Creative Commons in Crystal Castles throwing stones
No this is not my long promised article on creative commons but its some insight why this article never appeared. I found a band that I actually liked musical wise and I whizzed the net to find out more about them - you know some nice postpunktrash80s8bitwomanscreaming music. Interestingly the first articles that I found about the band where about plagiarizing other bands and visual artists who had released their stuff under creative commons. Allegedly Crystal Castles (only really bad myspace site that I am not linking to) stole some riffs and sampled some stuff outright and also used some artwork found on the web licensed under Creative Commons for their promotion t-shirts. Now the band became kind of famous (hey they are a lot of fun after all) and was sported in a commercial.
Now I just had the discussion yesterday - no its not allowed to use other people creative common licensed work if you make money if its not explicitly set to the "commercial attribution" license - which is virtually none of the stuff found. Just have a browse through flickr and search in the advanced search option for stuff that you can use commercially - you get if you are lucky 1% of the results you would normally.
Now of course most of the failure lies with the band itself but MUCH MORE of the failure lies with the creative commons foundation and the non-existing rules about non-commercialism. The most asked question about creative commons must be "Am I doing something commercial?". And guess what - even after sending repeated emails to a lot of people in the digital rights movement including Creative Commons Foundation itself - nobody can answer that question. It seems nobody can answer for sure any questions that goes deeper then the "oh creative commons is so cool and free and makes the world a better place". Donīt understand me wrong. I love what creative commons does - yet in the end they better hammer out ANY legal problem they can not answer to someone who creates content. It seems at the moment for example that putting embeds in your page - in Germany you ARE liable (court opinion from Munich of all places) for copyright infringement even if the video is hosted on another site - while in the US you do NOT seem to be liable (but thats not a given - noone is 100% sure). That is: you post a noncommercial CC video that is hosted on YouTube or other similar places on your for profit site (which in itself is not clear where that starts) you are liable for copyright infringement. And no creative commons does know shit about this. "We can not comment on this" was all I got from 4 different people inside the creative commons foundation. Its a nightmare PR wise and legal wise and I predict this will likely bring Creative Commons to a fall if they do not get their act together on the thorny "grey" issues of their license - heck make mock court examples just so its out of the way once and for all. If they are not doing it a high profile case will come around the next bend and you will have plastered all over everything how insufficient CC is. I was a bit shocked - as a content producer - with the lack of understanding on the part of the CC in these "grey goo" matters.
So going back to the band I can see how they started out all indy like never thought it possible to get a record deal or the label are just friends having a great community and then it all of the sudden took off and they where in the spotlight and the once notforprofit thing turned in some bucks and also some media attention and the original owners of the artwork got upset their CC licensed stuff was used - then the band starting to denying it - being their first record and all and not wanting to spoil their success.
Moral of story - produce your own stuff when you want to be successful - 100% of it not matter what medium you operate the bullet is going to bite you otherwise also its the best way to develop your own handwriting and further the art you are doing on a whole.
Oh and embrace Creative Commons but if you have a question about some legal stuff ASK OUT VERY LOUD - make a stink out of it. I can really only hope that the Creative Commons folks are clearing up the legal mess they are having in front of them before it goes downhill.
PS: I will not post any links because I donīt want to take part of the blame game on this band. Nor do I post any email exchange with the lawyers as they have asked me nicely not to because nobody is 100% sure about the legality and implications of some of the CC license points.