APIG DRM Inquiry: Should legislation be changed to make Creative Commons effective?
Posted by Suw Charman in DRM at December 2nd, 2005
Point 2: Do new types of content sharing license (such as Creative Commons or Copyleft) need legislation changes to be effective?
Does CC need the support of the law in order to work? Or is it sufficient as it stands?
December 3rd, 2005 at 3:32 am
You should probably say “new legislation” rather than just “legislation” and “additional support of the law” instead of just “support of the law”. Many people often forget that “copyleft” is not something which opposes copyright, but actually depends on and works in tandem with copyright. In an environment where many entrenched players feel the need to smear “copyleft” and Creative Commons as some sort of communist/IP-destroying concept, it’s important to drive this point home.
What would be more useful would be to ask if there are cases where copyleft/Creative Commons was insufficient in providing the intended level of protection+openness, and if so, is legislation the right way to fill in such gaps.
December 3rd, 2005 at 7:42 am
The main points aren’t my points, they are those made by the APIG inquiry, so your comments are a good push back on the language of their questions.
December 3rd, 2005 at 5:06 pm
The law should be written to support copyright owners that wish to licence their content on share-alike terms and on terms requiring attribution.. Whether or not the law is already written this way is a question for lawyers. Perhaps we APIG would like to get some lawyers in to inquirw into this area? Perhaps ORG could arrange something like that?
Share-alike and attribution requirements, when infringed, should not be treated as second-class infringements.
December 4th, 2005 at 12:02 am
Copyright libraries should be forbidden from retaining DRM’d material.
To do otherwise would legitimise DRM, and we all think that’s bad, right?
Martin
December 8th, 2005 at 6:44 pm
I don’t see why CC should need legal changes to be effective, as it’s purely voluntary and built on existing copyright law.
Astonishingly, I agree with Mr Coxall that copyright libraries shouldn’t retain DRM’d material; doing so is a total waste of time and money in any case as it will die and become inaccessible within a decade or so once the system it was built on becomes obsolete.
December 19th, 2005 at 12:10 pm
Whilst you can continue discussing this post, any comments posted after this one will not be included in the ORG public consultation paper.
December 21st, 2005 at 12:36 pm
These are designed to work with current copyright law, and involve a fair degree of complication to make them work legally. Changes in copyright law to reinstate the registration requirement, or to revert to shorter, more defensible terms to clarify public domain status of orphaned works would be advantageous to these licenses.