The Mind Trap

Microsoft Drops Ideology, Adds Creative Commons

BetaNews: The basics are simple: Microsoft and non-profit licensing organization Creative Commons have struck a deal to allow offices users to add CC licensing to their documents..."The first document to be licensed through the Office tool is a speech by Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, which will be made at the Creative Commons iSummit in Rio de Janiero, the two companies said."
Microsoft has traditionally been against anything that smacked of being even slightly against copyright, but has recently mellowed its stand, which makes a lot of sense, especially in this case. The Creative Commons license was never intended to be used for the kind of things Microsoft has IP for. However it is intended for the kinds of things that people use Microsoft Office to create, and the ability to specify what an author is willing to allow their work to be used for within an organisation or social group will be very useful.
There's some interesting history on the past antagonism between Microsoft and Lessig here...

Google Adds Creative Commons Too

SearchEngineWatch: Google has added the ability to search for content covered by Creative Commons licenses... Yahoo has has the ability for months, of course.

Dvorak on Creative Commons: Now I Get It

Corante: John Dvoraks' criticism of Creative Commons was roundly criticised itself...and he has now changed his position, although he claims his previous column was a "please explain" rather than an attack...

Public Sector Should Adopt Creative Commons

eGov: A report by the Common Information Environment (CIE) Group has suggested that Governments should use the Creative Commons license as much as possible, and the least restrictive form. Apart from making things created with public funds as widely available to that public as possible the CC licenses could also help dissemminate the information widely, possibly saving the government money on fielding calls. The PDF of the report is available here.

Are Creative Commons-NC Licenses Harmful?

Podcasting News: Erik Möller puts forward some good arguments against using the "non-commercial" part of the Creative Commons license, and some alternatives. Worth a read.

Creative Commons Annual Fundraising Campaign

ZDNet UK: Creative Commons has launched a fundraising campaign to raise $225,000 by the end of the year. It's already got over $26,000 (as judged by the page here), and is encouraging donations by awarding different titles based on the level of donations and giving a t-shirt, sticker and button to people who donate more than $75...

This Commons Just Isn't Creative

The Register: Here's a list of comments on a previous rant about Creative Commons...I think the Reg is still setting up a straw man by claiming that either all is licensed under Creative Commons or it can't exist.

An Economic Theory of Infrastructure and Commons Management

SSRN: This is an economic and legal argument for the idea of commons, and when it should be used as opposed to proprietary systems...

In this article, Professor Frischmann combines a number of current debates across many disciplinary lines, all of which examine from different perspectives whether certain resources should be managed through a regime of private property or through a regime of open access. Frischmann develops and applies a theory that demonstrates there are strong economic arguments for managing and sustaining openly accessible infrastructure. The approach he takes differs from conventional analyses in that he focuses extensively on demand-side considerations and fully explores how infrastructure resources generate value for consumers and society. As a result, the theory brings into focus the social value of common infrastructure, and strongly suggests that the benefits of open access (costs of restricted access) are significantly greater than reflected in current debates.

Frischmann's infrastructure theory ultimately ties together different strands of legal and economic thought pertaining to natural resources such as lakes, traditional infrastructure such as road systems, what antitrust theorists describe as essential facilities, basic scientific research, and the Internet. His theory has significant potential to reframe a number of important debates within intellectual property, cyberlaw, telecommunications, and many other areas.

Note: Professor Lawrence Lessig will publish a Reply titled Re-Marking the Progress in Frischmann in the same edition of the Minnesota Law Review.

(via SmartMobs)

A Common Creative Argument

When John C. Dvorak wrote a column in PC Mag criticising Creative Commons it was so riddled with stupid errors and complete falsehoods I figured he was just trolling, and didn't bother to reply. A few others have though...
Joe Gratz has pulled apart Dvorak's column, giving him the benefit of the doubt where I'm not sure it was deserved. My favourite quote, which corrects an incorrect statement by Dvorak (that you need to attach a copyright notice for a work to be protected) and explains the whole point of Creative Commons succinctly.
"Here, we have a material misstatement of the law. A copyright attaches to any fixed creative work whether or not there is any notice of copyright (e.g., "Copyright Joe Gratz 2005. All rights reserved."). Copyright holders can sometimes get more in a lawsuit if there was notice, but since 1989, notice has not been required. Copyright attaches automatically. That's part of the reason we need Creative Commons licenses — because silence means "nobody may use this, except under fair use, until 70 years after I die.". To me that is the whole point of CC -- that most times people are happy for you to use their work, but it is difficult and time-consuming to ask them.

The Register has a different view, a rather disingenuous one.
"Want to use a sample? Go ahead and use it. With a nudge and a wink, you'll probably get away with it. If you reach number one with that sample, expect to hear from the original artist. This isn't so hard to understand."
This is a pretty blatent falsehood -- DJ's have lived with the threat (and the occurence) of litigation for years. The Beastie Boys just got sued for using a six-second portion of a jazz flutists work...and even though they licensed it the flutist sued, basically for more money. Fortunately the case was thrown out. Andrew Orlowski at The Register basically says "go ahead and break copyright law, the owners can always sue you later".
He then goes on to claim "it's also slightly disingenuous to urge performers to forego the commercial option that might lift them out of poverty", which is itself an incredibly disingenuous statement. Nobody is suggesting that performers should forego payment for their creations -- or artists or writers or anyone else for that matter. For some works it's appropriate to be released under full copyright, although they might be urged to use Founders Copyright which gives full copyright for 14 years and then releases the work into the public domain. The point here is that not all work should receive full copyright protections because not all creators want full copyright protections.
This also links back to the indication in the article that Creative Commons is all about remixing other people's work...I guess except for those works with the "no derivitive works" CC licence. He then moves on to a bit of name-calling... Some professional creators do licence their work under a CC licence, and they normally have good business reasons for doing so. However, the majority of it is simply what people create in their spare time, and since they are not dependent upon it for income they often don't care if someone uses it. The point is not to remix something but to use it in a different context. For the unimaginative, here are a couple of examples:
1) Someone writes a story about Mexico for their blog, and wants to illustrate it with some pictures of pyramids. Someone else has gone to Mexico on holiday, taken such a picture and released it under a CC licence. Easy.
2) Someone is making a short film and wants a soundtrack, but has no experience composing music. They find that Derek R. Andette has created a number of background/music files and offers them on a royalty-free basis as long as he receives credit.

I'd love to hear more...

Now We're All Journalists

The Age (reg required): The Creative Commons license helped to distribute a key image of the London bombings in the hours following the attack...
"Within an hour and a half the picture had been sent to Sky, Associated Press, other news services and to anyone else who wanted to use it. Distribution was under what is called a Creative Commons licence. This allows anybody to use the image, but requires attribution to the creator...Dennen says he settled the licensing issue with Stacey by text message..."I texted Adam about it, explaining that it was such an important image, it needed reach, and there was no time to fuss with AP and other syndication agencies," he says."