What Problems and Benefits Does Creative Commons Licensing Create for Artists - Report Example

What Problems and/or Benefits Does Creative Commons Licensing Create For Artists? Name of Student: Student No: Date: Name of Supervisor: Introduction The importance of creative rights as well as the resources they guard is a significant aspect of modern culture. It therefore behoves us to understand the various avenues through which content can be managed. There is constant interaction online between users and owners of software, movies, music, images and other digital content; many of these materials may be protected by copyright which users may not be aware of, or may be used in ways that are inconsistent with the owners’ desires. What is Intellectual Property? It is difficult to pin down the meaning of intellectual property because it encompasses a vast array of inventions from light bulb to Harry Potter novels to drought resistant plants. It is unique because it results from the creativity and inventiveness of the creators. The right to intellectual property is protected by law in order to promote the growth of innovative thinking that results in inventions and creative works. These works are of benefit to society and it is therefore a symbiotic relationship that assists in creating this advantage to society while giving the creators the means and wherewithal to continue coming up with new things. The rights can belong either to an individual or an entity and is upheld by law. Creative Commons According to creativecommons.org, this is a non-profit outfit that facilitates dissemination and utilisation of creativity and knowledge via legal tools at no cost. They provide a copyright license to the public which gives them permission to utilise the creative works of the licensee under conditions specified by the same. This licence makes it possible for the author to alter some of the rights reserved. The creative commons does not replace copyright but works alongside it to enable the author to make alterations to the rights reserved as they require. Advantages of Creative Commons The use of creative commons licenses is patchy. This is because there are various views on the licensing held by different users. Some benefits that can be defined from use of creative commons licensing include: Benefits in terms of Search Engines; while having a creative commons license may not increase one’s search rank on Google, it does guarantee that as an artist, one will be featured on the sites that are CC- oriented such as Google, Flickr, and YouTube. This means that there is a higher possibility of exposure to new visitors. Higher Clarity of Copyright; CC licenses are more clearly explained than other copyright vehicles. This means that users are very clear on what exactly they can or cannot do with licensed content. This reduces the possibility of the artist experiencing copyright infringement. The precise restrictions of the license is still confusing in some cases which may cause some aggravation to the end users but ultimately, they are more likely to follow the terms of use because they are clearer. Increased Likelihood of being Quoted; it is permitted by fair use for users to quote content and the broad fair use exemptions are difficult to predict and utilise therefore users may not be comfortable quoting content without citing source or obtaining permission. Once one has a CC license, this encourages reuse of content and increases the likelihood of being re-used by interested parties. Reduced cases of Infringement; as the holder of copyright, it is your choice to decide who to deal with and who not to deal with; but coming up with arbitrary rules for usage may ultimately be tedious to the copyright owner. A CC license covers those who infringe the copyright work inadvertently or commit a minor misdemeanour, leaving the owner to deal with more serious cases of plagiarism or commercial use of the material. This means less time is wasted on legal manoeuvres and more time in creativity. An Actual License; the internet is mainly governed by the concept of implied licenses where, when no actual license exists for web content and therefore the work is assumed to have an implied license. This can be illustrated by the fact that Google is allowed to index and cache web content following a court ruling that stated that uploading content to the web gives Google an implied license to do so. Although having any sort of license is a positive, an implied license leaves a great deal to chance. This license however, can be overruled by an actual license which makes the terms of use of your content quite clear. The CC license can be obtained at no cost to the subscriber, is written by lawyers, and has been tested in international courts of law. Therefore when one does not have the wherewithal to retain a lawyer to write one’s own license, then the CC becomes a viable, free alternative (Bailey, 2009). The music group Radiohead released a free album followed a few months later with a physical. This immediately became a best seller (Leeds, 2008). Nine-Inch Nails created a social networking vehicle for their music and provided free music for remixing and reuse known as remix.nin.com. Record companies began signing artists to multiple rights deals in order to benefit from incidental sales such as t-shirts and concert sales to deal with falling numbers of albums sold and rise in digital sales. Thus the giving away of free content resulted in increased exposure leading to other avenues of revenue opening up. The two artists above showed that increased accessibility of one’s creative work is beneficial to the artist. Cc licensing gives a simple way to make this happen, at no cost. Disadvantages of Creative Commons As has been seen, creative commons licenses have their uses, however, that does not mean that there is no downside. Some disadvantage of creative commons includes: This licence is not suitable for creative content which the artist means to profit from commercially, either at present or at some future date. The artist cannot control who will utilise their work once they release it, apart from the provisions in the terms of use. The licenses cannot be revoked. Those who are against the Creative Commons licensing believe that the system is too lenient, allowing the exploitation of creative content by whomever may want to. Furthermore, the creative commons rights claim to be a departure from copyright by stating that they offer ‘some rights reserved as compared to the copyright ‘all rights reserved’. This statement is misleading because it simply borrows from the copyright system by which citizens can select which rights they retain. There are six CC licenses available according to the website but these licenses are in some cases mutually exclusive. Thus should an artist inadvertently mix two licenses that cancel each other out, it may make it impossible for them to share their work. The presence of Creative Commons can lead to misuse of genuine copyright holders’ licenses by exploitative users. This can be done by attributing a CC license to the copyrighted work and re-using it. Enforcement actually relies on the online community and there is a dearth of checks and balances. The provision of six differing types of licenses by Creative Commons still does not make provision for different types of artistic works. This can be illustrated by the case of documentary filmmakers who have extremely divergent requirements than a software designer or a professor of law. Those wishing to use the content would also have to ascertain that the type of use they wish to put it to is covered by the license or whether they have to get additional permission (Kiruba, 2011). Discussion Creative Commons was created in 2001 in order that intellectual content owners might have the option of declaring their content as ‘some rights reserved’ instead of all rights reserved as is found in copyright. There are specific rights given and these rights are decided by the creator. This could be illustrated by a musician deciding to give permission for her works to be modified or used provided that it is not for commercial purposes; or they could allow commercial use, but no modification. The process works by having the author visit the Creative Commons Website before posting the content online and clicking on ‘publish’. This action returns four options to the user; The first asks the user to give a yes or no response to the question of whether they wish to allow their work to be commercially used. The second makes proviso for ‘yes’; ‘yes as long as others share alike’; and ‘no’ to the question of modification of their content. The third option is selection of jurisdiction where the license applies. The fourth option ascertains the format under which the content has been created i.e. text, image, interactive, audio, video, or other. The user then clicks on a license that covers their provisos. The question then arises, how legal is all this and is the artist protected? The Creative Commons project was jump-started by students and fellows of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society of the Harvard Law School. The board is chaired and peopled by various prominent law professors and practitioners. The assumption therefore is that the legal provisos have been thoroughly researched and covered by them. Mia Garlick who is the General Counsel for Creative Commons was asked whether they have been upheld in a court of law, and she responded by stating that as far as their knowledge goes, there is no case of Creative Commons licenses that has ever featured in a court case. All disputes have been resolved out of court. However, in cases relating to public law such as Netfilter v. Sitecom, the General Public license was held to be valid and therefore there should be no question of validity simply because the Creative Commons is a public license (personal communication, January 9, 2006) This means that the CC license is not without precedence for providing a lawful avenue for content creators to safeguard their work. This is the major cause of disagreement for any creator, composer or artist; the need to know that their works can only be used with their express prior permission and control. As far as providing the content free for use, this is indeed up to the artist and nobody can oblige them to do it against their will. The question which then arises is whether the copyright owners considers that the benefits that would accrue from providing his works free for use outweigh the potential loss of revenue that would result. The case for providing a taste or sample what can the artist provides has been made especially in the case of music. Musicians such as Nine Inch Nails who provide their music free for download on their site, remix.nin.com have benefited through providing users with a taste of what their music sounds like, leading to growth in full album sales. This argument however may not work for other types of artists whose works cannot be sampled in pieces. Authors who publish excerpts of their books may find that they peak interest in the final product even before it is published. The downside becomes if the audience is not receptive to the sampled music, they may lose any enthusiasm they initially had to purchase the final product. Nevertheless, Creative Commons is a growing trend that is used widely even in conventional institutions such as MIT which began a OpenCourseWare inititative in 2001 which was projected to have all MIT courses free and online by 2007. Rice Universtiy also offers over 110 free courses and over two thousand modules through the Connexions project. It is possible for student to access music lessons from Berklee College of Music via Berklee Shares project. They are all licensed under Creative Commons (Pitler, 2006). This illustrates the importance of this initiative because it allows the proliferation through study of works and elements that may otherwise only have been available to a small group of people. The purpose of creation is to share with as wide an audience as possible and without doubt the Creative Commons license makes this possible. It therefore benefits not only the users of the information, but it exposes the creator to a wider audience he or she may not otherwise have had. As record companies have seen as is illustrated by the proliferation of multiple rights signings; exposure leads to popularity which leads to tremendous future opportunities to benefit financially. Conclusion Benjamin Toth (2005), who is a critic of Creative Commons, is of the opinion that they there is something ‘fishy’ about them because they claim to offer an alternative to the classic copyright but neglect to give creators full information. This is illustrated according to him by the ‘all rights reserved’ vs. ‘some rights reserved’ argument where he says that the statement is misleading. This is because classic copyright already offers the option of some rights reserved to the creator, and it is up to them to choose. Thus the argument seems to be that the Creative Commons law is misleading and designed to hoodwink copyright owners. When considering whether Creative Commons is the right option for the artist, there are many reasons to take it up, and an equal number of reasons why the artist would not take them up. Each artist has to weigh both options and decide whether or not the decision is right for them. When looking at the benefits, it can be said that there are those that are not very well disseminated. The stated mission of Creative Commons is to give authors, scientists, educators, and artists the free tools that allow them to label their creative works and yet give them what liberty they desire. The question comes in as to how the artist might benefit from this liberty. That is the question that this essay has attempted to address. The main benefit of this dissemination of information is exposure. This exposure leads to the artist’s profile being raised and their notoriety growing which might afford them opportunities they might otherwise have. At the end of the day, Creative Commons creates symbiosis among users and creators. The creators give up the right to get monetary benefit from that particular piece of work in return for the chance to reach more people, become more well known, and in that way, gain a wider audience. For the users, they are able to access creative content without paying for it as long as they cite the source. In many cases, using the CC licence may be an act of philanthropy but that does not mean that the artist derives no benefit, even if it is only an elevation in the public’s opinion of them. In other words, it may ultimately be the best way to make your content work for you, by giving it liberty to disseminate. References Bailey, J. (2009). 5 Lesser-Known Benefits to Creative Commons. The Blog Herald. Retrieved 28-May-12 from: http://www.blogherald.com/2009/01/05/5-lesser-known-benefits-to-creative-commons/ Creative Commons. (nd). About. Retrieved 28-May-12 from http://creativecommons.org/about Leeds, J. (2008). Radiohead Finds Sales, Even After Downloads. The New York Times. Retrieved 28-May-12 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/arts/music/10radio.html?_r=1 Kiruba, S. (2011). Criticism and Disadvantages of CC. Retrieved 28-May-12 from: http://www.kiruba.com/copyrightandleft/wiki/index.php?title=Criticism_and_Disadvantages_of_CC&redirect=no Pitler, H. (2006). Creative commons: A new tool for schools. Innovate 2 (5). Retrieved 28-May-12 from: http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=251 Tóth, B. P. (2005). Personal feelings about the Creative Commons licenses. ARTISJUS, Budapest, Hungary Read More