So last week in EMAC 6300, we began discussing some of the political and legal issues revolving around new media; specifically, where can we draw the lines between original work and stolen work? Is there such as thing as intellectual property anymore? What sort of protection should be given to data under our current legal and digital systems today?
I for one do believe that intellectual property should be protected by law. Simply because we have gone digital does not mean you can just take something created by someone else and call it your own. That is still theft. Moreover, it’s how people make money. When you just steal their work and call it your own, you are potentially diverting profits from them, and can thus be stunting innovation. But I digress; that’s a rant for another time.
I began web design at age 12, so from a young age, I was familiar with using materials created by others was similar to how we were told to do it in school: in lots of cases, if you just gave credit to the original designers or asked them if you could use their material, you were safe. At the very least, you shouldn’t go taking stuff from big name corporations and pasting it on your own site, especially not without a credit. You could also avoid this by simply creating the content yourself, or using materials from a “stock image” or “open source” site. However, as time grew on, lines began to blur, and more and more boundaries were being pushed in terms of what was acceptable. Copyright law was growing more and more inadequate to fully cover all areas of digital property. Thankfully, Lawrence Lessig came into help all that.
Lessig created something called “Creative Commons“, which was meant to help bridge the gap between copyright and public domain. Having a CC license on your work allows you to put something kind of like copyright on your work, except in this case, you define for yourself how you will let other people use it. With copyright, all rights are reserved to you. But what if you want to publish something and allow others to use it for themselves? Like if a band puts out a song, and they want to gather some free publicity by making it legal to use so long as you credit back to them? CC lets you do just that.
It’s very easy to get a CC license. You simply file for one online, specify how much protection you would like to put on your work, and then mark your work or publish it with the CC information (They give you images and links and other details showing how to mark your work). I myself published something under CC a year ago: I created an original tabletop Role-Playing system for a class, and filed it with a Creative Commons license, saying people were free to edit it, so long as they credited it back to me. This way, people could expand upon the system and make up some of their own rules, so long as they made sure to say that they didn’t come up with the idea themselves. I like having some recognition for my weeks’ worth of effort, after all.
If you already know about CC, all of this may seem pretty obvious to you. But the main reason I wrote about it is because it astounds me how many people have never heard of it, especially when they’re in positions that they really should be using it. I have a close friend who went to a very fancy-schmancy private liberal arts college for undergrad, and at one point, I suggested he search through CC for some papers on the topic he was researching. The response? “What’s Creative Commons?” So I explained, and he then said “You have to understand, Mary. At my college, we are in a FAR different world than that of you geeks up at UTD.” I tried to explain that really, this isn’t just a geek thing, this was a creative, collaborative thing, and liberal arts programs should be getting in on it. I’m not quite sure he believed me. On another occassion, I was working with a student media organization on campus designing their website, and was questioned where I got the images for the design. I explained I went to sxc.hu, a large and well-known stock photo site. They were VERY wary of it, and were asking “Why can’t you just take the pictures yourself?” “I don’t have the resources…” “Well, we don’t want to steal content here, you should know that! This is so unprofessional!” “I’m not stealing; stock photos are open source.” “What’s open source?” This was a student media group at UTD, the aforementioned “geek” school. Not even the geek school is all up to date on this stuff!
In the end, I don’t think CC alone will ever fully replace copyright. It doesn’t cover all that needs to be covered legally either, and sometimes, people will just want a full on copyright. However, I find it an amazing tool for people like me who aren’t trying to amass tons and tons of money from something, but just want to share with some recognition. Basically, it helps to eliminate outright theft, but we still need a more overarching system in place to handle payment issues and the like. I really hope that more and more smaller, independent publishers will get on board with it and start to utilize it’s power soon. Who knows? Maybe once enough smaller people get in on it, some of the big names will come around too.
8 Comments
I think part of why people find it more okay to grab copyrighted information digitally while they would never steal from a store is the fact digital material is just that, it’s digital. There is no physical copy that needed to be processed and cost money to make individually. People may just see digital copies as just one harmless copy; it doesn’t take any money directly away from them (producing wise) since it is just another copy. They likely don’t think about the intellectual rights.
Nice overview of Creative Commons, Mary. I found your statement, “Basically, it helps to eliminate outright theft, but we still need a more overarching system in place to handle payment issues and the like” interesting. Are you suggesting that people should pay for creative commons-licensed content? How would a payment plan fit within the fundamentals of the initiative?
I can’t believe I didn’t think of creative commons during the class. It seems like this would have been brought up. You did a great job explaining it.
mary, i’m so glad that you covered this topic. thank you for such a great overview. my partner recently took up photography and wasn’t sure how to protect his work. he spends a lot of time reading, learning, and practicing. we would hate to see someone steal his images. i sent him the link to your post. i’ll touch on one other item – stealing copyrighted images. a very high level person at my office took an image of a comic and inserted it into a corporate newsletter. i’m pretty sure this person is aware of how intellectual property works, but no one challenged him.
great post. I was at an internship during my undergrad and I ran into a similar problem when I used an image from sxc on an internal newsletter. They’d had issues with using copyrighted work in the past so it was understandable that they’d be so on edge about it. Why do you think enough people don’t know about CC?
Mary…how long has CC been around? I just learned about it earlier this year. Also thanks for the info on sxc.hu….I’ve been paying for my images for a really long time.
As far as CC…I like the concept, but haven’t worked with it yet. I think it would be a great class project for some class….maybe Aesthetics.
I think CC is brilliant, and I really hope it starts become more popular and used more often. If so, I think legislators dealing with copyright laws might see it and start changing their own copyright legislation.
Thank you for this post. I am admittedly one of the many who knew nothing of Creative Commons (aside from the “CC” logo I saw branded on the occasional product or website) but now am surprised that more people do not use it more. Then again, as you stated, it won’t ever completely replace copyright; people are probably still a little too paranoid about others tinkering with their work in a way they don’t find favorable.