From the PBS website:
Beginning Sept. 6, PBS will make available – exclusively over the Internet – broadcast television’s first entirely downloadable series, featuring PBS technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely’s interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology.
…
“This ground-breaking series will be distributed under a Creative Commons license, so if viewers like what they see, they can redistribute the shows or even edit their own non-commercial version,” Cindy Johanson, Senior Vice President, PBS Interactive Learning, said.
Good stuff. Personally I think all of PBS content should be available via torrents, but mayble I just read too much into that whole ‘public’ thing. 😉
Here in the Netherlands, virtually all public broadcasting is available on-line for free (they keep adding more shows every day it seems). However, all content is “all rights reserved” unfortunately. I hope they open some content up for remixing, it’s a vast archive.
Besides broadcasting, a content management system was developed by the public broadcasters (MMbase, under a Mozilla licence). So luckily, there is a notion of ‘giving back’. Hopefully CC will open their eyes a bit further.
“This ground-breaking series will be distributed under a Creative Commons license, so if viewers like what they see, they can redistribute the shows or even edit their own non-commercial version.“
thus the flaw in the CC license. like the GPL, it imposes unnecessary constraints on commercial exploitation. if someone can rip, mix, and burn an interview with robert cringely such that people would be willing to pay to see it, why use copyright to stop them? if the objective of CC is to promote technological and artistic “innovation” and broad distribution why claim any copyright whatsoever? someone using a CC:ed PBS broadcast for commercial purposes does not take anything away from the original or make the original any less available.
is it jealousy? that someone gives something away for free and someone else makes money from it? to the person who gives something away for free what should it matter as long as what she gave away for free remains freely available? is it envy? is it greed?
the general rant on this board is how copyright is used to support the commercial agenda of the big, bad, boogeyman corporation. (ogga-booga!) CC using copyright to IMPOSE through these otherwise evil copyright laws a non-commercial agenda is seen as all goodness and light.
we are bemused by this apparent hypocrisy.
moreover as long as CC uses copyright to impose a (discredited) 20th century ideology on a 21st century economy, does this not also demand and require tools and methods required to enforce it? is not the sharks with friggin laser beams protection called for by us three blind mice as essential to CC as it is to the traditional commercial uses of copyright? is it not true that without DRM anyone could “illegally” use CC:ed content in a manner inconsistent with the CC license?
that CC uses the otherwise evil law called copyright to “feed and water the commons” suggests to us that the problem is not copyright. copyright is actually a good thing: it is capitalism that is bad. it seems to us that the pejorative charge of “communist” so often leveled at commons-ists may have some good basis in fact.
please, friends, clarify if we have missed something. help us understand how we have it all wrong.
TBM: Considering that you beyond doubt are more of a polemist than someone with a real agenda I don’t know would I bother replying, but here it goes. What alternative do you see CC having to using copyright? Copyright is what is there by law, and unless you prepared to sit with your hands inn your lap for the next decade hoping you get through to the worlds politicans to change the regime you have little choice but to try to work for what you want within the structures which are here today. Called CC hypocratic for relaying on copyright is about as meaningful as claiming someone who thinks the legal system is severly broken is a hypocrit for defending himself in a lawsuit.
Secondly it isn’t CC who choose what license PBS or any organisation choose. I am sure Lessig and anyone else here agree it would be better if the copyright holders used one of the CC licences which allow commerical exploitation. The thing is, and I am suprised you didn’t see this, it is the copyright holders who choose what CC license they choose to use, not Lessig or anyone else associated with CC. And so far many (most?) of them seem to choose a CC license which prohibits commerical exploitation. And while it seems we both agree this is less than optimal, it is a better solution for the public than if the content hadn’t been CC licensed at all, cause that would have made the content 100% unavailable, even for non-commerical uses (apart from everyone negotiating their own deal to use the content, which history so far as shown that doesn’t really work out/scale).
Also for someone who have at multiple times called upon Godwin’s law for defence you have no inhibitions about degenerating every other posting you make into claim of communism.
thus the flaw in the CC license. like the GPL, it imposes unnecessary constraints on commercial exploitation.
You are allowed to sell GPL-ed software, or use it for commercial advantage. Many of the most successful companies of the moment get commercial advantage from using GPL-licensed software (or other copylefted software). You could not do this with NC.
I agree with you that CC-NC is bad. I personally cannot stand NC. But NC is far and away CC’s most popular license module. The market has spoken. Who are we to question the market?
if someone can rip, mix, and burn an interview with robert cringely such that people would be willing to pay to see it, why use copyright to stop them?
The reason for copyrighting and licensing the work is to ensure its ongoing freedom, not to limit its immediate exploitability. Importantly, the character of this freedom is chosen by the author, not by some central politburo.
We are not less free if we are denied the freedom to limit other’s freedom.
is not the sharks with friggin laser beams protection called for by us three blind mice as essential to CC as it is to the traditional commercial uses of copyright?
And don’t locks rely on burglars to keep the contents of your house safe?
All three of you got it wrong…
thus the flaw in the CC license. like the GPL, it imposes unnecessary constraints on commercial exploitation. if someone can rip, mix, and burn an interview with robert cringely such that people would be willing to pay to see it, why use copyright to stop them?
The CC license doesn’t stop them. Copyright is not exclusive. A creator of a work can “give away” copies for noncommercial use and it and those derivative works can circulate until there are no hard drives left to contain another copy without giving away the right to demand payment when Virgin comes knocking.
This doesn’t “stop” anything except the ability of la machine to exploit a world full of wired Robert Johnsons. CC and GPL give creative content its walking papers – the freedom to circulate where it will without danger of being whisked away to the involuntary servitude of a corporate master.
rob myers, thanks for the clarification on NC. we should have been more specific in our question.
The reason for copyrighting and licensing the work is to ensure its ongoing freedom, not to limit its immediate exploitability. Importantly, the character of this freedom is chosen by the author, not by some central politburo.
no argument that the license is chosen by the author – and not some central politburo – but why does PBS choose NC? “freedom?” please. what about the freedom of commercial exploitation? why should PBS – a government and private funded entity – want to stifle commercial exploitation? despite the claims of the idealists on this board a significant amount of innovation comes from commercial exploitation.
again, the fact that someone might commercially exploit the PBS content does not IN ANY WAY limit or restrict the availability of the original PBS content. its ongoing “freedom” (whatever that means) is unperturbed by the co-existence of commercial exploitation.
it just seems to us that the CC-NC agenda is precisely that: non-commercial and anti-capitalist. it has nothing to do with promoting innovation. yes, the choice of the license is not imposed on anyone, but the choice of it suggests to us that there is a strong element of anti-capitalism within the CC movement.
Also for someone who have at multiple times called upon Godwin’s law for defence you have no inhibitions about degenerating every other posting you make into claim of communism.
Christian Schaller, the three blind mice have NEVER mentioned herr hitler in connection with the copyright issues discussed on this board. we argue, discuss, challenge, and disagree. as the sole dissenting voices in this echo chamber, we would like to our dissenting views inject some color into this blog. our agenda is simple intellectual curiosity. we post anonymously, never self-link, and are not trying to impress anyone or make a name for ourselves.
it is not our agenda to offend the groupthink of the lessig blog, but we understand that our comments are not always well-received. nevertheless, we are gererally met with polite, erudite, and thoughful responses. your suggestion that we are polemics is unkind and impolite.
answer the question: why should PBS want to stifle commercial exploitation by using a CC-NC license?
TBM–
Perhaps it is not PBS, but rather Mr. Cringely that has chosen the CC-NC license. As a professional journalist, it is in his interest to prevent others from profiting from the work in which he invested his reputation without compensating him. Despite that restriction, it is also in his interest as a public personality to promote the dissemination of these interviews in whatever form to the largest possible audience. Hence, for him, the CC-NC license is a good choice and may well could have been part of the contract he formed with PBS under which these interviews were conducted.
Jonathan