The 4 page reader from the March issue of Linux Format is an excellent and concise round up of the wide range of perspectives towards the Creative Commons and copyright generally.
I very much appreciate the view of Frederick Noronha a journalist in India:
“There is an overall culture of
sharing knowledge here, even if this isn’t called ‘Creative
Commons’. We had the launch of CCIndia in early 2007, but
there seems to be little activity there… I think CC is a bit too
conservative and too respectful of copyright issues. Copyright
has not worked for us (in the developing world) for
generations. Generally speaking, copyright in any form,
including CC, doesn’t fit in too well with Asian ideas of
knowledge, since it enables those controlling knowledge and
information over the rest, and we find it impossible to emerge
winners in this game. It is a colonial law, not meant to serve
the interest of the people of those parts of the globe that are
not ahead in the information race! Why should we be as
respectful to it, as, say, Lawrence Lessig is?”
And I sympathise with the so called “radical” view expressed by Minhaaj R Rehman:
“Nobody in Pakistan knew about copyright, copyleft or CC
a decade ago. Even when academics knew about copyright,
they just didn’t deal with it, primarily because of eastern
tradition and religious injunctions of collectivism and open
literacy. CC and copyleft movements have made it harder,
here in Pakistan at least, for poor students and educators to
use books. Sure, they inspired academics to copyleft their
work, but at the same time, they convinced them that
copyright, which should never exist in the first place, is good.
Whereas content never belongs to anyone, as it comes from
previous experience and incremental learning. Here in the
east we need to abolish copyright, nothing less. That’s why I
don’t think CC is good for developing countries. To me, even
things like Richard Stallman’s FSF accepting support from
organisations like Unesco (which do nothing to fight the
problems I just mentioned), or Wikipedia’s profiteering by
asking for donation of $6 million this year are proofs that both
copyright and copyleft are partners in restricting human
rights and freedom”.
No doubt now and in the future, people will think of Creative Commons as when generosity began, and that will be a real shame. Creative Commons came about as a stop gap to the real radicalism in Copyright that was encroaching on those intuitive generosities that we in the West did in fact have, and used to enjoy.
Teachers I work with had no clue about Copyright 3 years ago, and photocopied and sampled digital work in blissful ignorance of copyright. Then came Creative Commons and evangelists like me, now we are all tormented by Copyright and feel the loss of those freedoms we used to have in our quiet corner of the world. But the law is the law I suppose. Pleading ignorance only goes so far, and doesn’t help the many people who we are sending out into the world.
The name itself, Creative Commons – refers to a forgotten tradition of such collective ownership and sharing, The Commons. But now CC is a brand in itself, over shadowing the perspectives like Minhaaj and Fredrick’s. It would be a whole lot simpler to adopt Minhaaj’s ethical line, and get back in touch with the freedoms we used to enjoy.
8 comments
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February 19, 2009 at 1:29 pm
prawsthorne
this is were I think we should just ignore all this copyright, copyleft, etc. Even in the west and, as educators, when we are challenged we claim fair use. I’d welcome the legal battle it could become similar to the pirate bay action. In the end it is the global information economy restructuring the regional / national industrial economy. It all has to happen sometime, so lets just get on with it. I’m all in favor of just ignoring all copyright or like abstraction. Get on with being a global village of learners… let the capitalists waste away in their greed and entitlements.
February 19, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Addy
Speaking about copyright (that seems to be the most popular word of the week) and Creative Commons, here’s another link on applying CC on PhD theses (gasp!). I find it liberating that some have started the revolution of (gasp!) SHARING their thesis publicly!http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/02/18/licensing_your.html
February 20, 2009 at 1:06 am
minhaaj
Good synthesis Leigh. I have always been a big fan and rather surprised spectator of your anti-western and collective stand on copyright issues being a ‘so-called radical’, inspite of your sheepish and rather westernized ‘careful’ and ‘positivistic’ way. I totally agree that its about time we join hands to eradicate the elitism and restriction in edusphere.
February 20, 2009 at 9:05 am
leighblackall
Thanks all for the comments. I’m still thinking about it. Certainly I wish copyright was not a factor in our work, or at the very least – Fair Dealings (Fare Use) had enough scope to render Copyright irrelevent in our work, but I thought I’d share an experience I just had now..
I was dropping off a paper memo to a colleague and couldn’t help notice that she was working on a slide presentation. She was in the process of adding images, scanning a Google image search and sampling very low resolution images and stretching them to fit into her slide layout. What’s more is the images were not getting referenced. It looked bad.
So I piped up and said, “you know copying images from a Google image search is not strictly ok with copyrights? I know a site where you can get legal images, at better quality, but you’ll have two reference what you use of course” and I point her to http://flickr.com/creativecommons
Assuming she now uses that website to sample her images, we have to outcomes “thanks” to the scarey jolt I gave her about copyright:
1. She is finding and using better quality images
2. She is now referencing her work (which of course she should be doing regardless of copyright).
So you see, in this instance, Copyright and Creative Commons has helped improve the quality of this persons work.
If I wanted to be obliging to Copyright as a law, then I would add a 3rd benefit to this little intervention:
3. Her slide presentation is now cleared for copyright and publishing.
But we don’t need to talk about that one here 🙂
March 4, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Marco
Greetings, everybody.
Thanks for your interest in my article. I would just like to remind that personally, I’m still in favour of copyright, it just as to be reformed as I mentioned in the final note of the article itself. I also invite all of you to read my comments in the related Linux Format forum, where I give first hand example of the fact that it isn’t true that:
– if copyright didn’t exist at all the same quantity of good quality works would be produced anyway (including the very article you appreciated)
– copyright always damages somebody
the link to that forum is http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=70972#70972
Best Regards,
Marco Fioretti
August 26, 2009 at 5:22 pm
leighblackall
Very sad to see that Marco’s article is no longer available at that link 😦
Have checked the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine – it was not archived. Marco, if you’re listening.. can you point us to a copy of the PDF version?
I have found an HTML version here.
August 26, 2009 at 5:25 pm
minhaaj ur rehman
There you go.
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B_d9mhjA-uLJZTE1YTBjYWEtYTNiNS00MGNiLWI4YjctNzIxYTEzYmZmMTVk&hl=en
August 27, 2009 at 6:20 am
leighblackall
Thanks again Minhaaj..