Preserve Culture: Donate to the Internet Archive

05-16-2008 | 11:54 AM EST | 0 Comments

A few weeks ago I mentioned the rise of audio re-mixing websites, and today I want to up the ante by suggesting that you not only contribute your re-mixes but your actual source work as well. Movies, music, text, even web pages, they're all being permanently archived as cultural artifacts, and if you're a digital content creator, you might want to consider making a donation.

The Internet Archive (found at http://www.archive.org), is a 501(c)(3) non-profit on a mission to provide "permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format." Texts, audio, moving images, and web pages can all be donated and cataloged for current and future consumption. From helping to establish a collective memory to tracking the digital evolution of humanity, I think there are many fantastic reasons for content creators to donate their work. But, probably my favorite is best summed up by the Internet Archive itself: "Without cultural artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures."

On a final note, if you find yourself thinking, "That's great, but my work really isn't worth preserving." I'd ask you to think again. I recently donated a collection of songs to the Archive that I had previously created and made available on my personal website. Am I a famous musician whose work has influenced modern music? Of course not. But, part of the point of recording culture for historical purposes means also collecting the efforts and creations of the average members of society. In a broader sense, that's exactly what this larger debate is about — the ability for everyone to create and consume culture, not just a few voices backed by a lot of money, political influence, or intimidating legal practices.

Primer: Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture, and Creative Commons

05-14-2008 | 02:03 PM EST | 0 Comments

It recently dawned on me how, when you've been researching a topic for a while, the cornerstone ideas, people, and works that are so familiar to you may be completely foreign to others. And, as much as I want to make sure I'm providing people with up-to-date information, I also realize that I've got to start setting aside some posts to mention the history behind so many of the current events and news items I normally write about. So today, I'm going to try to give short answers to the questions: Who's Professor Lawrence Lessig? What's Free Culture? And, what are the Creative Commons?

Professor Lawrence Lessig
Because there's already an incredibly in-depth and lengthy bio of Professor Lessig at Wired as well as a short bio on his personal blog, I'm not going to try to re-invent that wheel. I do want to give you a brief overview of Professor Lessig and his contribution to this debate, though.

Lessig (sometimes listed around the Internet as simply "Larry Lessig"), is currently a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and has also served as a professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago. Outside of his academic career, the short bio on his blog explains that he also "serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge." On top of all of that, he's also a distinguished author with four books (Code 2.0, Free Culture, The Future of Ideas, and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace) and many columns for Wired to his credit. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. To be sure, Lessig has been prolific and he and his work have received many accolades and recognition.

Free Culture
Of all his works, Lessig's book, Free Culture, may be his most significant written contribution to this topic. In it, Lessig examines the concept of intellectual property and how it relates to ownership, piracy, and the law in general. He argues that the practice of making law in this area has been turned into a tool for generating wealth rather than freely exchanging ideas. Free Culture also relates Lessig's prosecution of the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, and gives a nod to other free-as-in-freedom pioneers and proponents, like Richard M. Stallman. Ultimately, Free Culture has been a massive inspiration to numerous individuals and groups who believe that the freedom and liberty to participate actively in creating and expressing culture is a requirement for a healthy society.

Interestingly, in a case of practicing what he preaches, Lessig made Free Culture available to the world under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 1.0 Generic license. In essence, this means that others are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work as they see fit so long as Lessig's contribution is attributed. (You may not, however, use Free Culture for commercial purposes.) Free Culture is now available in a wide array of free-of-cost and free-of-restriction formats — most of which are available on the Free Culture / Derivatives/Remixes page — as well as a complete copy of Free Culture available here.

Creative Commons
I think an explanation of Creative Commons, founded by Lessig in 2001, is probably best handled by the description on the organization's website itself:

"We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare 'some rights reserved.'"

Put another way, Creative Commons produces licenses for content creators to apply to their works to let the world know how to interact with the work. For example, a Creative Commons license might tell you whether you're allowed to re-produce or distribute a work. It'll tell you whether you may re-sell the work. It'll even tell you who, if anyone, you have to credit as the creator of the original work. One of the biggest differences between Creative Commons' licenses and other non-restrictive licenses, though, is that Creative Commons tries to offer creators a wide variety of licenses to choose from, ranging from absolutely no restrictions to some restrictions. If it all sounds too confusing, just check out the license choosing tool on the Creative Commons website. There you can answer a simple series of questions that will help you choose and understand the license that's right for you. (While you're there, check out all the other things Creative Commons is up to these days — they do a lot more than just write licenses!)

And, there you have it in a very, very small nutshell. Please keep in mind that thousands of people have written and said countless words over Professor Lessig's work, Free Culture, and the Creative Commons. What I've hopefully created here is a very basic primer for someone who wants to know (in a matter of minutes) the gist of what this person, book, and organization are about. For an in-depth understanding, please visit the links throughout the post.

Feel the Force for Free

05-12-2008 | 02:27 PM EST | 0 Comments

Okay, all you Star Wars fans out there, time is running out! For a very limited time only, you can get your hands on a free, complete copy of Betrayal, (the latest installation in the STAR WARS: LEGACY OF THE FORCE: BETRAYAL series). You've got to hurry, though, because this free dose of the force expires tomorrow, May 13, 2008 at midnight.

In an effort to promote this latest publication, Del Rey Books is making Betrayal available to the public for a limited time in an Adobe PDF, Audiobook, Amazon Kindle e-book, or Sony Reader e-book format. You can get your free copy at http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/starwars/sw_legacy.html. So far as I can tell, there isn't much information about what you are or aren't allowed to do with your free copy aside from the copyright notice on page six of the PDF — which doesn't really say anything specific about any limitations put on the free version. My guess, though, is that this work is simply free in cost but not free in any sort of Creative Commons or GNU Free Documentation License sense.

This seems like a growing trend as experimental business models become the fashion of the day. In the music world, both R.E.M. and Pennywise made their most recent albums free of cost for a limited time. (Interestingly, both albums made it into the top fifteen ranks on the sales charts.) Nine Inch Nails took things one step further when they released their new album, The Slip, free of cost and under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial. Nine Inch Nails actually encourages you to share the album and re-distribute it with friends or however you see fit, and they also encourage re-mixes and the free distribution of those as well. The move, labeled as a "Thank You" to their fans, may not be all that surprising given the $750,000 success of their last "giveaway" and the band's long history with trying out new ways to do business.

Unfortunately, some people still don't get it. Rather than supporting their fanbases and encouraging people to interact with their art on a more meaningful level, some content creators choose to silence their fans — their biggest supporters. Such was the case when BBC Worldwide decided to send Mazzmatazz (a Dr Who fansite posting knitting patterns of Dr Who monsters) a takedown notice. Keep in mind, Mazzmatazz was offering these patterns for free simply as a way for fans to connect with the show they love on another level. I doubt this will cause any fans to quit watching the show, but it certainly is causing some bad press for BBC Worldwide.

I understand that keeping incredibly tight controls over their brand is simply the way many large corporations still operate. But, as many new and dynamic content creators begin to distribute their work and interact with the public in a more open way and as people get used to and begin to demand this type of freedom, institutions like BBC Worldwide may want to consider whether their efforts don't make their brand seem outdated, lacking, and ultimately irrelevant.

More and Less in the Public Domain

05-09-2008 | 11:59 AM EST | 0 Comments

If you read my earlier post about the Creative Commons-co-sponsored public forum, Who Owns This Image? Art, Access, and the Public Domain After Bridgeman v. Corel, you might be interested in learning a little more about public domain works and copyright. In a blog post today, William Patry asks, "When can you commit infringement by copying public domain works?" The answer? In Patry's own words: "When the public domain work is a derivative work and the underlying published work is still under copyright." It turns out, some public domain works are maybe a little less in the public domain than you'd think.

PRO IP Act Passes in the House

05-09-2008 | 11:43 AM EST | 0 Comments

We've just been brought one step closer to an entirely new level of federal enforcement of copyright law. With the potential to see tax dollars flying out the window and infringement lawsuits being filed even when no copyright has been registered, let's hope the Senate shows more restraint in the coming months than the House has.

The PRO IP Act (H.R. 4279) passed in the House with a vote of 410 to 11 (12 representatives did not vote). Three key features of this bill include:

1. Forfeiture in Criminal Proceedings: This means that aside from, say, simply collecting fines, the person or group filing the infringement charges would be able to incite local authorities to collect the alleged infringer's equipment (computer, etc.) that was used in the infringement.
2. IP Enforcement Czar: A Cabinet-level position would be created to report to the President and coordinate enforcement efforts across government.
3. Non-Registration: This includes language that extends the power of criminal enforcement of the copyright even in cases where no copyright has been registered. According to the EFF, this "could be read to open the door to increased prosecution against individuals or innovators as well as large-scale commercial pirates."

I wonder how many individual citizens in this country really think that copyright, digital rights, and even fair use disputes merit such heavy-handed law enforcement tactics?

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