The winners of the Creative Commons Moving Image Contest have been announced, and the first place film blew me away. You need to see it right this second, it’s intelligent and stylish. However, the third place entry featured a character that caught my eye, and so in the spirit of the contest I’ve taken him and made a 3 panel cartoon. Because the movie was licensed under the Creative Commons, it’s perfectly legal for me to do even though the creator has no idea I’m doing it. This comic is released under the BY-NC-SA license and is based on a fictional figure created by Alex Tarkowski and Jakub Tarkowski.
2 responses to “Creative Commons Contest Concluded”
I watched all three movies….and while I was impressed with them, I can’t help wondering what LEGAL power any of this has? I mean…am I misunderstanding things or are people just making up their own versions of copyright law?
Bear in mind I didn’t actually bother to read anything on the cc webpage…I just watched the movies. What I got out of it is a hippy concept of copyright law. As with most hippy ideals, I think the concept is fantastic….it’s the concept’s interaction with the real world that seems to fall short.
How can I look at this as anything other than an extra credit project for some 300 level art class when the “CCPL” is immediately discredited by the following disclaimer from their website….
“CREATIVE COMMONS CORPORATION IS NOT A LAW FIRM AND DOES NOT PROVIDE LEGAL SERVICES. DISTRIBUTION OF THIS DRAFT LICENSE DOES NOT CREATE AN ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP. CREATIVE COMMONS PROVIDES THIS INFORMATION ON AN “AS-IS” BASIS. CREATIVE COMMONS MAKES NO WARRANTIES REGARDING THE INFORMATION PROVIDED, AND DISCLAIMS LIABILITY FOR DAMAGES RESULTING FROM ITS USE.”
and…
“Creative Commons is not a party to this License, and makes no warranty whatsoever in connection with the Work. Creative Commons will not be liable to You or any party on any legal theory for any damages whatsoever, including without limitation any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising in connection to this license. Notwithstanding the foregoing two (2) sentences, if Creative Commons has expressly identified itself as the Licensor hereunder, it shall have all rights and obligations of Licensor.”
Saturate me with links………………………….now
They’re not creating their own copyright law, they’re creating licenses. Like overly restrictive software licenses, but in reverse; they grant additional rights to people who want them. It’s like the GPL, it provides less restrictive copyright protections for people who want them. Take a look at Get Creative for a non-reading overview of Creative Commons and the Learn More section for more information in comic book form.
For real world interaction, here’s a sampling of featured content on CC’s website:
Common Content – directory of CC licensed mediaWorld66 – collaborative travel guide [BY-SA]Magnatune – Lots and lots of music [BY-NC-SA]The Prelenger Archives – An amazing sampling of ephemeral films from years ago, discussed here earlier [PD]
As for the lawyer code, if you read a lot of legal documents you’ll see that cover-your-ass stuff is the hallmark of lawyerdom. If it didn’t have that kind of stuff I’d be worried about it being an art project, and you can be assured that they have plenty of legal brains to back it up. What it’s saying is that CC isn’t your lawyer just because you used one of their licenses, that if you do something dumb with it that it’s not their fault, and that if you release something with a CC license and then get mad at the results you can’t blame them.