‘Rights are good …’
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- Earlier this year Creative Commons formally introduced a license waiver called CC0 (CC Zero), blogs Lucas Gonze, continuing, “I urge musicians, as strongly as I can, to consider using this license waiver for the audio samples they put into the Commons.
“Audio samples licensed with CC0 with a CC0 waiver are the most flexible and least restrictive. Put another way, they carry the most freedom. Isn’t it hard enough to be creative?
“No matter how highly I consider my musical work on my best days, I would like to think there is balance between my personal desires and choking off my great granchildren’s freedoms to speak creatively.”
He adds, “musicians just don’t understand copyright in any way. Burdening them with the difference between the different flavors of CC license is a non-starter.”
Now, “I’m obliged by Lucas Gonze to reappraise CC0 having read his blog article,” writes Crosbie Fitch (right), noting Lucas’ post responds to Victor Stone’s article Consider: Zero.
Crosbie goes on »»»
I think we’re seeing the crossover of friction vs constraint between software and other art.
The GPL is a license that restores liberty to the public (otherwise suspended by copyright and patent), albeit at the expense of friction (easily surmountable by coders used to it). CC-SA is somewhat similar.
The CC0 is a license/waiver that unencumbers the art from constraint by the author’s copyright, and friction due to (well intentioned) licensing conditions, albeit at the expense of not being able to liberate anyone apart from the immediate users. It may be that opprobrium will be enough to prevent derivatives of CC0 works from being re-encumbered with copyright.
There is a similar issue (and confusion) between manumission and laissez faire between the GPL and BSD licenses (as between CC-SA and CC0). The GPL is actually freer (in restoring more people’s liberty), whereas the BSD is least encumbered by licensing conditions (the licensee is free to suspend others’ liberty).
There is a FAQ for the CC0.
It is disheartening that in conflating legal rights (privileges) and natural rights (moral rights, etc.) CC is giving ‘rights’ a bad name by suggesting that CC0 is a way of surrendering/unreserving as many rights as possible, as if this was a worthy aspiration. It compounds this insinuation by saying that in some jurisdictions it is difficult or impossible for some rights to be waived or licensed. That’s because they are natural and inalienable rights, not commercial privileges!
As I’ve often said before, artists should surrender none of their rights. They should divest themselves only of their privileges, and by so doing restore the public’s rights their privileges would otherwise annul. Rights are good (natural rights and derivatives), privileges are bad (copyright and patent).
Copyright (via CC license) may provide a holder with the apparent ability to demand attribution, but there is no natural right to it. What there is a natural right to is truth, and thus a right against misattribution.
Lawrence Lessig created this confusion in the first place, and now people who are relinquishing their privilege to demand attribution will assume they are also relinquishing the right not to be misattributed.
Somehow, Crosbie states,” I suspect CC has a hidden agenda in conflating the privilege of copyright (and all the ‘legal rights’ it engenders) with inalienable, natural rights, i.e. that it wishes to cement the popular delusion that copyright is a natural right, in order to facilitate legislation that secures it as if a natural right (making infringement a crime).
“To thus provide liberal licenses/waivers with one hand whilst reinforcing the privilege as if a right with the other hand is crypto-IP-maximalism.”
blogs Lucas Gonze – Advocacy for CC 0 over BY-SA, June 3, 2009
Crosbie Fitch – Copyleft vs CopyZeroFriction, June 4, 2009
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June 5th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Crosbie:
You’re just NOW figuring out that CC licencing (and the GPL) have “a hidden agenda?”
Geez.
Actually, it’s not all that “hidden”, and — importantly — it never was.
From square 1, the GPL, and ALL other so-called “free licenses” suffer from one basic flaw: namely, they ARE “licenses”.
From the moment you concede that there IS such a thing as a “rights-holder” with the power to permit — or deny — particular uses, whether that “rights-holder” does so in a “permissive” fashion (like the GPL licenses) OR a “restrictive” fashion (the RIAA) ultimately makes no difference, as far as the basic principle.
The “Free software” and “creative Commons” licenses are in fundamental agreement with the RIAA, up to — and including — the fact that many of them advocate using the DMCA if those “free” licenses are violated.
The GPL and CC licenses ARE fundamentally opposed to the “public domain”, because the public domain allows NO SUCH RESTRICTIONS OF CONDITIONS AT ALL.
That’s why I personally believe that it’s dishonest to claim that the GPL “restores freedom” of any kind. The only way such “freedom” could be restored, would be for the monopoly privilege upon which such licenses depend — copy”right” — to either be repealed, or allowed to expire.
June 5th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
In case anybody wonders, I support the GPL and Creative Commons, for the same reason that I think shorter copyright/patent terms are much less pernicious than the ones we have now.
They’re ALL equally bad in principle, but the shorter/less restrictive ones are less damaging in practice.