Copyright Sucks, Creative Commons Does Not
The folks behind Creative Commons will argue that it isn’t a new form of copyright, that it supplements and extends copyright, utilizing its provisions. While semantically true, modern copyright has reached a point where it is fully associated with the idea of control and the lack of freedoms. The point has come where content creators simply assume that work is copyrighted and can’t be licensed because the law has become so restrictive. Creative Commons is so contradictory to this, that it is a virtual 180′ from traditional copyright.
Creative Commons, for the uninitiated, is based around three primary ideas: attribution, commercial vs. noncommercial uses, and sharing alike the new work.
Creative Commons License Buttons
Take these three fundamentals, mix them up, and you have the ‘Commons. It’s a copyright replacement, with three incredibly simple and easily understood icons. Why would you go with this system though? What’s wrong with traditional copyright?
Find out after the jump…
Traditional Copyright
Imagine you’re working on a documentary, and a cell phone rings. The ringtone: the Rocky theme. You, the realist filmmaker, leaves the ringtone in (why sacrifice your documentary’s believability?). The day after the premiere, you receive a phone call: you’re being fined ten thousand dollars for use of a copyrighted song. Sure, you could fight it in court. Sure, you could assert fair use. But why bother – it’s a long battle that you don’t need to fight. You pay the fine. You change the film. In the process, you lose credibility. Good bye distribution.
Copyright, Creative Commons style
Creative Commons is looking to stop this scenario. By allowing artists to easily choose a license (with a pathetically easy license generator), it becomes easier than ever to tell what work you can use (and how much). Licenses are human readable (no laywer required) and available for the world. It’s easy for everyone. Here’s an example:
A Creative Commons Deed
The deed is quite simple: it outlines the provisions of the license (in the screenshot above, you must attribute, use only non-commercially, and share your work under this license as well). There’s a link to the lawyer-version and a disclaimer, as well as the important note that any of the conditions can be ignored if the licensee says so. If the license owner is using Creative Commons, there’s a much higher chance he or she will consider your plea for affordable commercial rights.
Creative Commons is one of the most useful tools that a media creator has. It helped create the intro music for the PodDev podcast, it gave me background music for The Bet, its given web designers thousands of stock photos thanks to Flickr’s support of it – it can’t be put plainer than to say that Creative Commons kicks ass.
For the sake of the participatory culture, you too can put your work into the ‘Commons. There’s an easy-to-use generator, and you can snag the above images for use in your work (be sure you follow their terms though). It’s a fantastic system that helps everyone out, spreading work and helping artists do what comes easiest – create.
[...] Remember, respect the law – be sure to check the legality of the song before you use it in your podcast. Creative Commons, which YouMakeMedia has covered previously, is incredibly useful here: ccMixter or opsound provide Creative Commons-licensed audio. Not only are these songs great for podcast intros, they’re great for general listening! [...]
The creative commons licensing is nice, but there are three problems with the bogeyman set up in the “copyright” page.
One, it isn’t a violation of copyright law to record something that is trademarked or copyrighted in incidence to a documentary film – that would make filming in general impossible in areas where copyrighted work is prevalent “ads, etc”. Were you to use the recording as means for distributing the song itself or use the song as a way to work with your movie, it would be – but talk to the producer and holder of the copyright – they aren’t bad people and often they will set you up with licensing.
Two, while there is a case where copyrighted material in incidence to a film was attempted to force a takedown (LENZ V. UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP) yet even in that instance the EFF provided her with legal counsel and she wasn’t found liable for the infringing content, its still on Youtube. This is often used to commit the fallacy of exception – because this one woman got a request to remove her content that involved another’s work incidentally, obviously all copyright must be destroyed.
Three, even if the above were true, taking the ringtone out of a documentary and causing it to “lose credibility” is a shaky argument. I’d like to think documentaries are primarily thought of as credible based on how they are researched and filmed, rather than if the ringtones are all there or not.
oh my god i hate copyright i made a song to sing to my girlfriend next thing i know there was a song with the same meaning but not the same song only the same meaning i fucking hate copyright fuck the police we want to live free bitch!!!!!!!!!