The essence of the matter is - if we want to be free, we have to allow freedom of choice. You can't brow-beat someone into Free Software - in doing so, you take away their Freedom. Thats not what I call Free as in Freedom not Beer.

I've broken away from the 'Free Software Only' camp, the 'Never May Open Source Tread Here' groupies. Likewise with Open Source. I've been more drawn to Creative Commons as a solution, because it offers a spectrum from full Copyright as it is conventionally used, to Free Software, non-commercial copying only, and finally the Public Domain. But all of these camps have their own parking spaces. Creative Commons is the closest that I can get to uniting this movement of 'Stuff', of alternative copyright, while allowing freedom of choice.

www.copyleftmedia.org.uk
weblog Miriam Clinton (nee Rainsford)
Copyright © 2002 Miriam Rainsford

So, here’s a success story for Canadian culture. Yay. You don’t need to know about it, or care about it, because it works behind the scenes—and who would argue about a little bit more money making it to Canadian artists and publishers?

Oh wait, the copyleft movement would argue with that, or at least some in their fold would. Copylefters, lovingly profiled in this very magazine a year and a half ago, are the anarchists of creativity who, at their extreme edge, advocate the removal of all restraints on use and reuse of creative material. Music downloaders, cut and pasters – we all do it, and we’re all vaguely aware that at some point someone will probably figure out a way for us to pay for it. Certainly, I do not mind paying 99 cents to download a Ron Sexsmith song to my iMac, and I don’t really need to know where exactly every cent of that 99 is going. I assume Mr. Sexsmith is getting some of it, and if he’s not that he’ll make a big enough stink about it that the system will eventually change. Who can argue against artists getting paid for what they do?

And yet, it’s increasingly popular to do so. The Walrus just recently ran a sarcastic humour piece suggesting the publishing industry lobby for a hidden tax on blank paper, just like the music industry succeeded in doing on blank tapes and cds. It included some lame argument about people who only buy blank cds for data – why should they pay an extra cent or so because other people are putting copyrighted music on the cds? Well, it’s called the economy, and though I am NOT advocating for a paper tax here, I generally support any measure or agency, like Access Copyright, designed to help artists make a living at what they do. And I’ve got my cheque stub from AC to prove that’s what’s happening.

John D. March 13, 2005
blog.thismagazine.ca

“But what if artists don’t mind having their work, as long as it is credited to them, floating freely in the ether? Even the RIAA can’t see anything wrong with the Creative Commons in theory. “If a copyright owner has consented to the distribution or copying of his or her work in a particular fashion, that’s great” says Jonathan Layme, an association spokesman. “What we’re concerned about is when they right is deprived of them and someone else is making that choice for them and giving it away for free, i.e. unauthorized file sharing.”

Biella October 7, 2004
www.healthhacker.org

“As a copyfighting lawyer, I love the spirit of tinkering in the air. The whole event was brimming with the spirit of exploration, interoperation, and user driven innovation. The more people who catch that excitement, the more people we’ll have fighting laws that restrict out ability to open boxes and re-use the contents

Wendy Seltzer EFF March 18, 2005
www.corante.com/copyfight/

“They (music companies) dictate cultural taste based on relatively narrow and often deeply ignorant criteria related to marketing and money and fear of the new and the different. This is what they do. In other words, it was shelved because it’s different, unique, a little eccentric, all bells and oompah horns and strings and oddly lovely circuslike arrangements and you as the co-opted overmarketed oversold listening audience can’t really handle anything like that anything challenging or interesting or distinctively or deeply cool or lacking in prepackaged backbeats that sound just like Kelly Clarkson or maybe “American Idiot”, even if it comes from a stupendously talented world-class Grammy winning artist”

Donna Wentworth quoting Fred von Lohmann, March 17, 2005
www.corante.com/copyfight/

“I think it is helpful to educate consumers that there is a place like the Creative Commons where one can access intellectual property that has been freely made available to the general public without compensation and that that should be distinguished from sites that are permitting access to infringing material”

Donna Wentworth quoting Hilary Rosen of the RIAA, March 14, 2005
www.corante.com/copyfight/

“Many of those extracting new value from old content are not the original creators or rightsholders. Some of them are repurposing older material , and others are aggregators who have found ways to find new markets for material that’s fallen beneath the commercial radar”

Andy Scudder quoting Chris Anderson, February 3, 2005
http://freeculture.org/blog/

“In a way, it’s embarrassing to watch the old media guard flounder and attempt to regulate these distribution methods our of existence simply because they don’t jive with their current modus operandi. At the same time, it’s frightening because they something succeed at convincing people that their distribution methods should be protected at all costs. It’s at this point that we’re reminded again how an open marketplace allows more people to prosper than a closed system. Using copyright to confine the distribution of works not only limits the success of its creators, but also the success of the distributor, and the public when it keeps that media out of the very culture in which it was designed to exist.”

Andy Scudder February 3, 2005
http://freeculture.org/blog/

“Everyone who is in the group (“Free Culture Swarthmore”) knows what ‘free culture’ is and what Free Culture is, but each persons ideas are a little different from the next, and trying to articulate those ideas has proven surprisingly difficult. What makes identifying whay we do and who we are so hard? Perhaps the biggest obstacle is that there is no commonly accepted jargon for taking about the things that we are interested in… Thus our greatest challenge is trying to bring those important issues to the attention of the public despite this language barrier”

Alex Benn March 10, 2005
scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu/wordpress/

“His (Lessig’s) piece reminded me of the recent controversy with Indiana UP and the countless other instances where literary executors control access and/or permission to use exerts from materials from archival materialism and as in the Indiana case, refuse to grant permission… In the case of literary executors, it always seems to give them so much power to be able to refuse a request. It seems like we need a different system – something that does not put so much power into those who do not ant the criticism or comment.”

Elizabeth Townsend August 20, 2004
http://academiccopyright.typepad.com

So perhaps for the first time, the committee (WIPO) will be focused on the question of to maintain our (users) ability to freely access and create knowledge. This was an amazing victory in line with the Development Agenda and a step forward for the Treaty for Access to Knowledge”

David T. November 19, 2004
www.public-domain.org

“The real disagreement between OSI and FSF, the real axis of discord between those who speak of open source and free software, is not over principles. It’s over tactics and rhetoric.”

“We hackers are thinkers and idealists whol readily resonate with appeals to principle and freedom and rights”

“So it is for all of us: to the rest of the world outside our little tribe, the excellence of our software is a far more persuasive argument for openness and freedom than any amount of highfalutin appeal to abstract princples”

Eric’s Random Writings
June 28, 1999
“Shut up and Show them the Code”
www.catb.org

“The other is open source, the Internet engineering tradition, in which source code is generally available for inspection, independent peer review and rapid evolution. The standard bearer of this approach is the linux operating system.”

“The pattern is simple and compelling. Where we have open-source software, we have peer review and high reliability. Where we don’t, reliability suffers terribly. This fact in itself is probably sufficient to marginalize closed source development in the future.”

Eric’s Random Writings
Keeping and Open Mind
March/April, 1999 “Cyberian Express”
www.catb.org

“First, the web response to OntheCommons.org has exceeded our expectations. The site now receives an average of 15,000 visits a month. About 20% of these visits come from beyond the U.S., which means that interest in the commons is truly global in scope.

David Bollier March 18, 2005
onthecommons.org

All articles would be deposited in the NIH’s online repository, PubMed Central, which would then be accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Imagine the boon to scientists worldwide, who could collaborate on finding solutions to medical challenges. Imagine the benefit to ordinary doctors and citizens wanting to learn more about a given medical issue. Price and copyright permissions would not be an issue. And why should they? We, the taxpayer have already paid for all this research.”

David Bollier March 16, 2005
http://onthecommons.org

“Creators not politically powerful, so alliances need to be made. – alliances with users rather than non-creator copyright holders”

“The greatest threats identified were not end users not paying royalty payments, but the ability of creators to create, distribute and profit from works under their own terms”

Russell McOrmond September 8, 2003
www.digital-copyright.ca

131 words from On Bullshit violates copyright? Bullshit! -- UPDATED

A reader writes, "Much-blogged 'On Bullshit' essayist Harry Frankfurt, of Princeton's philosophy department, has asked me to pull a 131-word excerpt from his essay from my blog, saying that it'll hurt his profits. Has the guy--an academic, no less--never used quotation in his work? Never heard of fair use?"

Here's 131 words from On Bullshit for your perusal. In my view, the claim that this is either a "clear infringement" of copyright or will displace sales of the book is so unlikely as to constitute bullshit.

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis.

March 16, 2005
BOING BOING
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/16/131_words_from_on_bu.html

Cory's editorial on chicken companies and copyright

I wrote this editorial for the Edinburgh law school's website on how the copyright wars are being waged today because big technology companies have lost their nerve. It has extra meaning this week, when Grokster is being played out at the Supreme Court, where a tech company has exhibited the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the entertainment industry bullies.

Time was, companies like Sony could be relied upon to spend hundreds of millions of dollars defending its right to market good technology to its customers -- the company spent eight years in court sticking up for the VCR at a time when the consensus among legal scholars was that giving the public the ability to copy movies in their sitting rooms was flat-out illegal.

Time was companies shipped products that sat at the intersection of the limits of engineering and what the public could be convinced to buy: jukeboxes, cable TV, radio, VCRs, MP3 players, you name it, if it was dodgy, cool and likely to freak out an entertainment exec, someone out there would offer it for sale.

Time was that copyright changed whenever some entrepreneur invented something cool and infringing and compelling and the courts or lawmakers legalized it with reforms to copyright.

Times have changed. Today, businesses shrink away from offering general-purpose technology whose suite of uses includes ones that fall outside the confines of today's copyright -- like automatic commercial-skipping in PVRs. They run screaming from businesses that are clearly infringing by today's standards -- like DVD-ripping movie jukeboxes.

Cory Doctorow March 30, 2005
BOING BOING
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/30/corys_editorial_on_c.html

700+ Orphan Works comments at the Copyright Office

Gavin sez, "The U.S. Copyright Office has posted the orphan works comments that were submitted. Over 700 comments were submitted in total. The CO will be accepting comments in direct reply to these through May 9."

• Lessig (for Save the Music and CC)
• Internet Archive (Note: The Internet Archive's comment has some particularly interesting suggestions, including using orphan works under the Creative Commons by-nc-nd license.)
• FreeCulture.org
• Public Knowledge
• Library of Congress
• Microsoft
• Copyright Clearance Center (copyright.com)
• RIAA
• Elizabeth Townsend (Academic Copyright)
• MPAA
• ASCAP
• Samuelson Clinic
• Consumers Electronic Association

March 29, 2005
BOING BOING
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/29/700_orphan_works_com.html

Shirky: stupid (c) laws block me from publishing own work online

Clay Shirky tells Boing Boing:

Welcome to the Copyfight. So, at Etech this year, I gave a talk entitled Ontology is Overrated. I want to put a transcript up online, and Mary Hodder, who recorded the talk, graciously agreed to give me a copy of the video.

When she came by NYC last week, she dropped off a DVD, which I then wanted to convert to AVI (the format used by my transcription service.) I installed ffmpeg and tried to convert the material, at which point I got an error message which read "To comply with copyright laws, DVD device input is not allowed." Except, of course, there are no copyright laws at issue here, since I'M THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER.

Got that? I am in possession of a video, of me, shot by a friend, copied to a piece of physical media given to me as a gift. In the video, I am speaking words written by me, and for which I am the clear holder of the copyright. I am working with said video on a machine I own. Every modern legal judgment concerning copyright, from the Berne Convention to the Betamax case, is on my side. AND I CAN'T MAKE A COPY DIRECTLY FROM THE DEVICE. This is because copyright laws do not exist to defend the moral rights of copyright holders -- they exist to help enforce artificial scarcity.

Copyright holders in my position, who want to use Creative Commons licensing to share material, are treated as pathological cases, because we're not behaving in the extortionate manner that current regulations are designed to protect.

I've gotten the copy another way, and the transcript will go up, but this is the state of the world, circa 2005: I can be prevented from copying my own words from my own devices, precisely because I want to share them freely, a use the law is perfectly prepared to regard as irrelevant.

Clay Shirky March 31, 2005
BOING BOING
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/31/shirky_stupid_c_laws.html

“Your new legislation would further, and unnecessarily, empower these corporations. Specifically the "anti-circumvention" provisions in the proposed legislation would treat every Canadian as a criminal in order to control those few Canadians who might actually be crooks. These provisions call for laws that would criminalize the writing of software and even the possession of software tools that have many legitimate uses. But because these tools "might" be used to pirate a song this law calls for the RCMP to throw you in jail just for owning the tool, not for pirating the song. It's like a law that made owning screwdrivers illegal because they can be used to commit crimes such as break and enter, or robbery.

The ironic part of this effort by the world's music publishers for this flawed legislation to combat the pirating of copyrighted songs, is that despite all the hype of Napster and Gnutella creating a generation of Canadians who do not respect the musicians copyrights, the sales of copyrighted CD's are at all-time highs. The simple fact is that the average Canadian is honest and law-abiding. We don't need new laws like this proposed anti-circumvention rule to protect multi-national publishers from their Canadian customers. This transfer of power to the multinational publishing and technology firms, at the cost of rights currently held by all Canadians, is designed to solve a nonexistent problem.

My primary concern is these anti-circumvention rules will pose a serious threat to Canadian entrepreneurs. These rules will enable the global publishers to stop not just criminals from stealing their copyrighted intellectual property, but will enable them to stop competitors from offering alternative solutions to the marketplace.”

Bob Young
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/incrp-prda.nsf/en/rp00416e.html

Open Letter to Darl McBride of SCO from Bob Young

To the Editor,

I've kept out of this debate as I no longer work at Red Hat and wanted to give Matthew Szulik and the Red Hat team complete control over Red Hat's communications with the press.

But three years have passed since I worked at Red Hat. Lulu.com is where I'm spending my time and energies, now I figure I can and should speak up. Lulu is attempting to create a marketplace for digital content. Its goal is nothing less than to enable authors to decide for themselves how to edit, market, and grant rights to others over the use of their works (copyright).

On the off-chance that anyone is taking Darl McBride's campaign seriously I can no longer sit idly by, as to do so could some day restrict the users of Lulu.com from choosing the copyright terms and conditions that most suit the needs of the projects they are trying to advance.

Bob Young, December 7, 2003
http://people.lulu.com/blogs/view.php?blog_id=256

Content Creator’s Bill of Rights

1. Publishing is free.
2. The creator controls his own work.
3. The creator chooses whether to reserve all rights or some rights associated with his content.
4. Distribution is not exclusive.
5. The creator sets the price for his content and chooses the amount he makes on each sale (royalty).
6. The creator shall have the option to give away his content for free.
7. The creator has the right to know what and how many books, songs, or images he has sold—as well as the amount of royalties earned—instantly.
8. The creator controls the production process. Editing, producing, designing, proofreading—important parts of publishing—are the responsibility of the creator. These services can be purchased, or not.
9. Modifying content is free and instant.
10. Un-publishing is free and instant.

Lulu is a tool for creators. It's also a business, to be sure. Lulu's commission on the sale of content through its site is 20%. But we are not in business to own anyone else's intellectual property. We're not in business to control how or where creators or publishers sell their intellectual property. Lulu exists to provide options and to help make sure that the flow of knowledge into the world remains a roar and not a trickle. In the long run we're all better off that way.

Bob Young, December 10, 2003
people.lulu.com/blogs/view_post.php?post_id=519