Week 12: Remix and Creative Commons

Trying to help people be creative in the current copyright climate “safely,” especially in the realm of remix, is similar to giving someone an umbrella in a hurricane, or so it sometimes seems.  No wonder so many people try to steer clear of details, unless they are headed for a career in copyright law, like Lawrence Lessig, the author of Remix, our text of the week.

Lessig explains that the current Fair Use guidelines were never really meant for average people to use.  They are highly interpretive, and were meant for lawyers originally.  We checked out a very nice tool for self-assessment of fair use standards created by the Copyright Advisory Network of the American Library Association.  If one is completely and totally honest, one can probably assess whether the source one wants to use (and most importantly, the way, intent with which, and amount of which one wants to use it) falls within the boundaries of fair use.  The Copyright Advisory Network is a resource for librarians, primarily.  In addition to the Fair Use Evaluator, there is a link to a tool to guide teachers to see if their use of copyrighted materials is exempted through the TEACH act.

Lessig takes us through a labyrinth of situations and premises, through legalities and their effects on human creative output.  In class, we started reading the Terms of Service of iTunes and Google/YouTube.  In almost every case, the ToS was more restrictive than we thought. For example, YouTube basically seems to claim it can do whatever it wants with your videos while they are in the site and take them down for pretty much any reason:

For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your videos that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable. (YouTube Terms of Service)

Depressing stuff.  It’s yours, completely, but we can “use” it wholesale unless you remove it from the site.  This made me think of some rather hideous analogies, such as, imagine if veterinarians viewed our pets like this, or schools our children. There are laws to prevent such abuses.

There is currently a ruckus in Second Life over the ToS there, over similar kinds of claim to user-created properties in the virtual world.  Several high-profile content creators/artists have left the platform, as this story by Bixyl Shuftan relates.

As Lessig says, this is all more of an impediment to free creativity than an end to it.  It will and must continue.  Remix is not stealing when it is done well, any more than writing a book with multiple source research is stealing.  But there are a few hard rules that we can teach our students:

  • Attribution is NEVER optional.  Always give credit to a source, even when you’ve remixed it so that it can barely be recognizable.  If you remix materials in a video, always offer a list of credits in the video. It is also better to attribute in an imperfect format than not to attribute at all, ALWAYS.
  • Use the Creative Commons search engine to filter out images, videos, and audio that are licensed by the creators for use in remix.  There are six kinds of licenses issued by Creative Commons that denote various privileges to a user. Several of these are “share-alike” licenses, which means if you use these materials, your subsequent product is also licensed automatically with a similar license, whether you say so explicitly or not.
  • Use your original works when you can, and consider licensing them.

photo credit: License Some rights reserved by A. Diez Herrero

 

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