COPYLEFT and the creative commons
Copyright, Copyleft, Copywrong just what are we talking about? The answer is CONTENT.
WHAT IS CONTENT?
Content is just about anything that isn't executable. Content can then be used in an infinity of ways, restricted only by the imagination of the user. One of the most significant uses may be supporting instruction and helping people learn.
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE
What is Creative Commons?
- Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0
Lawrence Lessig's (founder of the creative commons) brilliant talk about copyright and what needs to be changed and why. WHO OWNS CONTENT? Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor and cyberspace theorist, is well-known for challenging traditional notions of copyright. A 20-minute video of a recent speech given by Mr. Lessig is making the rounds on some popular blogs. The
speech, "Who Owns Culture?," provides a brief look at how new technologies, starting with the player piano, have challenged traditional models of how copyrighted materials are distributed and how artists are paid. Mr. Lessig says that we're now in a "remix culture" where people find creative ways to meld existing creative works to make something completely new. He argues that copyright laws need to be reformed to allow such digital creativity to thrive. - Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that provides content - text, books, educational material, etc. - that is free to share or build upon.
- Creative Commons also provides webspace and bandwidth for creative work in digital format - free of charge and in perpetuity.
- Creative Commons will make available flexible, customizable intellectual-property licenses that artists, writers, programmers and others can obtain free of charge to legally define what constitutes acceptable uses of their work. The new forms of licenses will provide an alternative to traditional copyrights by establishing a useful middle ground between full copyright control and the unprotected public domain.
Read More http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/02/11/creatcom.DTL - OER Commons (Open Educational Resources) -- http://www.oercommons.org/
- "Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution," "a general roadmap of some of the legal issues specific to podcasting." The guide covers copyright, publicity rights, and trademark issues related to content that you acquire or create. Information is also provided on licensing your podcast.
- Creative Types: A Lot in Common Why is this important? Copyright applies fully and automatically to any work - a photograph, a song, a web page, an article, any form of expression - the moment it is created. This means that if you want to copy and re-use a creative work you find online, you usually have to ask the author's permission. This "all rights reserved" protection is good thing for many authors and artists. But what about those who want you to use their work freely without permission -- but on certain conditions? This is where the you can find out about the
- Creative Commons License a collection of free, machine-readable licenses.The idea is to give copyright holders another way to get the word out that their works are free for copying and other uses under specific conditions. Information Wants To Be Free but you must respect the rights they have reserved which the common license shows, then you can use the work without having to contact them and ask. You might even find work in the public domain and free for any use with no rights reserved.
- Also find out about The Open Audio License (OAL)
FREE SOFTWARE GNU PUBLIC LICENSE
FREE PUBLIC RESOURCES
FREE
- MIT OPEN COURSEWARE MASTER LIST OF CLASSES YOU CAN TAKE The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced plans to make the materials for nearly all of its courses freely available on the Internet over the next ten year. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology FACT SHEET announced plans to make the materials for nearly all of its courses freely available on the Internet over the next ten years. 2,000 courses across MIT's entire curriculum - from architecture to engineering to management and the arts - will have their lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists and assignments published online; credits will not be offered, however. Tuition free MIT Tuition-free MIT an exploration of some ideas by Philip Greenspun
- FREE SOURCE WARE
- OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS
examples: Public Library of Science The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. The MIT Press to participate in the open access initiative. - The Internet Archive
- The Internet Archive Open Source Audio
- Public Domain Music
A reference site to help identify public domain songs and public domain music . . . royalty free music you can use anywhere and any way you choose . . . performance, sing-along, film, video, advertising, business, or personal. - OpenDOAR Search Repository Contents
OpenDOAR is pleased to present a trial search service for the full-text of material held in open access repositories listed in the Directory. OpenDOAR already provides a global Directory of freely available open access repositories that hold research material.
OPEN SOURCE:
Freedom and community are the moral goals of software freedom.
FREELY SHARING YOUR SOFTWARE
OPEN SOURCE TOOLS
RICHARD STALLMAN started the Free software movement started in 1983.
The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) offers free public patent library database of patents donated to the open source community. The library is a catalogue of patents whose owners have agreed not to exert any control over the technologies as long as they are used to improve the open source community. The OSDL offers a clearinghouse for information about patents, where they came from, what they do, and under what conditions they can be used. The site should free open source developers from much of the uncertainty they have when using patented technologies in their development efforts.
- Open-source movements like the Free Software Foundation's General Public License inspired the Creative Commons' model.
- Richard Stallman was talking up his "copyleft" idea, which he called "a mirror image" of copyright.
- The Free Software Foundation
- CopyLeft.net is a sort-of-profit company that supports free and open source software by donating a large portion of each sale to various organizations that develop or support the development of free software.
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Linus Torvalds wrote the GNU/Linux operating system code.
- Larry Lessig Copyright Tutorial - Free Culture 7/24/2003
Critically important ideas regarding intellectual property. A simple, and clearly presented explanation of the consequences of recently-passed, overly repressive, copyright related laws. At Issue: Does the 5% decline in the entertainment industry justify the control by political interests that are controlling the creativity and innovation that has always been built on the past? - Eric Raymond Advocate "Open-Source Software" About Linux - Open source, and the Creative Common allows many gradations between openness and control
Home Page esr@thyrsus.com>
AKA <esr @ snark.thyrsus.com>Other WritingOpen Source Initiative
(OSI) is a non-profit corporation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community, specifically through the OSI Certified Open Source Software certification mark and program. We also make copies of approved open source licenses. The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves.The Open Source movement is grounded in the computer industry. If the "free" model of intellectual property has more advantages than the proprietary model it will change all the rules for everything from publishing to you name it."Now that Unisys is shaking down websites that use GIFs for a $5000 license fee, you should burn all your GIFs too."
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Get your Free Stuff - About Gnutella - open source
- Copyright, Congress, Due Diligence, and Coase by Frank Forman
INTERNET COPYRIGHT SOFTWARE LICENSES CONTRACTS
Just what is GPL - A Contract? A Copyright? Both?
Software licenses are generally considered to be contracts. A copyright, meanwhile, is not a contract. Instead, it avails the creator of intellectual property of the protection of copyright law, which is limited to the life of the author plus 70 years.
ABOUT UCITA
UCITA Background information on is available at the ALA Washington Office website. If you have any questions, concerns or would like further information on UCITA, contact Miriam Nisbet UCITA, the ``Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act,'' is the technology industry's version of Dracula. It's designed to suck money from overmatched consumers, and it keeps emerging from the coffin.
JOIN AFFECT, Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions, is a broad-based national coalition of industry leaders, libraries and consumer organizations dedicated to educating the public and policy makers about the dangers of UCITA, the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act
Sun Microsystems announced plans for an open-source, royalty-free digital rights management (DRM) standard, called the Open Media Commons, to address the increasing number of incompatible download schemes. Through the open-source Common Development and Distribution License, Sun is releasing the code from its Project DReaM (DRM/everywhere available) program. The company is encouraging digital rights holders and device makers to join it in this initiative. There are also other companies and groups making similar efforts.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/22/sun_open_source_drm/
PROTECT YOUR FAIR USE RIGHTS
"Sampling is not new. Stravinsky himself once said: "A good composer does not imitate; he steals."
Bach, Bartok and Dvorak all cribbed from anonymous folk tunes. Key doctrines in copyright law is on their side: the concepts of "fair use" and "transformative use."
New York-based intellectual property lawyer Monica Youn clarifies it this way: "Fair use is a statutory defense to copyright infringement, which defends use of a copyrighted work 'for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.' The courts look at 4 factors in determining whether a use is a fair one:
1) the purpose and character of the use (usually this focuses on whether the use is commercial or nonprofit/educational)
2) the nature of the copyrighted work
3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used (this test focuses on whether the user has taken the 'heart' of the material)
4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work (THE most important factor. If the holder can prove that the user is eating into her market share, the holder wins)" In "transformative use," the greater the degree of transformation, the greater the likelihood that the use is fair.
The doctrine of fair use gives certain shelter to artists for when they feel that getting permission from another artist (or record label) might stand in the way of their own creative endeavors-after all, most artists aren't too keen on having their work parodied or otherwise squeezed through a cultural wringer. Fair use clearly does not protect artists who want to completely rely on another person's work-product. Nor does it give protection to people who want to pirate, forge, or counterfeit the property of others. And, importantly, fair use is applicable only to U.S. copyright law.
Think Prohibition: would you have stopped drinking or making your own beer because the state made it illegal, or would you have fought against a stupid law.
RIAA subpoenas a prelude to "Shock & Awe": The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is preparing to made good on its threat to sue those who illegally distribute music over the Internet. Last week the association issued subpoenas to Verizon Communications, Earthlink,
http://www.nypost.com/business/795.htm and DePaul http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-depaul17.html and Loyola universities <http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6311463.htm> , forcing them to reveal the identities of suspected file-swappers.
RIAA <http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=582&ncid=582&e=
2&u=/nm/20030716/wr_nm/media_riaa_dc> . "Filing information subpoenas is exactly what we said we'd do a couple of weeks ago when we announced that we were gathering evidence to file lawsuits."
Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/14/tech/main563234.shtml> . "Does anyone think more lawsuits are going to be the answer? Today they have declared war on the American consumer."
RIAA's Congress persons John Conyers and Howard Berman, the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003 <http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/20030716_conyer-berman.php> , or ACCOPS, would make uploading a copyrighted file to a peer-to-peer network a felony
<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=582&ncid=582&e=
3&u=/nm/20030716/wr_nm/congress_internet_dc> punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each uploaded file.
Harvard Crimson The DMCA uses four criteria to decide whether copyrighted material can be made freely available. These include the purpose of the infringement, the nature of the material, the amount of material used and the potential effect on the documents' market. You can make a case against claims of copyright infringement if you can show the documents were used in an academic and not a commercial manner, they were factual-not creative-works, did not damage the company market value because the company was never going to sell the thing in the first place.
US judge strikes down bootleg law
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/music/3689580.stm
Judge Harold Baer Jr, sitting in New York, dismissed charges against a Manhattan-based record dealer which had been brought under the law. He struck down a law which bans the sale of bootleg recordings of live music in the United States. The law could not stand because it placed no time limit on the ban - unlike the limits placed on books or recorded music releases. Judge Baer said US law unfairly granted "seemingly perpetual protection" to the original performances. US law defines bootlegs as being recordings of the original performances, as opposed to copies of already released music, such as live albums, which are dealt with under piracy legislation.
MANAGING CONTENT AND MAKE MONEY
ShareSniffer peer-to-peer file sharing
Article The site encourages netizens to rummage through strangers' music files, digital movies, Microsoft Word documents and spreadsheets on"random, unprotected hard drives on the Internet.Company motto "because it's there".
Flycode and OpenCola are developing file sharing programs.
BearShare built around Gnutella, Entropia, Popular Power and United Devices are building distributed computing services, which propose to use thousands of Internet-connected computers to process large computational problems.
Morpheus-KaZaA
KaZaA is a media community, where millions community members can share their media files audio, video, images and documents - with each other. You can search for and download media files with any of three products - KaZaA.com, KaZaA Media Desktop and the new KaZaA Winamp Plug-in. One of the main differences between KaZaA and other peer-to-peer networks is that KaZaA is built on standardised p2p technology from FastTrack.
Limewire - Pays the artist!!
A product of Lime Wire, LLC, LimeWire is compatible with the Gnutella file-sharing protocol and can connect with anyone else running Gnutella-compatible software.
RIAA sues LimeWire people using it seeking $150,000 in compensation for every song distributed without permission.
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Gnutella Porn Surfers Exposed 5/3/00
Zeropaid.com (music portal Web site) wants to keep Gnutella (file-sharing program) clean by posting a Wall of Shame which contains the IP addresses of those who attempt to download porn files. -
Download Gnutella - Most people are using it to download music.
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Knowbuddy's Gnutella FAQ. Find the author on EFnet IRC in #gnutelladev, or email him.
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ZDNet Music: Beginner's Guide to Using Gnutella - step-by-step guide for getting connected, searching, and downloading files.
Ian Clarke, a 23-year-old Irish programmer,
is finishing a program that he says will make it impossible to control the traffic in any kind of digital information -- whether it is music, video, text or software. His program, known as Freenet, is intended to make it possible to acquire or exchange such material anonymously while frustrating any attempt to remove the information from the Internet or determine its source. Mr. Clarke and his group of programmers have deliberately set themselves on a collision course with the world's copyright laws. They express the hope that the clash over copyright enforcement in cyberspace will produce a world in which all information is freely shared. In any case, the new programs could change the basic terms of the discussion about intellectual property.
Cryptobox
Aimed more at keeping information and communications out of corporate hands rather than away from prying governments. "The threat comes from companies," lead Cryptobox developer Nick Bobic wrote in an e-mail interview. "Everyone's Web browsing habits will be under a microscope, and all of that information could end up for sale."
FIGHTING P2P
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Lawsuit makes it illegal to discuss or provide technology that might be used to bypass industry controls limiting how consumers can use music they have purchased. Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) Foundation threatened litigation against Felten, his research team, and the relevant universities and conference organizers.
The RIAAs Statistics Dont Add Up, posted on his Web site (azoz.com). George Ziemann makes two key assertions: 1) that the labels raised CD prices during a down economy, and 2) that they slashed the number of new releases by almost 25% during the past three years. He says that these factors, and not downloading, are responsible for sluggish CD sales.
Courtney Love gave an excellent unedited speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference, given in New York on May 16, 2000 on the creative math that the record companies do with regards to the artists. 6 pages long - good read. takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs." By Courtney Love June 14, 2000
Sony BMG - Do you trust the business sense of people who PERPETRATED the rootkit debacle? FIRST they diverged from the CD standard. Not realizing that standardization insured the success of the format. Not looking back at corporate history and seeing that the non-standard Betamax ultimately failed. THEN, they altered operating systems. Which is akin to identity theft in the world of tech. And what's worse, they had no idea they were doing this. They just trusted their tech partner in the U.K. It's not the public that's ripping off the labels, it's the labels that are ripping off the public. After the class action suit Andy Lack and Mitch Bainwol need to go to jail. Story ~ Bob Lefsetz
Evil lurks at the top? MD urges screening CEOs for psychopaths A leading expert on psychopaths said the heartbreak, chaos and economic slump caused by corporate corruption could be avoided if prospective CEOs were screened for psychopathy. Saying he was ill at ease with many of North America's top executives who are currently under fire for misleading shareholders and milking hundreds of millions of dollars in company cash, Dr. Robert Hare said corporate North America is likely rife with psychopaths. Hare, whose psychopathic checklist diagnostic tool is used around the world, said ruthless psychopaths who have managed to hide their true nature because of a privileged upbringing can commit their crimes with impunity in the business world.
THEY FIT THE MOULD
While he stressed that many thieves and fraud artists are not psychopaths, Hare said when executives take hundreds of millions of other people's cash "blatantly and with malicious forethought" they fit the psychopathic mould.
MP3 DISCUSSION Roger McGuinn Songwriter
Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee July 11, 2000Statement of Roger McGuinn Songwriter and Musician Formerly with The Byrds on “The Future of Digital Music: Is There an Upside to Downloading?
DeCSS
is a program that cracks the code designed to protect the content on DVDs from being copied -- for either legal or illicit uses, the court case, censorship, issues etc. are all spelled out here - Find Everything!!
Aimster
integrates with your instant messenger service so you can: search the major internet file-sharing services- including AOL FIle Sharing, Gnutella and soon Microsoft Networking - and lets you target hundreds of thousands of files within seconds. And swap any kind of digital file, including video, text and photographs.
The Coalition is committed to "striking an appropriate balance in law and public policy between protecting intellectual property and affording public access to it." More
CYBERSPACE LAW
Publius.net
will be the home to a wide range of anonymity services and is meant to guarantee freedom of speech and anonymity on the Internet while abolishing online censorship.
Freshmeat A leading Linux software and news Web site.
Tux.Org
Incorporated is a nonprofit organization providing resources for the development, support, and education needs of openly developed software.
Slashdot
The leading community Web site for Linux and open source news and resources.
EliteTorrents site shut down by FBI and Homeland Security http://elitetorrents.org/ - 5/05 Source The MPAA has managed to shut down at least five BitTorrent networks through lawsuits and has also sued individuals who use them.
ALSO SEE This 121-page report on "How to secure Software Defined Radios",written to help the FCC decide how to handle software radios, is very slanted toward monopoly-industry viewpoints. The whole focus is on giving the system operator lots of flexibility to do whatever they want, while giving customers, experimenters, competitors, and citizens zero flexibility or opportunity. They managed to suppress the few pages of actual information about the paucity of any actual threat to public safety (see last paragraph of this review).
