Essay - Creative Commons

Twenty-first century artists, gamers, ‘tweeters’ and programmers operate within an immersive, technology-rich environment. Widespread participation in the ‘read-write’ culture of Web 2.0 has generated ongoing debate concerning the legal, practical, philosophical and creative conflict between restrictive copyright law and the exponential growth of online content distribution and access.

The Creative Commons (CC) licensing framework is one response to the issues inherent in applying traditional licensing practices to digital works especially. The ‘some rights reserved’ stance of the CC framework and uptake of CC licences by recognised figures and groups have caused a stir amongst creative and academic industries worldwide. The following discussion defines the CC framework and demonstrates how the flexible, accessible and identifiable nature of the Creative Commons system sets it apart from other forms of copyright.

 The Creative Commons Foundation set out in 2001 to repair the ‘cultural machine’ (Katz, 2007), motivated by a social shift towards a more collaborative culture, the rise of a “…new global consciousness of sharing and participation across national borders” (Cheliotis, Chik, Ankit et al, 2007, p.1) and the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public Licence (GNU GPL). The non-profit organisation provides a set of six core licensing tools that encourage user-creators to legally ‘share, remix, and reuse’ copyrighted works (Creative Commons, 2010).

These free licensing tools provide a middle-ground of authorship protection between copyright and public domain (PD). Licensors allow users to freely share and use their work provided they: attribute the use of the work (CC BY); use the work in a non-commercial capacity (CC NC); make available any resulting works under the same license (Share-Alike or CC SA); or use the work as originally created (non-derivative or CC ND) (Creative Commons, 2010). More recently, the CC Zero (CC0) was developed as a ‘universal waiver’ to give authors an opportunity to bring works closer still to the public domain, while the CC Founder’s Copyright provides a more balanced option for short-term licensing.

The recent explosion in popularity of the CC licenses is due in part to the flexibility they lend authors in sharing their copyright video, audio and written works with others on a large scale. It is estimated that over 350 million items are currently licensed under the Creative Commons worldwide (Cobcroft, 2008), in various combinations that give licensors a balance of control over their work; a way to “…protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them” (Katz, 2006, p.392).

Australia’s Copyright Act 1968 was developed before the advent of the internet and the more recent evolution of the Read-Write Web: in contrast, the user-friendly CC framework was developed by and for contemporary user-creators. Subject to ongoing improvements that recognise the pervasive nature of multimedia formats available online (Gordon-Murnane, 2010), the commons assist users to sidestep the “edgy trip into the legal maze of copyright” (Pallas Loren, 2007) by filling out a web-based application form and distributing their licence-encoded works as desired.

Flickr’s migration to the commons as its principle content-licensing option was met with a phenomenal response that is showing exponential annual growth [Insert diagram]. Ten million CC-licensed images in 2004 jumped to over 100 million in 2009: more than 12 million of these are attribution-only licensed (CC BY) (Thorne, 2009), meaning they are completely free to download, share and reuse, commercially or otherwise, provided that the licensor is duly attributed.

In addition to a flexible licensing platform, CC licensors have the advantage of a three-way coding system that makes commons material and its licensed uses readily identifiable to the public. Whereas traditional copyright is automatically attached to works and ‘other subject matter’ (that is, film, video, sound recordings and other electronic multimedia) without any process of registration, publication, or even display of a copyright notice (Commonwealth of Australia, 2005), each CC licence or combination is made clear. A “…legal code, a human-readable deed, and machine-readable code” (Peters, 2009) allow electronic works to be easily located and used via purpose-built search engines hosted by the Creative Commons, Yahoo!, Flickr, YouTube and others.

                American band Nine Inch Nails stunned the music industry when it released its two most recent albums under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence. Kevin Kelly of online record label Magnatune explains that this revolutionary approach to licensing allows musicians like Nine Inch Nails, The Grateful Dead and Radiohead to take full advantage of the identifiable nature of CC licences by capitalising on the ‘considerable incentives’ for releasing original material that is ‘free’ (as cited in Cobcroft, 2009, p.33). This particular CC success story resulted in international prominence in the press, and a substantial profit accrued from subsequent ‘Deluxe Edition’ CD sales (Cobcroft, 2009). The contrast with the stringent implementation of copyright and infringement by traditional record companies is illustrated in the reciprocal degree of ‘fan respect’ that is linked to the reasonable assertion of copyright by creative authors (Pallas Loren, 2007), and the clear communication of permissible uses to audiences.

A consequence of the efficient CC identification system is increased accessibility of a wide range of works to fellow artists, researchers, educators and user-creators around the world. The various and complex layers of traditional intellectual property protection pose mounting challenges that frustrate efforts by CC and other organisations to revive the public domain (Peters, 2009).

Creative production workshops and short film competitions such as Bush in 30 Seconds and Video Slam 02 encourage the use and creation of original works made up almost entirely of CC-licensed material, that contribute in turn to a bigger and better cultural commons. Produced by Josh Nichols, Jules Sholer
and Alister Robbie during a 48-hour “instant filmmaking marathon” (Open Channel, 2008), So Hard is one such example. The result of a ‘limited abandonment’ of protective rights by creative content authors is a reworking of original works for new purposes and audiences: it is also diametrically opposed to the restrictions and ‘overly broad ownership rights’ imposed by traditional copyright law on works such as those produced by Disney.

 Since 2005, CC has cast the net wider still, beyond the domain of creative works. By “…identifying and lowering unnecessary barriers to research, crafting policy guidelines and legal agreements, and developing technology to make research, data and materials easier to find and use” (Creative Commons, 2010) CC hopes to build commons-based infrastructure for scientific research and educational materials.

The work of the Creative Commons has been called a temporary experiment; a revolution in ‘social media’ sharing; a significant phenomenon of ‘open’ cultural production and distribution. While several issues have necessitated revisions of the legal licence codes for different jurisdictions, exponentially-increasing support for the commons across a range of media and in both developed and developing countries would suggest that the ‘some rights reserved’ option is a welcome alternative to other forms of copyright.

                As traditional copyright and patenting laws become more and more difficult for the average person to navigate, the flexible, accessible and identifiable nature of the Creative Commons framework is garnering popularity and espousal, by recognised organisations and celebrity figures as well as the individual user.

Is the CC licensing framework a timely solution to ongoing private-public gain conflict? Should the trends in international uptake of CC licences continue in the same vein, it would seem that the folk at Creative Commons are moving in the right direction to meet the needs of intellectual property protection in the twenty-first century.

References

Cheliotis, G., Chik, W., Ankit, G., & Kumar Tayi, Giri. (2007). Taking Stock of the Creative Commons Experiment: Monitoring the Use of Creative Commons Licenses and Evaluating its Implications for the Future of Creative Commons and for Copyright Law [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/7/71/Taking-stock-of-the-creative-commons-experiment_eng.pdf

Cobcroft, R. (Ed.). (2008). Building an Australasian commons: Creative commons case studies volume 1. [Sydney?]: CC Australia.

Commonwealth of Australia. (2005). Copyright Law in Australia: A Short Guide [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 15, 2010, from http://www.ag.gov.au/agd/WWW/rwpattach.nsf/VAP/
(CFD7369FCAE9B8F32F341DBE097801FF)~Copyright+Law+in+Australia+-+A+Short+Guide+-+June+2005.pdf/$file/Copyright+Law+in+Australia+-+A+Short+Guide+-+June+2005.pdf

Creative Commons. (2010). History. Retrieved October 15, 2010, from http://creativecommons.org/projects/founderscopyright

Lessig, L. (2001). The future of ideas: The fate of the commons in a connected world. New York: Random House.

Open Channel. (2008). Video Slam 02: Teams. Retrieved October 18, 2010, http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/openchannel/videos/VS02_TEAM-02.ogg/view

Pallas Loren, L. (2007). Building a Reliable Semicommons of Creative Works: Enforcement of Creative Commons Licenses and Limited Abandonment of Copyright. George Mason Law Review, 14(2), 271-328.

Peters, D. (2009). Expanding the Public Domain: Part Zero [Press release]. Retrieved October 18, 2010, from http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/13304

Katz, Z. (2006). Pitfalls of Open Licensing: An Analysis of Creative Commons Licensing. IDEA, 46(3), 391-413.

Thorne, M. (2009). Analysis of 100M CC-Licensed Images on Flickr [Press release]. Retrieved October 18, 2010, from http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/13588