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Updating the Creative Commons Licenses

It isn't just the GPL that is being updated. Creative Commons is working on changes to its licenses also, and for some of the same reasons. It was announced early in August that changes were in the works, and you can read the proposed draft language on that page, and while it was hoped that the license would be finished by the beginning of September, the discussions continue on the CC public discussion board. A major sticking point? What to do about DRM.

There is already an anti-DRM clause in the Creative Commons licenses which reads like this:

What is proposed are some amendments to clarify the language, but some, particularly in the Debian camp, worried that the language in the draft was inconsistent with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and instead proposed a kind of parallel distribution clause, in order to give programmers freedom to code for both open and closed systems.

Creative Commons project lead Mia Garlick opened the topic up for discussion. Some find it ridiculous to argue that the way to promote freedom is by allowing DRM, with its potential to take CC works and close them off. They see DRM as the fast track to destroying the share-alike community that Creative Commons authors are choosing to be a part of. The whole point of having such a license, after all, is precisely to avoid the sort of total freedom to do whatever you wish with the work, as would be possible by the author choosing to release into the public domain. As one comment put it, allowing DRM on CC'd works in the name of freedom is like saying the way to promote democracy is to vote in a dictator.

And so the upgrading to CC version 3.0 is going through a similar discussion as the GPLv3. Because of the opposition, the dual license idea isn't currently in the draft, as Garlick explained:

It's a fascinating discussion, and polite. If you wish to join in, here's where you go. You must subscribe to post a comment.

To get up to speed on what has already been discussed, here's a PDF that summarizes the discussion so far, along with Creative Commons' reactions to various suggestions, available here.

The Debian point of view, as far as I can see, is being expressed by Evan Prodromou, and the contrary view by many, but outstandingly by Rob Meyers and Greg London. You can find the archives by author here. My best suggestion would be to start here, and just click on "next message" for a while to follow the discussion in a straight line. At that starting link, London suggests making sure "DRM can't be used to take a work private or set someone up as sole source for DRM-versions of works," and Meyers answers Prodromou's expressed concerns about "licensees being free to distribute works in their format of choice." Prodromou expresses this worry:

He amplifies in this comment:

Of course, that's when the discussion gets really interesting. Meyers points out:

When one comment states, "That's why pleas for DRM are *not* pleas for user freedom", Prodromou argues,

To which London responds:

Another issue, and again this is identical to efforts in GPLv3, is to internationalize the license. The CC proposed solution is this, according to the August announcement:

And finally, there is discussion on just what the definition of "noncommercial" is.

I would suggest that you take the time to read all the comments themselves in August and September, though, and not just rely on the PDF summary, as there is already a comment indicating the summary didn't get every point precisely as the commenter intended. Besides, figuring out the appropriate response to DRM is a very important task, one the community needs to get right.

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WOS4: Lawrence Lessig on read/write culture

Lawrence Lessig appeared at the third edition of the Wizards of OS to launch Creative Commons Germany. He returned at WOS4, instead, to talk about free culture. As it turns out, Mr. Lessig has recently moved to Berlin to spend the next year working on his next book, so there may well be other opportunities for the locals to hear him speak. For the rest of us, though, it was a rare treat.

He started by talking about the composer John Phillip Sousa, who had expressed frustration (to a Congressional committee) with the "talking machines" which were just becoming common in his time. These machines, he feared, would turn the public into mere listeners, rather than people who participated in the creation of music. Many years later, Mr. Lessig notes, this "read-only" approach to culture has indeed taken over, especially in the U.S.

The talk then shifted to the founding of the U.S. Republican party, which was based, at that time, on the idea of "free labor." Working for others was seen as a form of indentured slavery - especially given the kind of labor contracts which were in use at that time. The idea motivating the Republicans was a vision of a country where people owned their own means of production and worked for themselves. Needless to say, things did not work out that way. Industrialization pushed the economy in a different direction, and, by the 1870's, 70% of the workers in the U.S. were employees. Free labor, he says, is a "fantasy" now.

The idea is beginning to come back, however, as the net is enabling more people to own their own production equipment. We are also seeing similar trends in politics - the 20th century mode of being told what to think by politicians on the television is giving way to a blog-driven participatory democracy. It's becoming a read-write system. And that, Mr. Lessig says, is how things have been for most of our history; the 20th century was an aberration in this regard.

Moving back to culture, Lessig noted that the Internet can enable both read-only and read-write culture. In the read-only mode, the net is a channel by which we can consume culture created elsewhere. The classic example here would be iTunes, which allows the purchase of music for specific devices, to be used in specific ways. The Internet can be a way of perfecting the control held by content owners.

But it need not be that way. To demonstrate the read-write alternative, he showed a few videos taken from the net. These varied from silly works involving reworked anime clips set to music rather different from that used by the original creators through to highly political pieces. Something to offend everybody - but highly amusing. Text, says Lessig, is "the Latin of our time"; video is the way to communicate in this era. Unfortunately, many of the videos he showed have been subjected to takedown notices and other attacks from copyright holders. Lessig also mentioned a film which won a prize at Cannes; it was made for all of $218, but then the creator was faced with a $400,000 bill to clear the rights for the background music used.

There are many differences between the read-only and read-write views of culture, starting with the way that the read-write view departs from the "couch potato" mode. Read-write culture is a participatory medium. The read-write culture is also far larger, by almost any measure. It certainly involves more people, but it can also be economically larger. Unfortunately, current copyright law heavily favors the read-only mode. It controls the right to make copies, but, in the digital world, any use of a work involves copying it. So every use requires permission. Content holders are making full use of this legal view, which, in the end, means they have control over how people use culture.

Copyright law, in other words, conflicts with the read-write net. It smothers it.

Jack Valenti described "piracy" as his own terrorist war. We are, it seems, fighting a war where the terrorists are our own children. And the tools which are being deployed in this war, in the name of stopping piracy, are also killing read-write culture.

So what do we do about all this? The first step, says Lessig, is to enable free culture in any way we can. And that requires building free tools. The free software community, for all of its successes, has not yet succeeded in building a comprehensive set of friendly tools which can be used by artists. We need to fight DRM in any way we can, support free codecs and protocols to the greatest extent possible, and support free software everywhere.

We must also build a legal platform for free culture. The Creative Commons license is aimed at that goal. It seems to be having some success; by one measure, there are now as many as 140 million CC-licensed works available on the net.

Finally, Lessig says, we must reach out and support the creation of free culture on proprietary platforms. In particular, the estimated one million Flash developers should be brought into the read-write world. That involves encouraging them to share their code, putting "view source" buttons on Flash products, etc. By reaching out to these people, we'll grow the support for free culture, and, ultimately, free platforms. Free software, he says, was not initially built on free platforms; free culture will need to take a similar path.

In summary, says Lessig, the 20th century is best described as the "weirdest century." But it's over. If we can grow the free culture movement, we will enter truly into the read-write world, and we'll all be richer for it.

During the question period, Mr. Lessig was asked what he thought of Richard Stallman's refusal to support the Creative Commons licenses. The day of that announcement, he responded, was one of the most depressing of his life. He stands by the Creative Commons licenses, however. The artistic community still has not really had the discussion of what rights it needs to be truly free. There is no artistic equivalent to the "four freedoms" for software. Until that discussion has happened, the Creative Commons can only defer to the free-culture friendly musicians it is working with (Gilberto Gil was mentioned) and go with what they suggest. Mr. Lessig does not feel that he knows better, and will not try to force a particular vision of freedom on them - even if it means losing Richard Stallman's support.

The question was asked: don't the Creative Commons licenses constitute an admission that many of the rights often claimed under fair use do not actually exist, since those rights must be codified separately in a license? That can be a problem, he responded, which is why these licenses have always been written as a grant of additional rights beyond all of those already permitted by law. In the end, it comes down to a choice of trying to build this legal platform, or doing nothing at all; they chose to act.

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WOS4: Quality management in free content

One problem which must be faced by any cooperative project is that of quality management. If anybody can contribute to a work, how can a project ensure that its output is up to the standards it has set for itself? A Wizards of OS 4 panel session on this topic highlighted three very different approaches to this issue.

Ullrich Pöschl, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, is trying to address a number of problems with the scientific publishing world. Publication is crucial to scientists - it is, in the end, the one concrete result from their work which matters. But the process to publication is long and frustrating, and can often be hampered by personal agendas and scientific conservatism. Your editor who, in a previous life, actually published a paper in a refereed journal can attest to what a painful process it can be. There are also problems with scientific fraud and (much more often) plain old carelessness. Scientists, in their rush to get their work out, will often not take the time to produce work of the needed quality. Quite a few papers are published which contribute little and actually dilute the pool of scientific knowledge.

On the other side, scientific journals are tremendously expensive, and they publish last year's work. There are a lot of pressures for faster - and more open - access to scientific results. It seems that a more open approach would benefit everybody, but only if the quality level can be maintained.

Ullrich is a founder of a relatively new journal (Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics) which has set out to demonstrate a new approach to scientific publication. This journal has retained much of the classic scientific publication process - every paper is still reviewed by anonymous referees whose questions must be answered to the editor's satisfaction. Where things differ is in the openness of the process.

When a paper is submitted, as long as it's not complete junk, it will be immediately published as a "discussion paper" on the journal's web site. It is clearly marked as an unreviewed paper, not to be taken as definitive results at that time. While the referees are reviewing the paper, others can post comments and questions as well. These others are limited to "registered scientists," since the desire is to keep the conversation at a high level. The comments become part of the permanent record stored with the paper, and they can, at times, be cited by others in their own right. The editor will consider outside comments when deciding whether the paper is to be accepted and what revisions are to be required.

After using this process for five years, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics has the highest level of citations in the field. Citations are important in the scientific world: they are an indication that a given set of research results has helped and inspired discoveries elsewhere. The high level of citations here indicates that this publication process is succeeding in attracting high-level papers and filtering out the less useful submissions.

Things are at an early stage - out of approximately 7,000 scientific journals, about five are currently publishing with this sort of technique. Others are interested, however, and that number can be expected to grow in the future.

Martin Haase then took the podium to talk about quality management in Wikipedia. While Wikipedia is a useful resource, there have been a number of well-reported problems. Some articles can be flat-out wrong, or, sometimes, distorted to meet somebody's political goals. Maintaining and improving Wikipedia's reputation will require getting a handle on these problems.

Some measures being taken by Wikipedia are:

• Putting restrictions on anonymous access. In particular, anonymous editors cannot create new articles.

• Getting a better handle on attribution of work. Wikipedia maintains an article editing history now, and has lists of contributors. Some people, it seems, have been surprised to learn this, and have changed the style of their contributions afterward.

• A two-level reviewing process. Articles which have been heavily reviewed and deemed to be correct can be designated as "featured" articles. This process, however, turns out to be slow, so a new, less rigorous "good article" designation has been created as well.

• Specific metadata about validation is being added to articles.

• There is a mechanism for creating permanent links to specific versions of articles. These links can be used by outside sites to link to a "known good" version of an article with no need to worry about what subsequent changes could bring.

While agreeing that improving the quality of Wikipedia articles will be a never-ending process, Martin seems to think that the measures being taken will move things in the right direction. He warned explicitly about "expertism" - requiring that articles be written by experts in the field. It can be hard for experts to write articles for people who are unfamiliar with the field - their work tends to be jargon-heavy and written at the wrong level. They also tend to run in schools, and expert-written articles tend to reflect the views of one school only. Limiting contributions to experts would, in Mr. Haase's view, rob Wikipedia of much of its usefulness.

The third panelist, Larry Sanger, disagrees. Larry was a part of the creation of Wikipedia, but has since fallen out with that project. So, while claiming to be a "big fan of Wikipedia," he spent much time criticizing it. Wikipedia, he says, was meant to be the wild side of Nupedia, it was never supposed to be the whole thing. With only half of the original design, he says, it is not surprising that things have gone wrong.

So what has gone wrong? According to Larry, the Wikipedia rules are not enforced uniformly, leading to lots of abuses. Anonymous editing attracts trolls and other people whose main purpose is not the creation of a top-quality encyclopedia. The Wikipedia community is insular and hard to join. And there is no place for academics, people who are experts in their field. Wikipedia people may fear expertism, but Larry, instead, is on a campaign against amateurism. This amateurism, he says, is behind many of the problems with Wikipedia, but the community will not recognize these problems, and, thus, he says, will never fix them.

So Larry is going to fork Wikipedia. His project, called The Citizendium, will, he says, be very different. It will start out very much the same, however: the same software, and copies of all the Wikipedia articles. Those articles will track changes to their Wikipedia equivalents until they are changed locally, at which point they will become a hard fork. There are no plans to fork the software. In essence, the Citizendium intends to make full use of Wikipedia's free licensing (as is its right) to bootstrap the new site, and only move away from Wikipedia content when and where it feels it has something better to offer.

There will be some distinct roles for members of the Citizendium project. People who are deemed to be sufficiently expert in a given field will be called "editors"; regular contributors will be expected to defer to the editors in their field of expertise. These editors will be self-selecting, but they must publicly state their credentials. Editors can mark an article as being "approved," indicating that, in their opinion, it has reached a certain level of quality.

There will be no anonymous editing allowed in the Citizendium, and no pseudonyms either. All contributors must work under their own names. There will be a number of rules on how contributors and editors are supposed to work, with quick expulsion from the project for those who do not follow them. To that end, there will also be "constables," whose job is to enforce these rules.

There are vague plans for a meeting to draft and approve the charter under which the project operates. For now, however, the Citizendium is very much Larry Sanger's project, with goals and processes set by him. Whether it will be able to build a community and maintain it while keeping quality high remains to be seen.

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