I went to a public lecture at UCL in London on Monday. It was a presentation by Lawrence Lessig to mark the launch of the Creative Commons UK licences.
Great presentation – powerpointed to the multimedimost. But a simple, effective message filtered through all the sights and sounds:
Too many lawyers. Not enough freedom to create. Simple solution.
It was, of course, very exciting for me to meet Professor Lawrence Lessig (hereafter, ‘Larry’ as per his stated preference). I have been following the Creative Commons movement for some time, and in as much as one can be a ‘fan’ of a professor of law, I am a Larry fan. I took the opportunity to shake his hand enthusiastically and say ‘hello’, ‘thanks’ and ‘wow’.
Not entirely sure if I said anything else that would have alerted him to my acute and dedicated critical application to the issue of copyright reform – but I reckon he picked up on it.
Now, I know I’ve been through this with you before, but some people are new to The Wireless Weblog – so bear with me (and, of course, there’s value in repetition)…
The story of the Creative Commons movement is a good one – and I recommend you check out the book ‘Free Culture’, which can be downloaded for free online – or you can buy it in a regular shop as a Penguin paperback if you’d prefer to read it in the bath.
In short, though, Creative Commons licences facilitate Internet distribution and creative re-use of digital content by offering a ‘some rights reserved’ alternative to the traditional ‘all rights reserved’ that most creative works are assigned by default. By selecting a Creative Commons (CC) licence, creators of cultural/artistic content are able to choose the extent of the control they wish to have over the works they produce.
A CC licence may, for instance, allow derivative works to be created from the original, as long as the purpose is non-commercial. It may specify that the work can be used or reinterpreted in any fashion for commercial or non-commercial use, as long as the work is attributed to its originator. A sampling licence may be attached to a work, allowing other content makers to sample and include segments of an original work into a new work, without permission needing to be sought.
You’ll notice that this blog has a CC licence (over there on the right – scroll if you need to). I’ve chosen an attribution, non-commercial licence. That means that you are free to quote or reference this blog in any way you choose – without requiring my permission, under two small conditions.
1) You must attribute it to me. If you quote me, you have to say it’s a quote. I’m an academic, and so I like to be quoted, and I like to be referenced. It comes with the territory.
2) You can’t use it for commercial purposes. You can’t, for instance, serialise my blog in the NZ Herald without asking me (though, why you’d want to…). You can, however, serialise it in the local primary school newsletter (though – again – why you’d want to…). It’d be nice to know about it, but you certainly don’t need my permission.
The upshot is that you can take my words and build on them. Make derivative works. Turn it into a musical. Make an online audiobook of this very post. Translate it into Klingon. Whatever you like. Just remember you have to mention that I was the author, and you have to come and ask me if you want to sell it to anyone.
That’s just one example of a CC licence. There are many types, with various conditions. But the idea itself is very simple: you register your work with a central body that allocates licences that allow your work to be used in the way that you wish it to be used – not the default legal position that says you have to be asked about EVERYthing.
There are three components to a Creative Commons licence.
1) A ‘human-readable’ licence. A short description, in plain English (or Portuguese, or Spanish, or French…), of the rights and acceptable uses of the work.
2) A ‘lawyer-readable’ licence. A long, watertight document that contractually assigns the desired rights and acceptable uses of the work, thereby legally protecting both the originator of the content, and the user of the content.
3) A ‘machine-readable’ licence. A piece of code that can be embedded in the electronic work itself, allowing for the fair online use and redistribution of the work. The code links back to the Creative Commons site, where the rights and uses allowed by the content’s originator are registered.
The purpose of Creative Commons licensing is, according to Larry, to remove the layer of lawyers between those who would produce cultural artefacts and those who would seek to build on those artefacts (“the future is built on the past”).
Brazilian musician and Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil has adopted Creative Commons generally – and sampling licences more specifically – as a strategy to expose the global marketplace to more Brazilian sounds, working the particularly Brazilian genres and musical characteristics into as much popular music as is possible. He’s a legend – and his last album of Bob Marley covers is surprisingly good for a politician. Even a Brazilian one who does the WOMAD circuit.
The creators of the recent documentary film ‘Outfoxed’ have released all the original raw material of their film on the internet under a CC licence, and have encouraged filmmakers to re-edit and create their own films using the same content as a launching point. As soon as I have broadband at home, that’ll be me…
Larry’s own book (as I mentioned) ‘Free Culture’ was released by its publisher Penguin online for free under a Creative Commons licence. It’s now been downloaded in full something like a quarter of a million times. It was apparently converted to nine different e-book formats within 24 hours of its publication. Within 36 hours, AKMA had sprouted an online audiobook project, encouraging bloggers around the world to record a chapter and make it available to the public (I did the introduction, as it happens).
The forthcoming issue of Wired magazine has a free CD of music by famous artists such as Gilberto Gil, David Byrne, The Beastie Boys, and others – each track (or recorded element) carrying with it one form of CC sampling licence or another. I’m sure as hell going to buy that issue – and watch out for a Dubber/Byrne/Gil mash-up.
The point of the whole exercise – Larry’s whiz-bang presentation and the UK tie-in – were specifically to produce this kind of result: to get people like you and me reading about it, talking about it and thinking about it. His aim was to explain and promote the benefits and philosophy of the Creative Commons movement and celebrate the launch of the UK’s own Creative Commons, to coincide with – and reinforce – the BBC’s Creative Archive project.
The BBC’s Creative Archive is going to enable members of the public to access and re-use a large part of the BBC’s huge archive of video and audio material, and is scheduled for launch later this year. Personally, I can’t wait.
Also, from November 1st, creators are no longer going to have to work through complex agreements with lawyers if they want to have control over the content they publish. They’ll be able to self-publish and protect their intellectual property in the manner they choose by using an automatically customised UK licence with just a few clicks of the mouse at the Creative Commons website. And let’s be honest – there’s one hell of a lot of creative content to be had in the UK…
Though the Creative Commons licences have now been adopted in over 50 countries, the UK example is unique in that it dovetails with a project like the BBC’s Creative Archive. The size and promotional power of the BBC brings a huge opportunity for the awareness and acceptance of Creative Commons licensing, which shares a similar vision of creativity and the fostering of a rich public domain.
I think it’ll kick off the whole CC thing with a real bang – and although David Cunliffe has flagged an interest in Creative Commons licensing in the incredibly lengthy draft digital plan, the real thing should get to NZ sometime late next year, I’m guessing.
They’re taking public submissions on the final version of the UK CC licence now (deadline’s on the 18th). The addition of the UK licence to the Creative Commons website is scheduled for November 1 – almost exactly the date of the beginning of my new research project: internet strategies for music-based SMEs.
Well, there’s strategy #1 sorted out already…
