How can you give people the freedom to use your work? At the same time how can you keep some rights for yourself?
If you sing, write, blog, or even make videos with little bunnies in them, this is something you will end up thinking about.
What is copyleft? How can it help you?
Keep reading this article to see the video, transcript and further sources.
Interesting tidbits later in the post include: According to US Law, when does a work become copyrighted? (The answer surprised me.) And one controversy with a little Asian girl, Virgin, and the Creative Commons.
When does a work become copyrighted?
Interestingly, according to US Law, a work becomes copyrighted the instant it is created. Be it a little napkin doodle, a picture being snapped or what have you.
There are other rules that apply, like if the work is original enough.
Little Girl, Virgin Mobile, Creative Commons, and Controversy
Long story short: Young girl finds her face on the side of a bus shelter advertisement. She is being depicted as the girl you can break up with, with your new cool text plan from Virgin Mobile.
How did this come about?
Virgin used Creative Commons licensed photographs from Flickr.com. Hers was one such photograph taken by someone at a charity car wash.
She sues Virgin and the Creative Commons.
Transcript
Hello CultureCats this is Joshua Hwang, distributing freely another 90 Seconds to Culture videocast.
Copyleft and Copyright Alternatives
So I’m about to release an e-book (basically a PDF guide). I want it to be for free, I want it to be shared, but I still want to be attributed.
In the past, I would have had only two options: 1) release the book into the public domain or 2) copyright it.
Under the first option, people would be free to share my work, but would also be able to change it, charge money for it and not attribute me.
None of which sound appealing. If I were to copyright it however, people would have to ask permission even to share the work in its original form.
Then what am I to do? Is there no middle ground?
Enter Copyleft.
Under copyright people are allowed to use your works, but must acquire permission first. Copyleft licenses are agreements that tell the world: “Hey, you can use my work as long as you follow certain conditions: for example, telling people the original work is by me (attribution) and using the same copyleft licensing agreement.” Other restrictions may also apply depending on the license.
Copyleft does not replace copyright. Copyleft simply modifies it. By helping to eliminate the need for middlemen, this simplifies sharing.
Two popular copyleft licenses are the GNU General Public License, which is exclusively for software and the Creative Commons License, which covers all works protected by copyright law.
The ebook, which will eventually be released, is licensed under the Creative Commons license and is totally worth checking out.
Boom, that’s Copyleft!
How has one girl suffered because of Creative Commons licensing?
According to us law when do works become copyrighted?
To find out, check out 90 Seconds to Culture.com for this and more resources.
Sources / Further Reading:
Wikipedia: Copyleft
Wikipedia: Creative Commons licenses
Wikipedia: GNU General Public License
What is Creative Commons? - Cute video at the top.
Gratis vs. Libre - The word free in English can be confusing.
(image by Magitisa)
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
love the video!!
FYI, a work also becomes copyrighted in Canada the moment it’s created too. you know, assuming it’s original and not copied and created with minimal skill and judgment and all that. just so you know!
Interesting stuff. I think facebook also “owns” the pictures you post online and could use them for commercial purposes. Many people don’t know this, and it’s written in the user agreement but few read it thoroughly, or at all.
I just have a question about a work being copyrighted the moment it is created since that also surprised me. You still have to apply to fully legitimize this copyright, right? What prevents someone from jumping the gun on you and copying your idea and applying for a license first. Furthermore, if it’s only an idea that has yet to materialize, what prevents someone from taking it and making the work first?
I assume the answer to both of the above is nothing and you should just be prudent about these things.
I can answer your questions!
(1) No, you don’t have to apply or register to fully legitimize the copyright, but if someone did copy your work and you sued them, registration would be proof that you created the work. If you can prove it in some other way, like if someone saw you do it or if there was some kind of date stamp, then registration wouldn’t really matter. Registering it just makes it easier to prove, but you still have 100% valid copyright in any work you create as soon as you create it.
(2) Nothing prevents someone from taking your idea. Ideas aren’t protected by copyright - only the expression of those ideas. For example, if you write a story about josh eating a pineapple, and someone else writes a story about josh eating a pineapple, he hasn’t infringed your copyright unless he used your words. The line between ideas and expression can be hard to draw, but generally, for you to have copyright in something it needs to be fixed in a material form.
but you’re right: since taking legal action is expensive, and there’s no copyright in ideas, you should always be prudent.
@ Ariel: Thanks for the compliment! I knew that knowing a few soon to be lawyers would pay off, but this is much sooner than I expected. Incidentally, I have some questions about extradition laws, but I digress.
I also think its interesting to see what qualifies as original work. Related to the Minimal Art post, and our conversation about it, art has a very low threshold of what is considered original (IMHO). Some say that some “skill, labour and judgment” has to have gone into the work. (Source: WP)
@ Maciek: I feel like you already know this because of those quotation marks around the word use, but I thought other people might be interested in the Facebook point. They pretty much say that can do anything they want with your content, but–after much outcry–they changed the point about who owns the content.
In the “User Content Posted on the Site” section:
Although I’m actually not that big on personal privacy, as in my privacy, I do think about intellectual and property rights a lot. So remember looking this up before posting my videos to Facebook.
BTW, someday I will be rich because of these videos. There will be Cristal. You are all invited.
Hey J, I agree, the question of originality is really interesting. It’s really hard to draw the line sometimes between what’s original enough to be protected, and what wasn’t created with sufficient skill and judgment.
Note - neither Canada nor, I believe, the US requires ‘labour’. Labour alone, or the “sweat of the brow doctrine” has been rejected in Canada and I believe a US case called Feist required a ‘creative spark’. At least since 2004, in Canada all you need is skill and judgment that isn’t merely a mechanical exercise (like making a phone book and putting everything in alphabetical order).
It’s also interesting to note that only the parts of a work that required skill and judgment will be protected. So, for example, if you compile a phone book and organize it by, say, people you like and people you hate, someone who copied your arrangement would infringe your copyright, but someone who took all the same phone numbers and arranged them differently wouldn’t.
ANYWAY, clearly I could go on and on about this, but my point was going to be that it’s probably best that there’s such a low threshold of ‘originality’ - otherwise we’d end up with judges’ beliefs about what is and isn’t original or what is and isn’t art seeping into their decisions about what’s protected. (…more than they do now.)
The facebook issue is interesting too. I think that what a lot of people don’t realize is that facebook needs at least some kind of worldwide licence (permission, not ownership) to use your content, including commercially, otherwise it would infringe everyone’s copyright every day. They don’t need to ‘own’ it, though, so it’s really good that that was changed.