Creative Commons & Intellectual Property

“Creative Commons licenses enable people to easily change their copyright terms from the default of ‘all rights reserved’ to ‘some rights reserved.’” – Creative Commons

After much thought and deliberation, I’ve decided to have my blog attributed under the Creative Commons Licenses.

I suppose I wouldn’t mind sharing my content, as long as I still have the power to set out the conditions in which my content will be used. And that’s just what Creative Commons is all about. It allows the current copyright holder to retain his/her copyright while allowing certain uses of that copyrighted work (Creative Commons).

Perhaps we should hear a little from Lawrence Lessig, a key founding member of Creative Commons.

Missed something there? Take a look at the Creative Commons Comic!

Of course, copyright laws have been around for a long time now, since it was originally established by Thomas Jefferson. Today’s copyright laws however, are somewhat different.

I believe that copyright laws today have become too rigid, as a result of Web 2.0, which has no doubt dramatically changed the way content is distributed. And as Marc Garcelon points out, “Copyright law bears directly on the interests of large media companies…” (Reader p. 290). Use an image without permission, and you could be slapped with a lawsuit, sometimes amounting to millions of dollars because you have just stolen intellectual property. In some cases, those accused of doing so aren’t even aware that they’ve broken the law.

I’m not advocating piracy here. I think that piracy is wrong. But I agree with Lawrence Lessig that these tight regulations are certainly shifting us from a ‘free culture’ to a ‘permission culture’. I admit, I get paranoid sometimes about taking images from the Web, even if I don’t use them for commercial reasons, because I’ve read so many stories about people getting sued (though this usually involves downloading music and movies illegally) and I really don’t wanna be another scapegoat. But let’s use my header as an example. I certainly don’t own those images and I think this fact is obvious to my visitors, but I’m still using them anyway on my blog page. It’s not for commercial gains and I obviously don’t get anything out of it, except the joy of sharing these great cover arts by great artists with other people. I even think it’s kinda like I’m promoting them in a way. But does this use fall under copyright infringement? (Hmmm I’m getting a little worried…)

See. This is what media conglomerates and their iron copyright laws do to us. They intimidate and turn everyone of us into potential criminals.

This is what Creative Commons is against. Again, it has nothing to do with piracy.

“The goal of Creative Commons was to recover the Jeffersonian conceptions of copyright as a limited monopoly in order to ‘rebalance’ copyright law in terms of maximum openness to creative and scientific work, not to prevent commercial restrictions on such work entirely by opposing the very idea of copyright.” – Marc Garcelon in An Information Commons? Creative Commons and Public Access to Cultural Creations (Reader p. 293)

As I mentioned earlier, I will be using a Creative Commons license because I believe that the current copyright laws stifle creativity and take away a lot little bit of our freedom. But at the same time, I understand that they are necessary. For now, Creative Commons seems to be the answer to the copyright/left conflict. But is this only because there are no other solutions? Because while I think Creative Commons is great because it gives people the option of choosing what they wish to do with their copyrights, there are obviously still limitations to it.

I think in a way, it was easier for me to make a decision as to whether or not I would license my blog under Creative Commons because I’m not writing as a profession. I blog under no obligations. This is something I’m doing because I want to. There are no risks involved and my blog is not my source of livelihood. I mean, if I were say, a professional blogger, my decision might’ve been different because I know that it would probably have a bigger impact on me financially. It’s not that money is all I care about. No. But as Armin Medosch argues, “CC does not pay attention at all to the issue of an economic model for supporting cultural production” (Reader p. 315). People who create culture professionally, be it art, music, movies, writings, all have to live off something. Okay there might be some who are so in love with what they do that they’d share whatever they produced for free. But realistically, money is an incentive and helps the culture industry survive.

Anyway, I don’t mind sharing my reviews and photos which I’ve put up here with other people, because as the saying goes, “sharing is caring.” But I’m not gonna get carried away and romanticize Creative Commons because I can’t be too sure if it will succeed in doing what it’s supposed to or not, even though deep down I really want it to because I really do think it’s a step in the right direction. But I’m keeping in mind that there may be complicated legal matters surrounding Creative Commons that I might still be unaware of, so that’s why I’ve chosen the license which is the ‘most restrictive’, because I wanna remain cautious at the same time. I won’t know for sure if people are gonna follow the conditions I’ve set out anyway.

I suppose with Creative Commons as with copyright, there’s a need to rely a little on the integrity of the people out there.

Advertisement