Calling Dr. Kevorkian
Thursday, March 12th, 2009 by Patrick Ross
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Some readers will recall the publicity-seeking Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who decided that it wasn’t easy enough for people to kill themselves so he would make it even easier by inventing various contraptions involving IVs and gas. Whatever you may think of the morality of physician-assisted suicide, at least Dr. Kevorkian had the courage to risk his own freedom by assisting in the deaths, and he was in fact sent to prison.
The Creative Commons Foundation has created an assisted-suicide machine for artists’ rights, but by handing over all of the tools, they seem to feel they can keep the blood off of their hands.
Dean Kay alerted me to a new license from CC that isn’t really a license so much as a forfeiture. Let this news announcement describe it:
Did you know that written, scientific or artistic content you create is automatically put under copyright protection under US law - whether you want it to be copyrighted or not? That’s not good for a culture of collaboration and building on each others’ work - quite the opposite in fact.
Today, the Creative Commons Foundation is announcing a new tool called CC Zero. CC Zero isn’t another legal license from the group, instead it’s a legal tool that lets content creators give up the rights claims they are given by default and instead send their work into the public domain.
Perspectives can be very funny. I’ve always thought it was a good thing that creators were given rights upon creation.
I have received some grief from my friends in the copyright community in the past for saying CC has a place in our copyright system. Yes, it’s very important that creators have rights upon their work taking a fixed form; that’s a critical incentive and keeps us compliant with other Berne Convention signatories around the world. But I’ve also always said that artists then have the right to give away some or all of their rights and grant various permissions, and I saw CC as aiding those individuals.
The three (fair) raps on CC are that (1) the licensing can be confusing and lead to artists giving away rights they didn’t mean to, (2) there’s no means for an artist to restore rights later if they change their mind (think of a novelist making the big time and wanting to profit off of a backlist), a problem not found in limited-term licensing, and (3) it’s always been clear that the individuals behind CC didn’t see CC as a solution to their concerns with copyright, but as a starting point toward shifting copyright to an opt-in world from an opt-out world. Lawrence Lessig has a model along these lines in Remix, and has long advocated for a return to formalities in copyright.
Despite that, when as VP of Communications I was overseeing the publishing of a colleague’s book, I insisted (with the author’s vigorous support) that the book be published under a CC license, because our primary goal was having the work read. (That was when I first learned how unclear the licensing process is.)
This CC Zero license, however, is a bit beyond the pale. How is a creator to know, at the moment of creation, that they wish to forfeit all rights for their lifetime and for decades after that? There is absolutely no reason for such an irrevocable action. I believe CC is sincere in building both the actual public domain and a quasi-public domain. I do not believe they are sincere in their concern for artists, because they would never advise an artist to act in a way that could be so potentially harmful to their interests in the long-term.
Please, CC, create a robust term-limited license policy. Don’t you want the artists contributing to your collection today to have the opportunity to profit from their works tomorrow?
I will say this — at some point CC is going to have to stop bragging about how many works are under their licenses. After all, quantity only matters if there is also quality, and if the quality of those works is so incredible, shouldn’t that be a rich enough database with which to remix to any one’s heart’s content?
A few years ago I was in Brussels for an IP conference, and happened upon a scene where some activists wearing CC T-shirts took over an intersection near the EU headquarters. They were hooting and hollering and banging on drums. The European bureaucrats walking to work maneuvered around them in the crosswalk without a glance. That scene, to me, has always symbolized CC — capable of making a lot of noise, but a noise heard only by the converted.
March 14th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I don’t understand your problem. Creative Commons gives option. It’s Creative Commons that is the opt-in, not U.S. and International Copyright Law.
Remember, Creative Commons provides licensing options for more than just artists. There are all kinds of works created and licensed under Creative Commons, like scientific research, papers, etc.
Creative Commons provides options. You’re not forced to take them. They provide some more clearly differentiated options than the black or white U.S. Copyright system now does.
The world is evolving. There are plenty of people, artists and more, who see options in publishing beyond the traditional. Let them have options if they want to.
If you hate Creative Commons so much, just don’t use them.
March 17th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
This article is in poor taste, at best., despicable at worst.