Odyssey Online

…a visual representation of the Creative Commons from the Art Happens Here blog (recommended by artist and friend Amy Hauber).  The Art Happens Here space on the image is the Remix. So if indeed the Internet is a palate for mixing media, Remix happens here.

…speaking of reading, back in January at our CC presentation Amy Hauber recommended this,  The New Creativity is Solving Problems Together by Stuart Cunningham.  It’s a short and well written piece, and speaks to the collaborative premise of the creative commons. Central to the Remix is voices rather than authorial voice. Hence, the granting of great rights to access content in the CC License.  Mr. Cunningham’s essay is an interesting take on this collaborative premise…

…last time we pointed to the work of Lawrence Lessig.  While Lessig’s work is not hard to Google-‘n-get, but we’d like to draw attention to a text by Lessig that is a little off the beaten path, and is titled Code and the Commons. It was originally a speech given at Fordham University on February 9th, 1999, and what is so interesting about the speech is how he demonstrates that html was the dynamic that drew the concept of the commons, and intellectual property together into what become the CC.  This narrative from the talk illustrates the convergence (it’s a little long (by blog post standards)):

The idea of Lex Informatica, or code, is this: That what makes
cyberspace so different is that it is constituted by these laws of
nature that we write. What defines the experience that cyberspace
is is a set of instructions written into code that we, or more
precisely, code writers, have authored. This code sets the rules of
this space; it regulates behavior in this space; it determines what’s
possible here, and what’s not possible. And as we look to this code
maturing, Reidenberg rightly saw that this code would become its
own type of law. That we could define life in cyberspace as we
wanted — with privacy, or without; with anonymity or without;
with universal access, or without; with the freedom to speak and
publish, or without — and then write what we wanted into the
code. The code would then regulate life there. And that regulation
through code Reidenberg called Lex Informatica.
It’s almost four years since Reidenberg first started talking
about this form of law, and we are just on the cusp of a time when
others can begin to get the point he saw then. For as the code of
cyberspace is maturing, we are beginning to see just how radically
different the world can be. And we are beginning to see how
important it will be for us to take a hand in this construction.

An early work by Lessig (he even uses the term cyberspace), but an important one I think in understanding the way the Internet is a foundation to concept of the CC, and how the concept of the CC might be an enduring legacy of the Internet.

Years ago in the days before the World Wide Web, someone described the Internet as “an organization run by nobody.”  Like the Internet, the Creative Commons is venture driven by interested parties, not a platform for a person on persons with one point of view.  However, if you had to a identify a spokes-person for the CC, it would be Lawrence Lessig.  Lessig’s work on intellectual property and digital technologies evolved into what we now understand as the Creative Commons.

Lessig is an active speaker and writer. He was  recently announced a hiatus from blogging, but his blog site is still a venue for publishing a great deal of his material.    We have a number of his books in the collection (Free Culture, The Future of Ideas, and Remix). Further, if you venture to Facebook and search his name, you’ll see Lawrence Lessig’s Facebook page, where he has posted, among other things, video of several talks he’s given. If you are interested in the CC, it’s worth the time to get to know Lessig’s work.

Remix is a core concept, and essentially an inspiration for the whole Creative Commons concept.  The idea is that as discourse becomes digital, it becomes quickly and easily interchangeable.  From this elasticity comes the idea (possibility?) of people showing their creativity in remixing songs themselves, or splicing different discourses together to create something new.  Think of it as making collages, only, collages with moving parts (film, music, animation, etc.) Therein lies the rub: does slicing together existing digital discourse constitute originality, or is it taking other people’s stuff?

The creative commons has stuff on remix here (with examples), and Uwe Hermann has some good “practical examples” here…

In the January presentation on the Creative Commons, it feel to Michelle to speak to working with the CC, and understanding what it is and isn’t.  A note she made to really underscore the point that CC is not a alternative to or absence of copyright is:

• With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify(namely, the types of licenses outlined in the last blog post)…

The notes from her lecture which form a librarians/readers/newbie guide to understanding what the Creative Common is meant to do can be found here…

…for the summer of 2010 (which has already been too hot, too cool, too wet, and too dry) the focus of Odyssey Online is going to be the Creative Commons.  We are going to work through the Creative Commons from theory to practice, and hopefully create a small body of work that could the be the basis for reflection on the Creative Commons, and whether it indeed speaks to where digital publication mediums might take human creativity.

First, then, definitions.  Creative Commons is all about copyright, or, rather, making copyright viable and elastic for this culture of the Internet.

On January 14th,  as part of SLU Techfest ’10 activities, Librarians Paul Doty and Michelle Gillie joined Amy Hauber of the Fine Arts Department to present on Creative Commons Copyright Licenses.  Michelle searched out and presented these Creative Commons basics:

The Creative Commons is not anti-copyright–what the creative commons strives to do is to create a copyright middle ground:

By using a combination of the licenses that CC makes available, creators retain the copyright to their work, and at the same time they can set limits that allow others to share it and build on it.

To accomplish this Creative Commons issues five types of licenses:

Attribution (abbreviated by): you can share, display, and perform this work, and any derivatives of this work, as long as you give credit to the original creator.

Share Alike (abbreviated sa): you may alter or build on this work and share it, but only if you do so using the same kind of Creative Commons license that was applied to the original.

Non-Commercial (abbreviated nc): you’re allowed to share this work, and anything derived from it, as long as you’re not going to make a profit.

Non-Derivative (abbreviated nd): you can share exact copies of this work, but you’re not allowed to alter it in any way.
[http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/]

With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify…
[http://creativecommons.org/choose/]

…more CC coming this pleasant summer Canton days…