If you’ve ever had any questions about copyright or Creative Commons, now is your chance to ask them. The APC is running a 2-week forum for southern Africans who want to find out more about Creative Commons and how it applies to them. Join up here and fire away!
Wired CD available for download
Make sure you download the Wired CD mp3 here. One of my favorite bands, Spoon, is on there with a great track called, ‘Revenge!’ What’s your favorite?
Who owns Madiba’s name?
Denise Nicholson sent me this News24 article about our Madiba’s impending trademark registration of “Nelson Mandela”, his clan name “Madiba”, his Xhosa name “Rolihlahla” as well as his prison number 46664.
I can understand how the man wants to control who uses his name, but this remark from Madiba’s lawyer, Don MacRobert, I do not understand. According to the article, MacRobert ‘estimates that the foundation has incurred losses of “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in potential revenues from private merchandising using the Mandela name or portraits.’
This ‘lost revenue’ argument has been used often in intellectual property debates (especially by the music industry) but I, for one, can’t understand why. Is Madiba in the business of making Tshirts, setting up panel beating shops or selling art? Will this mean that the (mostly struggling) artists that use our hero’s image on Tshirts and mugs and posters won’t be able to use his face and name in freedom without going through a long, expensive process of obtaining ‘permission’?
Is the Nelson Mandela Foundation saying that they will respond to the obvious need of South African consumers to purchase products and services relating to the Madiba ‘brand’? Will the Foundation sell Tshirts and posters and artwork and crafts with his name and his image in order to satisfy the need of the public to enjoy the image of our hero? And when the terrible day comes that Madiba dies, will we have to turn to lawyers to interpret the wishes of the man to remain an icon of freedom in South Africa?
So many questions. And no easy answers. I just hope that this case doesn’t follow the trend of so many others. Che Guevara’s image and name, I presume, were never trademarked – that’s why he remains so prevalent in public consciousness to this day (see this cool site). I hope that Madiba’s image will remain powerful too, but if protection and enforcement of his ‘brand’ is too restrictive, our children’s children may only hear about the man in their history lessons rather than being reminded of him while sipping Oros at lunchtime.
Commoner of the week: Roy Blumenthal
Our cc-er of the week is Roy Blumenthal – ‘artist, filmmaker, radio personality, performance poet, trouble-shooter, and ex-advertising copywriter’. Roy lives in Johannesburg and has a wonderful blog called ‘Coffeeshop Shmuck’ consisting of ‘totally subjective coffee-shop and restaurant reviews’ – a little more unusual (you’ll find great gossip on Roy’s latest hot dates) than what you’ll find in the M&G, that’s for sure!
Roy is a big fan of Creative Commons and has licensed everything on his site under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 licence. As South Africa’s first artist using Creative Commons to licence his printed works, Blementhal is getting people talking about copyright and the Internet – if you’ve ever been involved in the art industry, you’ll know how shocking it is for an artist to say: go ahead, copy it, share it – it’s what I want.
Below is an extract from a letter Blumenthal wrote during a pretty heated discussion about copyright in a global screenwriters’ forum. It gives you a bit of insight into a guy who is both creative and highly strategic in his approach to copyright.
‘The reason I opted to go for a Creative Commons licence is that I WANT people to spread my ideas around. I WANT people to use my thinking in a way that opens the world out a little bit. (Might be vain, of course, and my content might really NOT be world-changing, but to SOME, it might be, and I want them to be able to get those things circulating.) I’ve been very frustrated with conventional copyright law. It’s very much a blanket ownership statement, with no grey areas CONTROLLED BY THE OWNER OF THE COPYRIGHT. Those words are all-caps, cos they’re the frustration. I’M the owner of my stuff. I want to control how I disseminate it.
Finally, here’s a way of doing that.
If only Drudge [a blogger who one of the forum members had quoted, causing a ruckus amongst members as to the legality of the quote] had a Creative Commons licence on his site. Or at least some kind of explicit declaration of his intent for people to spread his views. I went to his site, and find that he’s a devout blogger, and he has three different kinds of syndication feeds. (Atom, RSS 1 and RSS 2.)
This indicates that he IS indeed keen for his stuff to be spread non-commercially.
Syndication feeds are things used by people or organisations supplying “news” or opinion or real news to give their content away for consumption by end users. But they’re generally “giving” in the sense of “allowing people to read and spread their content”. They’re not GIVING it away for commercial use.
In other words, if one of us were to write a movie based on a Roy Blumenthal (that’s me) blog, or a Drudge blog, lawyers will immediately pull their gloves on and scream about money.
But heck… spread my words to as many people as you want. Copy the whole blog, for that matter, and send it to your favourite congressperson. As long as, when someone makes bucks out it, I do too.’
Licensing Executives Society disappoints
I went to talk about Creative Commons at a South African Licensing Executives Society meeting in Pretoria last week. I made the trip and spent the time because I was hoping that this would be a great opportunity to get IP lawyers involved in Creative Commons locally – especially when we haven’t had much input from them on issues other than the enforcement and extensions of copy rights in recent years.
The group seemed happy enough when I presented them with the Creative Commons concept. But the main goal of the seminar had been to talk about the Laugh it off case, and this was where our opinions clashed.
I had brought Christiaan Bester along with me to share with the group his insights into why he thought that the judgement was wrong. Interestingly, Chris had originally agreed with the judge, but when he came to analyse the case for a paper that he was writing on limits to freedom of expression, he changed his perspective.
According to the judge, this was not a case of limiting LIO’s freedom of expression. LIO could have said whatever they wanted about SAB, according to Judge Harms, as long as it ‘wasn’t in the course of trade’.
The problem with this test is that it rules out any response to brands in the realm of popular culture and condemns independent expressions like these to the art gallery and to those (very few of us) who can afford to spend time and money on publishing ideas that might oppose those of million-dollar brands (not to mention the money it takes to a fight a case that will inevitably go to court – even if you were well within your rights).
If brands have been able to enter the realm of popular culture – on Tshirts, mugs and school soccer fields – why are people not able to engage in a conversation with those brands? If people aren’t able to charge for those expressions in order to cover the costs of producing independent voices, how will those voices ever be heard?
I asked one woman what she thought people could do if they opposed a brand. He replied that they could ‘easily’ have written an article and sent it to a newspaper. When I asked how much impact would that have on the youth of this country that are increasingly being lulled by a culture of imported consumerism, the subject was changed.
LIO’s 2004 annual – so successful in delivering an independent view from the youth of this country last year – is now being threatened by SAB and may very well not be distributed. I was one of the authors who submitted an article for the annual. Most of us aren’t being paid for our work – we just want an opportunity to be heard.
If that isn’t limiting freedom of expression in this country I don’t know what is. I can only hope that some members of this society that have become so good at defending the rights of multinational and brand propaganda will dedicate some time to balancing their actions by volunteering some time to developing the local Creative Commons licence. I’m afraid that I am not very hopeful about any change in direction for these trigger-happy lawyers. I’ll be sure to let you know, though.
IP-Watch reports on WIPO Broadcasting Treaty
Check out this new site if you want to track global intellectual property debates from Geneva. Things should be hotting up at WIPO over the next few months – especially over the proposed ‘Broadcasting Treaty‘ which would give broadcasters, cable casters, and, under the U.S. proposal, web casters a range of new rights, and at the same time, substantially expand both the scope and duration of currently recognised rights for broadcasting organisations. The EFF is calling the proposals a “grave threat” to competition, technological innovation, scientific research and freedom of expression. They say that the proposals could enable broadcasters to restrict the distribution of material that is not copyrightable, is in the public domain or is made freely availably by its creator.
Osisa funds cc awareness-raising in southern Africa
The Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa has announced that they will be funding a proposal from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) for awareness-raising in southern Africa until February next year. We’re wanting to build a working group of people in southern African countries for future Creative Commons projects – if you know of anyone, or you are that someone, please email me. We might just get a chance visit from Lawrence Lessig himself 
Weblog- Behance Network Creative Roundup
- Preparing Your Educational Resources for DiscoverEd
- Canonical Wants to Double Your Donation!
- Polish Ministry Creates Incentives for Sharing
- Printing Thom Yorke’s Head
- Jamendo PRO Partners with International Hotel & Restaurant Association
- Commoner Letter #3: Jay Yoon of CC Korea
- CC Taiwan Launches Version 3.0
- ccMixter→ArtisTech Media
- Free Software Award nominations due October 31
