Half-Copyrighted

Date: Wed, Feb 13, 2002 11:00 AM

From: "nu-monet v4.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=1663

...In a boon to the arts and the software
industry, 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...

...it's possible Creative Commons' licenses may
eventually evolve to include options that permit
or enable certain commercial transactions. An
artist might, for example, agree to give away a
work as long as no one is making money on it but
include a provision requiring payments on a
sliding scale if it's sold...

...(in this model) an MP3 song or a document or
any other intellectual property would contain a
special machine-readable tag that specifies the
exact licensing terms approved by its creator.
That means film students making a movie, for
example, could do a search, say, for jazz songs
released under public domain-friendly licenses
that they can use for their soundtrack without
charge...

...Rather than abandon an outdated software
program, for example, a computer company would
have the option of donating its source code to
the Creative Commons conservancy, where people
could build on it to create other new and useful
products...
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

I thought this was a joke at first, since it makes so much sense.

That's a real interesting site there. Egghead stuff. I hope their
efforts pan out somehow, because this basic idea would help fill some
tricky copyright holes. For instance, we as Dobbshead Trademark Owners
have been put in the awkward position whereby we are forced to (try to)
control it more than we would really WANT to, just to protect it at
all.

Every two weeks somebody tells me the phrase, "But that would be Fair
Use!" As if there was such a thing on the books. That's an artist folk
tale, "Fair Use" is. What it normally really means in practice is, "Too
small time for the big boys to notice you and squash you."

Our audio stuff would be the perfect example of small-time intellectual
properties that we want people to be able to use and cop, in the
private-use, indie-station, crappy-Internet-copying ways, but would
want to protect securely against some corpocreeps being able to SELL
as a mass-marketed CD without PAYING US. It would take some of the
"looking the other way" out of the two-bit showbiz world that we
fringe, poebucker and SubGenius arteests must needs inhabit, until
X-Day.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
A subsidiary of:
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. / P.O. Box 140306, Dallas, TX 75214
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com PRABOB
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: lyonderboy666@hotmail.com (Anti Pope Lupus of SI)

> ...In a boon to the arts and the software
> industry, 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...

Sounds like news that would have made me cum back in my college days.

-APLY
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: lyonderboy666@hotmail.com (Anti Pope Lupus of SI)

"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com> wrote ...

> Every two weeks somebody tells me the phrase, "But that would be Fair
> Use!" As if there was such a thing on the books. That's an artist folk
> tale, "Fair Use" is. What it normally really means in practice is, "Too
> small time for the big boys to notice you and squash you."

[snip]

> Our audio stuff would be the perfect example of small-time intellectual
> properties that we want people to be able to use and cop, in the
> private-use, indie-station, crappy-Internet-copying ways, but would
> want to protect securely against some corpocreeps being able to SELL
> as a mass-marketed CD without PAYING US. It would take some of the
> "looking the other way" out of the two-bit showbiz world that we
> fringe, poebucker and SubGenius arteests must needs inhabit, until
> X-Day.

Well Ivan, maybe this will help. I recently participated in a global
project to write a compilation of stories. The stories were based on
the "sprawl" series created by William Gibson. After the book was
completed, we sent a copy to him, you know, out of respect and all.
And we got a response which was basically this. He didn't have any
personal objection to the thing getting published, and his advice was
to go ahead and do it, even though he couldn't give his express
permission.

Translated, he's not going to sue us or anything, but he's reserving
the right to pull the plug if he has to for one reason or another.

Which is the best we could have ever hoped for. And he's effectively
covered his bases. It's not like any of us are going to see any money
off the book, and it's not open season on his series, of which there
were three books and two movies. (Johnny Mnemonic and New Rose Hotel)
Well, three if you count the blatant Matrix rip-off. :)

You can get it now at www.iuniverse.com, amazon, or b&n:
the Alt.Cyberpunk.Chatsubo Anthology.

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Original file name: Half-Copyrighted.txt - converted on Friday, 20 September 2002, 16:08