Fred, I understand what you're saying and largely concur.
 
There is more to cultural liberty than copying. It is crazy to be subject to
a monopoly on reproduction, but deprecating the monopoly doesn't sanction
plagiarism or misrepresentation.
 
If a merchant or politician were to incorporate an artist's work in their
advert or as campaign theme song, then this could well risk misrepresenting
the artist as endorsing the product or political viewpoint. This should
preclude doing so without artist approval - far better than NC (which also
prevents the artist receiving a share of commissioned use, among many other
rewards the artist excludes themselves from).
 
Sure, we don't have much in the way of laws against plagiarism or
misrepresentation (and we need them), but that's because of the legislative
dead zone caused by 300 years of copyright.
 
And on the last note, honourable exploitation of cultural works by
corporations is not a problem, just as Linux being exploited by IBM is not a
problem.
 
 
DISCLAIMER: I'd hate to work for a corporation with lawyers that would sack
me or sue my arse off it they felt a moron in a hurry might mistake my words
as representing the views of my employer simply because I failed to add a
disclaimer to words clearly attributed to me and not my employer (assuming
it is actually possible for an immortal corporation to have views).
 


  _____  

From: Fred Benenson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, 25 July 2008 5:07pm
To: Discussion of Free Culture in general and this organization in
particular
Subject: Re: [FC-discuss] Sparky Awards video contest




On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 11:51 AM, Dean Jansen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote:


People who slap NC on their CC'd work on the other hand have the very sound
understanding that if they didn't do this, nasty, greedy corporations could
make colossal profits by selling access, or performances, copies, and
derivatives of their work (despite it being freely copyable). 



I fully understand why NC exists, but in this case I think it's completely
idiotic. I mean if some horrible greedy corporation wants to make colossal
profits by selling access to the Spark competition video website and videos,
then by all means LET THEM!

If you're trying to sell something in the first place and think you're going
to be edged out of the market by large corporations, then NC *might* make
sense.

--Dean



I agree for the most part here.

But I think there is another reason that is grounded in pure
capital-self-interest for creators choosing NC. I think its because people
don't like the idea of a corporation using their work for advertising or
promotion. Its not that think they're losing out on a possible revenue
stream, its that they think of themselves as artists who have a right to say
who gets to use their work commercially or not. This is the case for
publicity rights to ones image (and I don't think that many people object to
publicity rights.) so it seems a natural extension for artists to assume
such a right to their images or work. 

People have strong objections to commercialization of community projects
(see: Wikipedia and advertising or the prohibition of logos / cash /
corporations at Burning Man among many examples) and while I personally as
an artist find the "freedom from restrictions" argument compelling in the
face of the absurdity of copyright monopolies, most people don't get that
far -- they hear that Ford can, legally, use their music in a Commercial or
Exxon can, legally, use their photo on their website, and they slap NC on
it.

Changing attitudes on NC is not going to be done by focusing on hypothetical
royalties or commissions (or by sarcastically antagonizing people about ones
that won't exist), but by changing attitudes about corporations and
commercial uses of creative works. That is a long battle that predates CC
and copyleft.

Assuming that the argument just comes down to a "lost revenue" issue assumes
that all artists who use NC are exclusively capitally motivated, which is a
cynical and, from my experience, fairly shallow view of their relationship
to their work.

And on one last note -- I don't buy the argument that "copyleft" solves the
exploitation by a corporation problem because corporations don't like
"viral" licenses. This implies that though corporations CAN do something, we
just assume they WON'T do it because of some generalized assumption about
corporations not liking copyleft, which may not hold true -- which should
not hold true.



F

PS: Despite working for CC, these views are mine and mine alone.

 


 

 
 


  _____  

From: Dean Jansen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ] 
Sent: Friday, 25 July 2008 4:13pm
To: Discussion of Free Culture in general and this organization in
particular
Subject: Re: [FC-discuss] Sparky Awards video contest


I assume he means this:

"Copyright, 2008 SPARC, subject to a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/> License"

and that NC = lame (especially in this case)

That's just my interpretation of the comment though, so who knows.

--Dean


On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Nelson Pavlosky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote:


Rob Myers wrote:
> Rather than comment on the NC failage in this competition I'll just
> draw your attention to:
>
> http://youtube.com/watch?v=iVCGmyRrmUc
<http://youtube.com/watch?v=iVCGmyRrmUc> 
>
> - Rob.


What does "NC failage" mean?

~Nelson~

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