Each year the library
at North Carolina State University holds a gathering called the I.T.
Littleton Seminar. This series was established in 1987 to mark the retirement
of I. T. Littleton, the former director of the D. H. Hill Library. The
seminar series attempts to address major issues that are important to
libraries. This year the invited speaker was David Boyle, co-founder
of the Creative Commons, who colorfully outlined both the current state
of copyright and why there's a need for his organization's fresh approach
to copyright protection.
Boyle opened with
a look into the recent past of copyright law. According to him, it's
possible to compare copyright to a landmine which goes off in the event
of piracy. In the 1940s this landmine was aimed at the "tanks"
of piracy. Back then the effort and resources necessary to overcome
the difficulties of significantly breaching copyright law meant that
individuals were never in danger of getting "blown up" inadvertently.
As an individual, there was simply no way for you to easily violate
copyright laws. In addition, you always knew which works were copyrighted
because formalities were required. You had to mark your copyrighted
work with a "©" in order for it to be protected. Your
copyright also had to be renewed periodically or it would expire. If
a work didn't meet these criteria it then entered the public domain.
The effect was that copyright law didn't regulate people's behavior
significantly. But now, with the advent of digital technology, copyright
does regulate people's behavior since it's very easy to violate copyright
protection.
In the 1980's copyright
changed dramatically; the U.S. amended copyright law so that a work
was protected the moment it was created. There is no longer a need to
register the work and no formal notification is required. The default
position of any work is that "all rights are reserved." The
question Boyle had, and the problem that led to the creation of the
Creative Commons, was what happens if you only want to reserve some
rights? According to Tim O'Reilly (the founder and president of computer
book publisher O'Reilly & Associates who recently adopted Creative
Commons principles for his works), "copy protection is over-blown
… the vast majority of artists would love to be known well enough
to be a target of pirates. The biggest danger to an artist isn't piracy,
it's not being noticed." When Boyle contacted the copyright office
with the question of how to release some rights, the answer was "We
don't have a way to do that. You'll have to get creative."
Boyle's response
was to help set up the Creative Commons which helps artists and creators
reserve some rights, while releasing others to the larger community,
without the need for an army of expensive lawyers. Here are a few of
the licenses that are available, free of charge:
Some Rights Reserved
- Attribution:
The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform
the work. In return, licensees must give the original author credit.
- No Derivative
Works: The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display
and perform only unaltered copies of the work -- not derivative works
based on it.
- Noncommercial:
The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform
the work. In return, licensees may not use the work for commercial
purposes -- unless they get the licensor's permission.
- Share Alike:
The licensor permits others to distribute derivative works only under
a license identical to the one that governs the licensor's work.
In this way the
artist/creator retains control over her work while allowing it to be
shared among the larger creative community. According to Boyle, creative
work is important to our intellectual future. While it's easy to quantify
how much the content industry loses due to piracy, the costs borne by
artists and academia through "failed sharing", due to overly
broad copy protection, is invisible.
So far the main
users of the Creative Commons are non-profits, musicians and filmmakers.
In other words any person who relies on "loss leaders"; the
break-through song, film, or writing that finally gets them noticed.
The Creative Commons
reports over 500,000 works licensed through their system. There are
also mirror projects under way in other counties in the attempt to replicate
the idea under different legal conditions. But most telling is the fact
that both Jack Valenti (the head of the Motion Picture Association of
America) and John Perry Barlow (of "information wants to be free"
fame) approve of this project. This unusual pairing should make Boyle
believe he's on the right track.
