The British Council, whose remit is promoting British culture abroad, has produced a report musing about the Creative Commons license scheme. For those who are not IP geeks this is a licence which creates a counter-intuitive permissive distribution and rights framework. All very subversive and counter, errr, culture.
Predictably, it is not going down well with those of a more conservative cultural outlook: most of these don’t ‘get’ it, but those who do get it really don’t get it. Alison Wenham representing indie music labels apparently said;
“We’re getting fed up with proselytizing from people who have never had grit under their fingernails trying to run a creative business”
“To suggest that Creative Commons is the ’solution’ to copyright in the digital age is to miss the point entirely … It does nothing at all to address the much more difficult challenge that the creators and the industries that invest in them are wrestling with, which is ‘how will we be paid in the digital age?’”.
To which one is tempted to repeat the observation that when all one has is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Ms Wenham seems to labour under the very common, within the creative industry, illusion that copyright is a legal device created for the primary purpose of making ‘creatives‘ a living. Thereby the Creative Commons is, at its most charitable, an irrelevance since it is not directed to that end.
Neatly demonstrating the point that ‘points’ are most effective when sharp and delivered on target.
At its most rigorous one would say that copyright was never, historically, designed for the purpose of making creatives a living indeed it wasn’t even intended to make investors in them a living. It was always designed to enhance the pool of published works for the benefit of the public. Any benefit to creatives or their investors is thereby a collateral and incidental benefit and not the purpose or goal of the copying right. That is an important aspect that is rarely made in the debate. But as a result public policy is skewed towards the question of how the copyright industry makes a living in the digital age, and protect itself from copyright infringement. An interesting question and even an important one: but not the primary policy focus. Allowing the free spending lobbyists of the creative industries to trip through fields of politicians with bagsful of money will, and has, led to a parched public domain that is veering ever towards becoming a dustbowl.
That’s principle. In practice the main problem I find among my creative clients is not how to monetize their art but rather to avoid being fucked up the arse, metaphorically usually - but literally for the prettier boys, by film and record industry executives. For most of them recognition, peer & public respect are everything - the money is peripheral, at least while they are making their reputations. The Creative Commons facilitates that. It is not in itself a revolutionary licence in some respects: the gratis licence with liberal distribution rights has a long history and most of what the Creative Commons offers can be done without it.
The Creative Commons is valuable since it provides a well known, moderately comprehensible, standard licence. It aids publicity and the growth of reputation while not necessarily inhibiting larger commercial goals. But above all else it signifies a renewed assertiveness among the consuming public: leave the public’s rights alone.
That, Ms Wenham, is the point.
I can’t come!!!...
“Yeah! Rock on!”
The brand “corporate blawg” is under a creative commons licence and appears as a brand label on the “geeklawyer” label by permission of “corporate blawg”. All rights are reserved with “corporate blawg” to retain all rights in all statements forthwith above, and may from time to time demand the removal of such brand name as and when “corporate blawg” feels a need to dissociate if, and an unlikely “if”, corporate blawg ever feels such a need to arise and be executed in order to preserve the reputation and marketing stategy of said “corporate blawg” in the absolute discretion of corporate blawg. Amen. Hoorah!
balls.
The purpose of copyright is to enable authors to manage, in the fairest
possible way, the income from their labours; it is a presumption of the
parliamentary draughtsman that creators “create” in order to live, and
that the process of creation necessarily involves an original work of art
that will be copied legitimately. All that copyright does is confer on
the author the right to copy each work.
e.g In the case of the recent DaVinci Code (and case), the author laboured mightily in order
to produce the original as a speculative investment, in the fervent
hope that a publisher would be enticed into signing a contract to copy the
original in multithousands for sale. Without the magical efficiency of
copyright, that process would be open to all kinds of contractual
difficulties, what with the author demanding bushels of shekels beyond the
wildest imagination or, on the other hand, the publisher squeezing every
last penny of profit from the enterprise.
Copyright is the exquisitely simple guiding framework upon which both
parties can construct a simple contract satisfactory to both.
Copyright enables copying.
I don’t know any creative whether client or friend who writes for the money. Well perhaps Geoffrey Archer, but then he is neither a client a friend, nor very creative. The argument that the money acts a substantial incentive simply doesn’t arise as a substantial motivation for 99% of artists.
Yes of course rock bands want the money, as do authors etc etc but the idea that they produce to earn is not born out by reality. Most of the ones I know would do it while filling shelves at Sainsbury’s - in fact some practically do. The economic basis for copyright is far slimmer than the ‘negotiating tool’ idea. Most create and will never earn a penny - copyright has virtually no role - in my experience if it has any role it is not an economic but one for enforcing artistic integrity and recognition against moral rights abuse.
I whole heartedly agree with both the view point and the described experience/desires of ‘creatives’, at least in a non-industrial situation. But I’m not sure how effective copyright is at preventing a (hopefully metaphorical) forcible cheek parting for some practices, those of the visual arts in particular. I’ve done a couple of posts (doubtlessly naive) on this recently.
nearly legal: I thought the piece on contemorary art practises was particularly good.