First, I think JPD’s comments about artistic motivation ignore the creeping context of intellectual property law. I don’t know about Faulkner, but Shakespeare could base Romeo and Juliet on a poem he’d read precisely because he didn’t have to worry about Arthur Brooke suing him for copyright violation. Artists driven by selfish passion today may or may not be familiar with intellectual property law, but they can be prosecuted under it either way.

I’m just not sure what to make of the comments about my own work (as one who has adopted a CC license). I don’t think my own songs are “significant,” except to the people who like them. But I don’t think my awareness of IP issues is what makes them insignificant.

We all think about things other than our art. William Carlos Williams was a practicing physician. Faulkner drank. If they had time for these activities and could still write Paterson and As I Lay Dying, then our next great genius can spare a few hours to think about copyright. Or maybe the genius after that.

Finally, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ll happily concur that my cover of “Southdown” was a “geeky experiment”. What’s wrong with geeky experiments?

That being said, there’s still the apochryphal Lennon and McCartney line about going home to write themselves a new swimming pool.

Rob said:

“It�s never �I wrote this novel so I could rake in the bucks.�

True, but now you need to ask whether that is the truth or whether it is because their PR team/common sense tells them they will end up as a pariah if they admit that they are only in it for the money…

For artists like Ives, who did care about these issues, the CC licensing scheme is perfect.

If “significant” is taken to be a judgement about the quality of the work or works, not of the philisophical tastes of the author, then one can reach a different conclusion.

Some of Charles Ives’s (died 1954) music was, according to reports, intended to be placed by its author in the public domain. According to one of his biographers. He agreed to submit music to be published in _New Music_ provided the periodical did not claim copyright in it:

It seems that [Charles Ives] had been incensed to find that, according to its custom, _New Music_ had taken out a copright in the composer’s name for the part of his Fourth Symphony that it had issued. Ives stalked up and down the room, growing red in the face to an alarming degree and flailing the air with his cane: “EVERYBODY who wants a copy is to have one! If anyone wants to copy or reprint these pieces, that’s FINE! This music is not to make money but to be known and heard. Why should I interfere with its life by hanging on to some sort of personal legal right in it?”
–Crowell and Crowell, _Charles Ives and his Music_, p. 121.

If this anecdote is true, and if _New Music_ abided by the condition, then some of Ives’ work that was published in _New Music_ subsequently to this incident might now be in the public domain.

Copyright is now CLAIMED in many of Ives’s works–in my opinion, falsely in some cases, though I would never have the resources to litigate the issue against those who would, let us imagine, argue that the 1922 publication of _114 Songs_ was a “limited” rather than a “general” publication. But at least one composer, some of whose works are taken by historians and musicians to be “significant” works, is reported to have tried to release some his works to the public domain because he did not want to interfere with the life of his works. Whatever one may think of Ives and his music, this example shows that it is possible to define “significant” in such a way that it is not automatically exclusive of those who have an interest in the moral and philosophical interest of copyright.

But Rob, when you say that the first Hollywood films were incredibly amateurish, you’re talking about an early foray into technology. I’m not skeptical about the power of this technology to transform the world. Your example makes it sound as though I am saying, “Oh, this internet fad will never amount to anything.”

I am skeptical of the power of this intellectual property scheme, the CC licenses, to spur the creation of significant works of art, because I think that the most talented artists aren’t as interested in intellectual property constructs as the people who read this blog are.

The best example somebody could cite here was Cory Doctorow’s book. Bad example. That is a book written by a geek, for geeks. I’m not saying it’s not a good book, but it’s not representative of literature as a whole — it’s written by an EFF employee; of course he cares about Creative Commons licenses.

In my view, insisting that CC licenses have a chance of catching on in a significant way among significant artists of various genres, is like insisting that Linux has a fighting chance of catching on among ordinary computer users. (The average computer user needs Linux on his machine, about as much as he needs a hole in his head.) Both of these things — CC licenses and Linux — are, and will remain, the province of idealistic geeks, who find moral issues in technologies and intellectual property constructs, that most people couldn’t care less about.

A couple of for-instances: 1-800 numbers, 900 number, calling cards, number portability and SMS messages for a couple of major US carriers are all handled by switches programmed using gnu-derived tools. One level removed, perhaps, from an end product, but its hard to deny that it’s “significant”, even if you think only a nerd could care about a web server. It seems plausible to me that this sort of second-level use is where CC might flourish – not necessarily the works themselves, but in their integration into other works.