Learning with the Fang

UPDATE: Summary of responses so far:

Tarmo Toikkanen – ‘the non-commercial clause is considered harmful (google for it)’

Stephen Downes – ‘ The reason I use the non-commercial license is that I believe that allowing commercial use will reduce and restrict future use. In other words, I believe that the non-commercial license is the most open. Why? … ‘

Leigh Blackall – ‘Now, I am on the brink of Public Domain myself… ‘

Stephen Downes hit a nerve in his response to my ‘Avoid YouTube if you wanna ReMix and MashUp‘ post – because he challenges my view on minimal restrictions when licensing work with Creative Commons – a view which is heavily influenced by Stephen’s work, particularly his podcasts. He said:

I am not convinced by the comments on Creative Commons – I use a
‘non-commercial’ license on my stuff because I don’t want some company
pulling a Blackboard on it- using it commercially then turning around and claiming it’s their property.

So, lets get the ball rolling with a challenge to Stephen – how do you reconcile these two views you have presented? :

1. ‘prevent some company pulling a Blackboard on it’

2. ‘you have to let go of trying to control future use of your digital (learning object) content’ … ’so that it can be re-mixed and passed forward’

I think Creative Commons has the potential to unlock exponential growth
in the value of the Read/Write cluture, shaped by expressions in the
new languages from digital multimedia ReMix and Mashups – but only if
used skillfully.

Having devoured nearly every podcast published by Stephen in the context of wider reading of Lawrence Lessig and others from their respective knowledge networks, I decided to change my default Creative Commons licensing from ‘Attribution, Non Commercial to ‘Attribution ‘ in the hope that more of my work will be discovered, re-mixed and therefore have a greater chance of surviving as a recognisable part of culture. Let my try to unpack my thinking while we wait for some form of response from Stephen’s network.

Be warned – I want to preface my response by letting you into a personal secret – I am ‘textually challenged’ and always have been. So, if I cant get the words out in text I might just have to share some of my whacky audio/video mashups. That’s why I need help from those of you who are wordsmiths, so we can get this important conversation moving along.

- Digital Natives / Millenials (like my own teenage kids) are beginning to speak in new languages where the words and phrases are replaced by elements made up from copy/paste of any digital media.

- The irrepressible urge for kids to express themselves via these powerful languages is what is driving us toward what Lessig calls reclaiming ‘Read/Write Culture’.

- Legal/Social Reforms are so far behind the internet explosion that nearly all the cool expressions are being driven underground and are technically illegal. Kids are growing up with a view that the law is essentially irrelevant. The growing list of absurd legal scenarios (copyright infringement against 4:33 silence, illegal to sing happy birthday at the zoo, campus downloading propaganda, D.O.P.A. and many more).

- Breaking Creative Commons. Even if Creative Commons were already universally adopted and proven in courts, there exists a hidden potential to re-create the broken-ness that existing music/video DRM (Digital Rights Management) schemes ultimately blocking the free (as in freedom) flow of digital artifacts as they are created, published, downloaded, re-mixed, mashed-up and re-published (or pushed forward). What seems like a benign ‘expression of rights’ when you post your photoshop masterpiece to flickr can turn around and become ‘management of rights’ and just like DRM, break the free flow of your digital creativity.

SO, WE MUST LEARN TO USE CREATIVE COMMONS SKILLFULLY OR RISK SENDING THIS WONDERFUL INFRASTRUCTURE TO THE SAME BONEYARD THAT IS GROWING FROM THE CORPSES OF DEVICES, SYSTEMS AND BUSINESS MODELS FOUNDED ON DRM.

WHY did I remove ‘Non Commercial’ from my default Creative Commons license?

Because I figure the RISK of my digital work never being discovered/re-mixed outweighs the RISK of being ripped-off (cheated out of money I deserve) or having some evil corporation ‘do a blackboard on me’.

I thought long and hard about my previous default ‘Attribution, Non Commercial’ license. The work I did for LearnDog seeks to publish and promote digital work by kids with a view to maximising the recognition for their work as it flows freely (freedom) through the read/write web without creating any impediments to them generating income (not free beer) in the future. My first inclination was to add ‘Share Alike’ to ‘Attribution, Non Commercial’ in what turned out to be a naive attempt to preserve this ‘pure and wholesome’ license regime in perpetuity. We very quickly discovered that ‘Share Alike’ was a barrier preventing work from being re-used in many interesting scenarios that we hadn’t predicted.

KEY IDEA: ALLOW FOR PLEASANT SURPRISES IN UNFORSEEN FUTURE USE CASES. (and deal with unpleasant ones as a fact of life).

So, ‘Attribtion, Non Commercial’ was working just fine until a little iMovie video mashup I made for fun with my kids, ended up being presented at a conference that was definitely commercial. The problem? – I had used many elements that were themselves licensed with ‘Non Commercial’ and it was too late to try and contact the owners to ask for permission. Worse, since I didn’t plan to use this fun mashup as part of my work I was fairly relaxed about checking the license of every single piece of media I used. It turns out that some pieces (ironically machinima I created from a creative commons event in second life) were licensed ‘No Derivatives’ which I suspect means I shouldn’t have used them at all. Sadly, I effectively ’self censored’, this piece of work has not been published and therefore cannot be downloaded, remixed and passed forward. Which is a shame because it contains a section of Downes vs Lessig talking about the precise issues we are grappling with in this post! From now on, Im only going to mashup stuff that satisfies both checkboxes [Search for works I can use for commercial purposes & Search for works I can modify, adapt, or build upon ] on searches like THIS.

MORAL: JUST IGNORE CONTENT THAT IS LICENSED WITH ANYTHING MORE RESTRICTIVE THAN CC:Attribution – when making mash-ups (even if they are just for fun).

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I now publish all my work as Creative Commons ‘Attribution’.

I am even toying with the idea of going Public Domain because I think Stephen Downes is bang on the money when he says ‘let go of trying to control future use’ (of any digital creation). The point of this post is not to try and persuade you that I am right but to start some debate that will help us all sharpen our Creative Commons skills.

Please Discuss

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:creativecommons, CreativeCommonsDRM, ccdrm, license, mashup, attribution, noncommercial