I’ll do a shorty talk at the Creative Commons salon in Silverlake, in LA, tonight. My topic is going to be the role of permissive licensing in the business of internet music. I’ll lay out a map of the industry as a whole and situate copyleft within it.
Flavorpill describes the event this way:
Creative Commons is at the forefront of the progressive copyright movement, seeking arrangements that allow the free flow of artistry and ideas while at the same time protecting intellectual rights and freedoms. A group taking the middle road, its efforts have been invaluable in the face of technology’s rush into the future. At tonight’s salon, Mark “Frosty” McNeil — founder of noted DJ and multimedia collective Dublab — and XSPF developer Lucas Gonze tackle the ramifications and opportunities that could result from current and proposed copyright policies and discuss their larger effect on the music industry.
Bear in mind that Creative Commons is a facility for the copyright holder to standardise their selective granting of permission (from the public’s suspended right to copy), whereas copyleft is a means of emancipation (restoring the public’s right to cultural liberty in an author’s published art and its published derivatives).
They are distinct philosophies. I wouldn’t attempt to locate Copyleft within the panoply of CC licenses. Instead one can estimate the CC license that has the greatest proximity to copyleft, i.e. CC-SA.
Copyleft attempts to neutralise copyright via a conditional license for the liberation of the public, whereas CC licenses simply modulate the constraints of copyright according to the author’s self-interest.
The nomenclature of change interests me less than the potential for implemented change. CC offers a standardized way for content generators to share work without the need to repeal the copyright statute. I think that it’s true that a view of copyleft which rejects the idea of copyright protection differs from CC. Yet CC, by working within recognized boundaries to achieve a standardized result, has helped advance a sharing economy.
I’m not sure I agree that copyleft is anti-copyright. I think it’s a positive goal — to empower builders working on and living in the free ecosystem.
As far as the philosophy of CC, I don’t know if there is anything beyond an impulse to moderate some excesses. Do Lessig’s ideas go beyond hand-wringing?
This is the nouveau philosophe invented for Creative Commons:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=984947
A re-empowerment of the author as rightful wielder of copyright – not their traditional assigns (publishers) – to be considered as having an inalienable right to determine how their published work may be used by others (even though no such natural right has ever been self-evident).
At best, the CC philosophy is one of utilitarianism. Copyright exists, so empower self-publishing authors to use it. Even though such power can only be enjoyed by the wealthy – but, hey, it’s the thought that counts (and sets the cause for state empowerment).
The power of copyright is obtained by suspending the public’s liberty. It is an unethical power whoever wields it. Copyright should be abolished, and in the interim neutralised by copyleft licenses.
I think that where CC transcends hand-wringing is in the utility of simple licensing forms for mass use. The “movement” is essentially moderate by design, because it solves a basic problem–how to get usable content out to users in a consensual manner. The worrying and trumpeting of CC seems to me a bit beside the point–except to the extent that form licenses are used to share material between creators and between creator and consumer. Even then, it’s not something magic and new–just a solid way to standardize a practice, to the benefit of all.