Defining the boundaries
One aspect of the Creative Business in the Digital Era project that I’ve been slightly struggling with is defining what makes a good example of open IP? One of the first reactions to the list of projects that might be relevant was “Where is the open source?” It’s a good question.
The answer is that I’m not really sure where open source projects fit in. Being open source by itself isn’t as enough to be included, because this project is about business models, and not all open source projects come with a business plan or are intended to make money. I’ve also been asked about open source infrastructure companies whose work is essential to the success of other people’s businesses. Examples might include things like peer-to-peer clients or server technologies. But again, it really depends on whether the software is being produced as part of a business.
Another facet to open source is the companies that use open source software and are commercial, but aren’t producing any IP themselves. I think I’m pretty clear on this one: these companies do not fall within the CBDE remit simply because they aren’t creating intellectual property.
Then there are companies that use open IP in order to provide a service to others, whether that’s the IP creator themselves or some other party. Sites like Flickr or Moo are important facilitators for people to make the most of their and other people’s intellectual property - in both cases photographs and designs - but I am unclear as to what intellectual property they are giving away that they have created themselves.
I suppose this all revolves around a few key questions:
- What intellectual property is being created?
- How is that intellectual property being given away?
- How does giving away that intellectual property benefit, directly or indirectly, the creator’s business?
I think I may need to rearrange the research page on the wiki to try and clarify what precisely we need to know in order to understand if a particular project or business meets our criteria.
October 25th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Sorry if this is rushed.
I’d say that FLOSS could be considered a necessary but insufficient condition for these business models. Yes, these projects will use FLOSS, but so will many others which do not make the grade.
I agree strongly that these models will be producing IP, and in fact we may we wish to narrow this down according to subject matter.
Also, the ‘giving IP away for free’ condition requires clarification. Its more about giving digital versions away for free (whilst selling hard copies), and also letting others build upon your works. In fact that probably requires greater precision.
October 25th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
We do need to clarify “giving away IP” as creative commons and open souce licences rely on copyright to enforce the terms of their “giving away” - they impose conditions on their licensees. How is it being given away needs to include a sense of this licensing, which could just be a shorthand for CC and various OSI licences
Many companies fund or give away open source code that they build businesses on - Apple with BSD and Webkit, Sun with Java, Google with Python and Mozilla. The coupling here does vary a lot - Apple and Sun are selling computers, and having lots of people using their code helps them do this. By funding Mozilla, Google gets its search built in, and sells ads on the search.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Yes, Kevin’s moving in the right direction. By ‘giving away IP’, we’re not talking in terms of ownership i.e. the whole bundle of rights. We’re talking about flexibility with particular rights, such as reproduction or adaptation, as embodied in the CC / GPL and various other ‘open’ licenses.
A more positive way to frame this condition may be that we are concerned with producers of IP are contributing to or collaborating with the digital commons.
October 26th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Well, I think it’s important to remember that IP does not equal IPR. You can make intellectual property, or creative works if you prefer that term, available for free without giving up any rights at all. I haven’t downloaded Radiohead’s album, but I’d be surprised if they were doing anything more complex than allowing a free download of a fully copyrighted work. Creative people and companies can use a range of licences to enable reuse of their work, but I think that the important part is that they are making their works - works they would previously have been defending and trying to lock away - freely available to the general public without DRM or other strictures. I don’t think we need to limit this to people using CC licences or similar - even if they are using copyright, it’s a big step to take.
“Give away” can be replaced by any phrase you like. “Make available”, for example. And “for free” basically means “without requiring the public to pay money for it”.
In my post, I never was talking about IPR, or the ownership of IPR, and I think it’s important to not get too hung up on what’s happening to the rights themselves. We shouldn’t require that case studies use some sort of CC or CC-like licence - we’re at the beginning of the change in the way that IP is viewed, and any big names giving away copyrighted works with no requirement to pay and no DRM are important steps along the way.