Questions about free art licences

From CopyCult

Licenses

What are the relationship between the licenses and the artworks? How do artists select them? What is the strategy behind the selection(or even the crafting) of a specific license?

The adoption of new licenses is the sign of a transformation of the art practices? A simple rejection of the behaviour of the majors(RIAA, intolerance of the collective societies)? A bit of both? How is this illustrated in artworks?

Not selecting a license can be a choice too. Making a media piece using licensed material without permission is a choice too. Reapropriation can be motivated by various reasons: fun, admiration(fandom), critique, opportunism, ... (note: important to have in mind the "legal" way is not the only way, and "illegal" ways cannot be assimilated simply to piracy)

Licenses Comparison

Why the success of the Creative Commons now?(this question could be rephrased as "what are the differences between the Free Art License and CC", or as "are CC free(enough)?") Is it because ...

• it answers a crucial question(even if partially)?
• of the flexibility of the licenses(in opposition to free art license, ie, which is more monolithical)?
• of the effort in communication(website, comicstrips, concerts with stars...)?
• it seems consensual enough, it seems to allow for enough variations
• it gives the authors the feeling they are (still) in control over their work?
• contrarily to the GPL and Free Art License, it keeps the distinction between commercial and non-commercial(highly problematic: in a capitalist society how can you distinguish from commercial/non commercial)?
• it has been spread by the blog cultures(Movable Type included an automatic generation of CC licenses)?

How do licenses evolve? Are they transformed when they face the real challenge of the courts? Which are the significant changes between the different versions? Who decide for the evolution of a license? What is the decision mechanism behind these changes?

Economic Model

• What is the economic model behind CC? How can artists make a better living using CC?
• What is the economic model behind GPL? And does it apply to the arts or to the cultural production(but software isn't cultural production also?)?
• What is the economic model behind FAL?
• What is the economy of a netlabel? (not releasing CD helps labels to survive?) ref: http://structuredsound.net/ssw/phil.html
• In which measure author rights(applied in the traditionnal sense by a collective society) do really pay artists?
• How do artists earn their living (ref: http://www.constantvzw.com/cuisine)? Out of a composite spectrum of activities?
• How artists should earn their living?
• Is it still relevant to speak of artists in the "professionnal sense"? The production of cultural(a better word than cultural is required) creations is not limited to artists: let's consider the production of fans, hobbyists, techno-enthusiasts(weblogs), all activities including crafting skills, recipes, manuals,... And of course all the creations from students in schools that were once limited to the enclosed space of the class and that become open to the world via the web... Don't we inherit on a view on copyright, author's right too strictly bound to the economic model of the "professionnal artist"? One of the justification of the author's rights being the salary of the artist, what to think of the growing production of cultural creations which are not meant to be commercialised, sold, etc?

ref: http://www.strangelove.com/slideshows/articles/The_Poachers_and_the_Stormtroopers.htm

Inheritance from the GPL

• Most of the free licenses for art are inspired by the Copyleft and especially by the GPL.
• How to transfer a model from an economic/cultural context to another? Transfer or reinvent?
• Probably one of the most problematic point of this model is that it relies on a notion of authorship who still is supposed to be purely original. The idea to rewrite the code of computer languages from scratch. It leads to ideals of purity, the myth of a new purely original state ...

The GPL intended to go back to a previous stage in the history of informatics. A stage where programmers could easily exchange code. In this perspective, free software is a conservative movement. For artists, finding new ways/and new legal ways to exchange is a transformative movement. Contemporary artists are born in the framework of author's rights.(one could argue that leaving author's rights would be a return to a previous stage of art history: Middle Age, Renaissance produced major art works without copyrights). To change this framework would require a deeper revolution...

The copyleft can only exist where the copyright already exist. We need to think about this in regard to the societies that do not include such a legal framework.