This short article is just brimming with ideas about how an author can better integrate his or her creative works into the flow of creationCopy This Book — Jonathan Lethem on Life as a Copyfighter -. Although I think there's a lot to be gained through Creative Commons licenses, for example, the fact that by using them, one's choice to share more broadly than the law's default provisions would allow is noted and CC works are searchable on the Web, that although there are many choices of CC license, one can recognize a typical set of rights with the abbreviated forms that are becoming common, still, Lethem's idea that people should think more creatively about how they want to to share their works is not without its appeal. At least it's a call to recognize how much we depend on the work of others, rather than persist in the idea that we create out of thin air and thus have a moral right to claim such broad, disabling exclusivity in our creations as the law now permits.
This has been in my thoughts for a long time, that the original idea of copyright was to provide just enough of a monopoly to bring about creation. Monopoly is not really a desirable way to do things, but where we've determined that the benefit outweighs the obvious drawbacks, we should at least limit the monopoly to only that which is required. The millions of people who are creating and giving broad user rights to the public are testament to the notion that we are over the line in what we provide authors. The harm done by such over-protection is more obvious every day.
Comments (1)
Allow me to post to this blog a comment that I posted to the liblicense list earlier today regarding Creative Commons licenses. I would welcome your observations, Georgia, as well as Lolly's or anyone else's participating in this forum.
"As for the general approach of Creative Commons (copied in this Science Commons version) to provide a means for authors to license any uses that are "noncommercial," I would appreciate knowing what "noncommercial" means. If it is meant to be the equivalent of "educational," then it is as vacuous and unhelpful as the view that "fair use" sanctions any "educational" use—which, as we all know from a variety of Supreme Court cases, is not the view of the highest court in the land. For the vast majority of the specialized scholarly writing that is the subject of journal licensing agreements, there is NO market outside of higher education—which is, by the way, the reason that university presses were established in the first place. Is "noncommercial" then supposed to be a synonym for "nonprofit"? But university presses are nonprofit entities. Thus, are we permitted by Creative Commons licenses to republish any articles or book chapters whose authors have signed such a license? It would be nice to know so that we don't have to bother paying them any permission fees. The same, of course, would hold for "nonprofit" society publishers. Our missions are, of course, to serve scholarship, so we would be happy to accept this interpretation of "noncommercial." I'm not sure its creators intended for it to be interpreted in that way. On the other hand, I really haven't a clue about how they did intend it to be construed, since it is inherently a slippery concept. And the whole edifice of CC licensing is built upon this shaky commercial/noncommercial distinction, is it not?"
Posted by Sandy Thatcher | May 27, 2007 8:28 PM
Posted on May 27, 2007 20:28