Lawrence Liang: Guide to Open Content Licenses v1.2 (2004)

Copyright is one of the most hotly contested areas of contemporary cultures. Many feel that current copyright regulations fail to meet the needs of information society and the realities of creative work. Many new practices of copyright – licenses which maintain the chosen rights of authors, but which work with rather than block the creative opportunities of the digital public domain – have emerged over the last few years.

This is the first systematic survey of the major open content licenses. Presented in a handy pocket-format it is designed both for non-specialists want to choose an appropriate use of copyright and for people who want solid background information.

Whether you are an artist, a peer-to-peer file sharer, or author of scientific papers the Guide to Open Content Licenses will provide you with an invaluable oversight and a how-to guide.

Published by Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam
Size: 110 A6 pages, paperbound
ISBN: 90-72855-16-7
Price: a gift
Additional material, chapter 1: Florian Cramer
Editors: Florian Cramer, Matthew Fuller, Calum Selkirk
Graphic design and book typography: Femke Snelting
HTML version: Florian Cramer
December 2004
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

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International Commons at the Digital Age. La création en partage (2004)

Creative Commons is a nonprofit that offers an alternative to full copyright to help authors to share and build upon creative works. The book analyses the first questions raised by the introduction of Creative Commons licenses in different legal systems and shows the real accounting of « cultural diversity » through Internet actors self-regulation. The authors defend that open access to information and culture for all is possible.

Edited by Danièle Bourcier & Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay
Published by Romillat
collection Droit et Technologies

This book is available under a Creative Commons license, at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

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Siva Vaidhyanathan: Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (2001)

Copyright reflects far more than economic interests. Embedded within conflicts over royalties and infringement are cultural values—about race, class, access, ownership, free speech, and democracy—which influence how rights are determined and enforced. Questions of legitimacy—of what constitutes “intellectual property” or “fair use,” and of how to locate a precise moment of cultural creation—have become enormously complicated in recent years, as advances in technology have exponentially increased the speed of cultural reproduction and dissemination.

In Copyrights and Copywrongs, Siva Vaidhyanathan tracks the history of American copyright law through the 20th century, from Mark Twain’s vehement exhortations for “thick” copyright protection, to recent lawsuits regarding sampling in rap music and the “digital moment,” exemplified by the rise of Napster and MP3 technology. He argues persuasively that in its current punitive, highly restrictive form, American copyright law hinders cultural production, thereby contributing to the poverty of civic culture.

In addition to choking cultural expression, recent copyright law, Vaidhyanathan argues, effectively sanctions biases against cultural traditions which differ from the Anglo-European model. In African-based cultures, borrowing from and building upon earlier cultural expressions is not considered a legal trespass, but a tribute. Rap and hip hop artists who practice such “borrowing” by sampling and mixing, however, have been sued for copyright violation and forced to pay substantial monetary damages. Similarly, the oral transmission of culture, which has a centuries-old tradition within African American culture, is complicated by current copyright laws. How, for example, can ownership of music, lyrics, or stories which have been passed down through generations be determined? Upon close examination, strict legal guidelines prove insensitive to the diverse forms of cultural expression prevalent in the United States, and reveal much about the racialized cultural values which permeate our system of laws. Ultimately, copyright is a necessary policy that should balance public and private interests but the recent rise of “intellectual property” as a concept have overthrown that balance. Copyright, Vaidhyanathan asserts, is policy, not property.

Bringing to light the republican principles behind original copyright laws as well as present-day imbalances and future possibilities for freer expression and artistic equity, this volume takes important strides towards unraveling the complex web of culture, law, race, and technology in today’s global marketplace.

Publisher New York University Press, 2001
ISBN 0-8147-8806-8
Length 256 pages

Keywords and phrases
Mark Twain, Napster, Pac-man, U.S. Supreme Court, D. W. Griffith, African American, Ben-Hur, Led Zeppelin, Marx Brothers, Statute of Anne, Willie Dixon, rhythm and blues, Groucho Marx, Martha Graham, DMCA, U.S. Congress, Schoolly D, intellectual property, rap music, He’s So Fine

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