd, 2006
I agree with Evan here. I’ve been talking with Pablo from Indymedia Sao Paolo about the idea of a gathering next year that would focus on articulating a radical stance against intellectual monopolies, and making explicit the need for coalition between different sectors on this: not only creative communities but indigenous whose traditional knowledge and medicines are being stolen by multinats and national govs (biopiracy); farmers whose seeds DNA is being privatized; activists around access to medicines who are fighting pharma’s attempts to shut down affordable generic HIV, TB, Bird Flu, and every other medicine; and so on. Also along these lines check out http://www.thought-thieves.org (needs to be updated, I know – want to help?) and also submedia’s open call for anti knowledge enclosure work: http://submedia.tv/
February 22nd, 2006
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