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Creative Commons & Webcomics
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Jun 13, 2005 09:02 AM
from the intentionally-left-blank dept.
from the intentionally-left-blank dept.
xerexes writes "This week Comixpedia is publishing an article written by T Campbell called "Creative Commons and Webcomics" which features a roundtable discussion with comments from Lawrence Lessig, Neeru Paharia, Mia Garlick, JD Frazer and Cory Doctorow. Traditional copyright faces webcomics with an uncomfortable choice. Its restrictions, properly enforced, would mean a virtual end to crossovers and homages, fan art, fan fiction, and many other staples that make the webcomic a more entertaining creation and foster artistic growth. A total lack of copyright, however, leaves unscrupulous readers free to "bootleg" subscription sites, program tools to deprive comics of advertising revenue, and even profit from others' labor without permission. The Creative Commons license presents a possible solution. It lets copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others, through a variety of licensing and contract schemes, which may include dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. "
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Not about Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as trademark law is concerned, you either defend it or lose it. Fan art can exist in this realm, as it does with Lucas' properties, but Creative Commons isn't some panacea for all that ails these artists.
If they want control whilst allowing variations, they need to first pursue trademark protection.
Re:Not about Copyright (Score:2)
Re:Not about Copyright (Score:3, Informative)
A proper trademark license requires attention to quality control standards, i.e. the licensor can dictate how the mark is used, can require the licensee to provide examples and submit to spot checks, and can be terminated if used wrongly. In practice, they should be for a limited term of years, and should be valid contracts, which requires consideration, etc.
Lucas likely has good trademark licenses with Kenner (or whoever th
Re:Not about Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there a net benefit to 'science and the useful arts' from trademark protection on Captain Jean-Luc Picard (TM)? Does it prevent unwary consumers being ripped off?
Parent
Why you should trademark characters and such (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't think so? In that case, I have an "official" Captain Jean-Luc Picard (TM) "Make it so!" Talking Toilet Bowl seat that I want to sell you. It programmed to offer such encouragement as:
"Make it so!"
"Tea, Earl Grey, Hot!"
"Engage!"
"These are not the droids we're looking for!
Yours for only four easy payments of 29.95!
Re:Why you should trademark characters and such (Score:3, Insightful)
Allow me to clarify, then.
First, the character is mine, all mine. I invented him (a detective, in my case) and no one else contributed. I have a past, personality and future all worked out for him. Name too.
If I do not protect him, you or someone else can create alternate storylines fo
It's about a lot more than copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Would a world without professionally produced entertainment be as bad as a world in which you need approval from some central authority every time you access a hard drive or move bytes from one piece of equipment to another? I can live a pretty full life without Madonna, Spiderman or Star Wars. I can't live nearly such a full life if every action I perform electronically is monitored, and everything I personally create and distribute must be checked for possible infringement or I risk losing my house in a lawsuit.
Preservation of copyright in the modern world creates these consequences. Like the War On Drugs, which currently accounts for 65% of our prison system, the War On Infringement will entail greater and greater enforcement costs. I don't want to pay those costs to preserve an industry that contributes only a few percent to the economy. I also don't want to further entrench the modern notion that ideas and property are one and the same, or that rights and property are one and the same. Given a choice between preserving the profitability of entertainment for the few people who earn a living that way, and perserving the personal freedoms that the other 99.999% of the population will lose -- and it IS a binary choice -- give me the latter.
Parent
As an example of how well things can work... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02242005.shtml [somethingpositive.net]
http://www.checkerboardnightmare.com/d/20050224.ht ml [checkerboa...htmare.com]
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/fanart/queenofwan ds.html [irregularwebcomic.net]
Of course, this being Slashdot, five people have probably already posted this by now...
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
You can already just give anyone you want permission to use your work... why would giving someone permission to use your characters in a crossover have anything to do with someone bootlegging your site? That makes no sense to me.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Because of that "IANAL" thing - true of most people with web content. And just putting a message like "You can copy my stuff within reason" is pretty much equivalent to "Help yourself to everything" if you ever want to take it to a courtroom.
The CC licenses, on the other hand, ARE written by lawyers. So they say exactly what you want them to say, and when you say "You can do this, but not that" you know that you're not leaving a dozen loopholes to be exploited.
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Licenses are simply a way to diseminate the different rights granted by copyrights. The thing is, though, that our new (post-1972) copyright law has an enumerated list of granted rights, any of which may be given or reserved by choice of the creator. Licenses simply are a legal mix of flexibility and technicality that covers the disemination of those rights in a set fashion.
So, if I were a webcomic author, I can say
Money, money, money (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe all copywritten works should go to the public domain after 20 years. Period. That should be plenty of time to make money off your work. And if you don't make any money, then it should pass to the public domain so someone else can take it and maybe make some money off of it. The majority of artists/musicians/filmakers/writers never get rich from their work. (Like me!!!) I would imagine that in the public domain, you might have another chance to get some recognition for your art. If you didn't make any money, letting somebody else alter it and re-package it could help you receive some recognition and lead to some $$$ for your other works. Maybe... what do I know... I'm a peasant.
Re:Money, money, money (Score:4, Informative)
How about 14 years with the option to renew for another 14? You know, how it was orginally way back in 1790.
Since we're on that note anyway, Copyright Timeline [cni.org]
Parent
Legality bites (Score:3, Insightful)
If you didn't read the article and are a comic or other artist, it's worth a read through!
Fair use, Fan Art and the plague of my daily life (Score:4, Informative)
This reminds me a lot of a problem my company is facing. One of partner sites that uses our free video hosting software http://video.freevideoblog.com/ [freevideoblog.com] gets a lot of "fan" dedications to popular TV shows like Buffy the Vampire slayer or Anime music videos set to popular songs. It's damn good work, and IMOHO only creates more awareness and popularity to the original work, but because we're paranoid of getting sued by the RIAA and MPAA, we have to delete those videos from the system.
I have to wonder how the Music industry gets around this as often I hear music that "samples" tracks from other artists, or even sound bites from TV and the movies. So I know there is a process in place to take an original work and modify it (And combine it with your own original work) to create your own unique art...but I don't know what it is, or where that shade of gray turns black.
I have to say that in this lawsuit happy time I'm more inclined to ere on the side of caution, but I feel a lot of unique and original work is lost or covered up by folks like myself moderating content off the system.
Anyhow just some idle rambling from my own experience.
-Adam
Re:Fair use, Fan Art and the plague of my daily li (Score:4, Informative)
It's not that bad.
Most people mixing up their own derivative works for fun will share within their circle of friends privately, or via centralized services that haven't grown big enough to care about being legally anal, or via decentralized p2p (which is where I find most of those anime music vids, halo vids, GTA trick vids, CS cheater vids, WoW "hammertime" vids, and whatnot).
Parent
Re:Fair use, Fan Art and the plague of my daily li (Score:3, Informative)
The test of legality used to boil down to something like "does the work stand on its own without the sampled material, and
Prohibiting parody? (Score:2, Interesting)
a bitter ex-fan decides to take the strips and replace the writing with, say, something you might find in Penthouse Forum. Not to say that there isn't a market for that kind of thing, just that UserFriendly has always been PG-rated for very specific reasons. I also don't appreciate someone else taking years of my own sweat and tears and in minutes turning it into something of which I don't particularly approve.
Could someone with more legal knowledge than me clear something
Re:Prohibiting parody? (Score:3, Insightful)
My understanding is that to be parody, it would have to be "poking fun" at the original material. Just "changing the words" constitutes a derivative work and that falls under copyright. (That distinction is what led the folks who thought they owned "This Land" to threaten legal action against JibJab [jibjab.com]. What go
I knew it! (Score:2)
Bull-pucky. (Score:5, Insightful)
With traditional copyright, you can still authorize people to do all of the things mentioned. Sometimes, I think the only reason there is a movement to create something new is because people don't understand the current standard.
Re:Bull-pucky. (Score:2)
One of these movements has a future and one of them does not.
Re:Bull-pucky. (Score:2)
Then the point of the exercise is to help the Creative Commons people, not the webcomics creators? Because in terms of helping the webcomics the parent seems right, they manage crossovers and fan art just fine right now under current law.
Speaking of Comics (Score:2, Insightful)
Profit from others' work is bad, eh? (Score:2, Troll)
Doujinshi (Score:3, Insightful)
Doujinshi are illegal comics that are openly tolerated because the legal owners know that the comics actually help the overall market (a fan fiction that keeps people interested, trains aspiring artists, and promotes creative freedom.
Of course, another reason that they flourish, was provided to Lessig by a Japanese buisinessman, who said, "we don't have enough lawyers," to prosecute the cases. If only!
The same issue exists for all artistic endeavors (although music, through sampling, seems to be at the forefront these days). It really is worth considering the dampening effect that these policies have on creativity and innovation.
Been there, done that. (Score:2, Interesting)
Hold on a sec (Score:2)
Now WTF does *that* mean?
You don't have things like Adblock in mind, do you? Let me point out that no one has a RIGHT to advertising revenue. I am quite sure I don't have any obligation, moral or legal, to look at the ads.
Re:Hold on a sec (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, I don't think this will fly. At all.
Under this theory, for example, I would be prohibited from doing anything destructive with a book -- e.g. tearing out some pages. This theory would immediately make the fast-forward button on VCRs/DVD players illegal. I guess it would make the mute button on the TV remotes illegal as well.
In fact, given the recent law explicitly giving permission to non-copyright-holders to modify and redistribute movies (primarily to take out cursing/sex/violence) -- I estimate the chances of this theory making it past the appeals court at zero.
Publishers might make a case for Trespass to Chattels, or Trespass, or Unfair Competition, or some other garbage tort that would boil down to "the courts are obliged to support my dumb-ass business model".
There might be a case against someone who strips ads and redistributes web pages (adless) to other people. Not against the end user, though.
Yes, I understand that you could make it a contract case -- make the user explicitly agree to a contract on the first page of the web site and then you can sue him for breaking that contract. However this has to generate so much ill will and bad publicity that I'd actually want to see someone try it..
Parent
Another "me too" (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:2)
Educational materials (Score:2)
Of course, a lot of this happens in curriculum development anyhow. When you're stuck for ideas, you look at activities and lesson plans others have written and pull what's relevant to adapt to what you're doing - no reason to reinvent the wheel. A
Re:Profit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Profit (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Profit (Score:2)
Re:Profit (Score:4, Insightful)
That's nice. But wanting to devote yourself to some craft, does not automatically qualify you for compensation.
If you want to make money, you have to do something that people are willing to buy.
Parent
Re:Profit (Score:2)
PMSL what a beautifully consise description of your own greed and willingness to steal the fruits of the labour of others.
Re:Profit (Score:2)
Pfft. Can't you come up with anything better? (Score:2)
His situation: The marginal cost of his digitally duplicating one more copy for himself is pretty much nil. Any argument that the recording industry lost money is based on the idea that if he had not been able to score it for free, he would have bought the item, which is the logic that allows the BSA to declare "ONE HOJILLION DOLLARS" in piracy per week.
Your analogy: He can't sell his labor more than once. Labor isn't easily duplicatable. Wh
Re:Profit (Score:4, Informative)
Basically, you should work on your vocabulary; just because something is illegal, or even wrong in your opinion, doesn't mean you should call it stealing. A different word might be more appropriate. Arson isn't stealing, for example. Nor is kidnapping.
As it happens, there is a term that is exactly the right term to use: copyright infringement.
It might not inflame your passion, but it's accurate. I value the latter more, especially since it's difficult to have a rational discussion with someone that's being so emotional that they can't think straight.
Parent
Re:Profit (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't mind me asking, what do you do for a living? If you hate it, then follow your own advice: quit and "don't do it at all." If you love it, then follow your own advice: quit and do the work "for the love of doing it," not for compensation.
The webcomic artists do love what they're doing, And some of them are trying to make a full-time job out of it, with the intent that they can provide better work that way. To my knowledge, none of them are really getting rich. They're just trying to make sure that they make enough to keep giving us our comics.
Parent
Re:Profit (Score:2, Funny)
Henceforth, you shall me known as the Motivation Nazi.
Re:Profit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Profit (Score:3, Insightful)
But moving along, this article wasn't really about compensation beyond the value of their work as much as it is about increasing the value of their work. More specifically, increasing the value of their work through sharing. And finding the right balance between freely sharing work, and protecting it.
And there are plenty of valid reasons to protect it. One of the examples given by the Us
Re:Profit (Score:2, Insightful)
Profit != greed != envy != hatred. Such simplistic thinking removes human free will, human spirit, and accountability from the equation and is a cheap view of
Re:Profit (Score:2)
Society requires lots of people do lots of things they don't actually enjoy to function. To get people to do those things they are paid money. As they want first food and shelter and later things like entertainment they do things they maynot do otherwise for the money.
Sociery wouldn't be better if they didn't. How many people would clean up trash for the love it? Or do a hundred other unpleasant but vital jobs?
Also, if you find something you love, wouldn't you want to be able to make it your job? So you
Re:Does anyone... (Score:2)
I see you don't have a
Re:Does anyone... (Score:2)
Not worried. (Score:2)
Then I think the proportion of Slashdotters adblocking everything and spoiling the commons isn't dangerously high.
--grendel drago