Creative Commons for NGOs (& other Media Makers)

by redjade Wed Oct 11, 2006 15:01

The Creative Common Misunderstanding
by Florian Cramer
published on the Nettime Mailing List
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0610/ms....html

Lately, the growing popularity of the Creative Commons licenses has
been counterpointed by a growing amount of criticism. The objections
are substantial and boil down to the following points: that the Creative
Commons licenses are fragmented, do not define a common minimum standard
of freedoms and rights granted to users or even fail to meet the criteria
of free licenses altogether, and that unlike the Free Software and
Open Source movements, they follow a philosophy of reserving rights of
copyright owners rather than granting them to audiences. Yet it would
be too simple to only blame the Creative Commons organization for those
issues. Having failed to set their own agenda and competently voice
what they want, artists, critics and activists have their own share in
the mess.

[....]

Whatever stance one may adopt, the name "Creative Commons" is misleading
because it doesn't create a commons at all. A picture released, for
example, under the Attribution-ShareAlike license cannot legally be
integrated into a video released under the Attribution-NonCommercial
license, audio published under the Sampling License can't be used on its
soundtrack. Such incompatible license terms put what is supposed to be
"free content" or "free information" back to square one, that is, the
default restrictions of copyright - hardly that what Lawrence Lessig,
founder of the Creative Commons, could have meant with "free culture"
and "read-write culture" as opposed to "read-only culture." In his blog
entry "Creative Commons Is Broken," Alex Bosworth, program manager at
the open source company SourceLabs, points out that "of eight million
photos" posted under a CC license on Flickr.com "less than a fifth
allow free remixing of content under terms similar to an open source
license. More than a third don't allow any modifications at all."^7 The
"principle problem with Creative Commons," he writes, "is that most of
the creative commons content is not actually reuseable at all."

read more at
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0610/ms....html

by redjade Wed Oct 11, 2006 15:14

Paul [ http://www.voyantes.net/blog/ ] writes on the Nettime list...

Dear Florian,

thanks for posting this article, which nicely dums up a number of
issues but - as far as i am concerned - has a fairly misleading title.
if your main concern in indeed the fact that there is a fundamental
misunderstanding among artists and creators about what licenses can
or cannot do, calling the whole thing the creative common (sic!)
misunderstanding is a bit unfair.

[....]

i guess my point is that we should stop comparing 'open content'
licenses to licenses that govern the highly specialized (and to the
majority of 'open contnet' users higly obscure) field of software
development and start to develop a critique of open content licensing
practices that stands on itself. and while we are doing so, we should
stop blaming the Creative Commons for the inherent wrongs of the
copyright system.

more at Nettime.org....
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0610/ms....html

by redjade Wed Oct 11, 2006 15:57

And what of Creative Commons in Ireland?
Looks like it's all but a dead effort.

...not only is there no: http://creativecommons.ie

But, as of this writing, there have been no more than three emails in the archives since November 2005! check the archives: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-ie/

Plus, the effort seems to be under the wing of UCC Law: http://www.ucc.ie/law/
and, in searching the UCC.ie site, very little could be found regarding its supposed connection to the Creatuve Commons project: check out: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:www.ucc.ie+...ns%22

Compare and Contrast....

Look at Hungary: http://creativecommons.hu
which is sponsored and promoted widely in Budapest by the Open Society Institute. OSI is the org founded by and led by gazillionaire global capitalist and funder of all good progressive minded things, George Soros. http://www.soros.org

So, maybe Ireland needs a George Soros?

Does Ireland have a George Soros already?

Of course it does!

But for him to be promoting Creative Commons would be bad for business.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bono

image by Noise Hacker: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/70155

the future face of Brand CC™ for Érie™?

by kevin Wed Oct 11, 2006 22:38

Letters and discussion about Creative Commons at techie site The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/29/creativity_comp...ters/