Exploring the Creative Commons; Sgt. Rizzo, Advising.

 My brother-in-law is a smart cookie, smarter than I ever hope to be. I play catch-up a lot to him, and that’s fine, because in conversing with him (as we do through blog posts and comments, rarely face-to-face, as we’re both shy, reserved individuals) I’ve learned a lot.

So today I’m learning about Creative Commons licensing, just to find out what the hoo-hah is. I’m starting at the source at www.creativecommons.org, which offers, by the way, excellent explanations of the various licenses the organization recognizes.

Here, I’ll briefly recap the offered licenses:

Attribution. You authorize others to distribute, alter, or build upon your work – even for profit – as long as they give you credit for the original creation.

• Attribution Share Alike. You authorize others to distribute, alter, or build upon your work – even for profit – as long as they give you credit for the original work and license it under similar terms.
• Attribution No Derivatives. You authorize the commercial and non-commercial distribution of your work, as long as you get the credit for it.
• Attribution Non-Commercial. Same as Attribution above, but they must agree not to profit from your work or theirs.
• Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike. Same as Attribution Share Alike, but they must agree not to profit from your work or theirs.
• Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives. Same as Attribution No Derivatives above, but they must agree not to profit from your work or theirs.

That’s all well and good. And then Sgt. Luther Rizzo comes into the room and, with his Louisiana drawl, says, “Awl ah wahnt is mah monaaayyyyy.”

So, how do people who license their creations under a Creative Commons license get paid? Or should they be?

Yes, the folks at creativecommons.org say. Here’s an excerpt from their FAQ:

Can I still make money from a work I make available under a Creative Commons licenses?

Absolutely. Firstly, because our licenses are non-exclusive which means you are not tied down to only make a piece of your content available under a Creative Commons license; you can also enter into other revenue-generating licenses in relation to your work. One of our central goals is to encourage people to experiment with new ways to promote and market their work.

Secondly, the noncommercial license option is an inventive tool designed to allow people to maximize the distribution of their works while keeping control of the commercial aspects of their copyright. To make one thing clear that is sometimes misunderstood: the "noncommercial use" condition applies only to others who use your work, not to you (the licensor). So if you choose to license your work under a Creative Commons license that includes the “noncommercial use” option, you impose the ”noncommercial” condition on the users (licensees). However, you, the creator of the work and/or licensor, may at any time decide to use it commercially. People who want to copy or adapt your work, "primarily for monetary compensation or financial gain" must get your separate permission first.

One thing to note on the noncommercial provision: under current U.S. law, file-sharing or the trading of works online is considered a commercial use -- even if no money changes hands. Because we believe that file-sharing, used properly, is a powerful tool for distribution and education, all Creative Commons licenses contain a special exception for file-sharing. The trading of works online is not a commercial use, under our documents, provided it is not done for monetary gain.

Okay, Sgt. Rizzo says.

So I write that book. I license it under a Creative Commons license – let’s say one of the non-commercial ones to start with; that seems the most conservative. I also file copyright notice with the United States, so I can defend my copyright in court (the folks at creativecommons.org suggest this). I put my book out on the Internets for everyone to see and for those really wound up about it, to alter in any way they see fit, as long as it’s done non-commercially and they give me credit for my original work. Effectively, in this instance, I’m using the Internet to find a co-author.

At the same time, I’m marketing my book directly to agents. I’m not one to sit around waiting for mah monaaayyy to come to me. No, like Sgt. Rizzo, I go in search of it. Either an agent bites or an agent doesn’t bite. I get a deal or I don’t.

Then someone who saw my work under that Creative Commons license contacts me. “Hey,” he or she says. “I altered your work. I made it better. Want to read it? Maybe we can get it published.” Maybe, just maybe, it’s good enough that, if an agent hasn’t bit, the new, improved work gets a bite. Good for me, right? I’m a published author – though the ego has to take a hit, giving co-authorship to another.

But, Sgt. Rizzo says, in that comical drawl of his, “Lookit this way, Bub. Some monaaayy is better than none a’tall. Besides, just ‘cause this bozo got you in don’t mean you gotta keep him aroun’.”

Ego soars forward, bruised, but still mostly intact. The both of you sail into a book deal. The agent asks, “So, what y’all got for me next?” Maybe co-authorship isn’t that bad, right?

“Seems to me that sittin’ on that story with nobody readin’ it is like sittin’ on a log in winter in front of a fahr that’s ‘bout to go out,” Sgt. Rizzo says. “Throw that log in the fahr, hell yeah somebody else gonna share that heat. But you’ll get warm, too.”

Sergeant Rizzo, you’re as smart as my brother-in-law.

“Don’t go sayin’ stuff like that,” Sgt. Rizzo says. “I’m no college boy. Seems to me there are plenty o’ people out there who won’ care you’re the original author. Awl they wahnt is their monaaayyy, and if’n they gotta steal somethin’ o’ yours to get it, they’ll do it, quicker’n little Billy Bubba – ah tole you about mah boy, little Billy Bubba, right – will suck down a pecan pie. Or, they like what you got and they just don’t wanna pay you for it.”

That’s the protectivist chicken in me. So, next installment. What do literary agents think about Creative Commons licensing?

Awl Ah Wahnt Is Mah Monnnaayy. . .

Over at the Lithium Press, my brother-in-law's blog, he's written an interesting post on an interesting post that's attracted a lot of attention from folks who don't want to be called digital pirates, but are in the eyes of some.

This is the question of the ages, and how it'll be settled will decide the fate of more than one industry, area of study, discipline, and commandment.

And, frankly, it's a lot older question than the Internet likes to pretend it is. Take me, for instance. I can't remember the last time I bought a new book at a bookstore. Yet books continue to flow into my house at an alarming rate. So alarming, in fact, I had to pack two boxes of books under the stairs because they were becoming a fire hazard in the study. I bought all of those books used, from thrift stores, with none of the proceeds going to the authors. And legally, there's nothing they can do about it, unless they suddenly go after every thrift store, used book store, library sale and garage sale in the nation, looking for a cut. And you've got newspapers and magazines bragging to advertisers: Hey, each copy of our publication is read by 2.3, 3.4 people. That's pass-along readership. The subsequent readers don't pay a cent for the publication they're reading. But they've obviously got some value to the publication, as they're bragged about. "Hey! We have freeloaders reading our stuff! You ought to pay us more!"

Why, suddenly, in the digital era, can't we buy used e-books? And why can't we share our paywall passwords with other people, so they can read the stuff we just read? What is it about the digital age that suddenly equates a one to one ratio between consumer and media to be consumed? Yeah, we can spread the copies around easily. But you know what, I have a sister in North Idaho who shops for books at a used book store up there, and she sends me the occasional book. It's laborious and more expensive than the Internet, but I still get the books I want without having paid a cent for them. The authors get nothing out of the transaction.

About a year ago, I saw a new book from one of my favorite authors at the book store. I really wanted to buy it. But it cost $24. It stayed at the bookstore. I don't have that kind of money lying around the house. But you know what? I've got the book now. Didn't pay for it. My sister bought it used. Read it, then mailed it to me. She doesn't have the room to store books, and typically doesn't re-read books anyway, or at least not as much as I do. So I've got the book. Free, absolutely free.

I'm scum.

I'm a wannabe author. I finished writing the first draft of a fantasy novel just a few weeks ago. It's available for free, in installments, on my blog. Nobody wants it. Nobody's reading it. Who am I to think that if it's printed, bound, edited and marketed that suddenly someone will want to read it? Did I write it for financial gain, or for the fact that I wanted to write a book? What's more important? The remuneration, or the reward of having accomplished something difficult? I don't think it's unreasonable that somewhere along the line, if people want to read what I've written, they ought to pay me for the privilege. That's all Mozart wanted with the music he wrote. He loved doing it. But doing it all for free didn't help pay the bills.

My brother-in-law writes this, which offer something to think about:

When a pianist, as in this article, collects all the significant piano music ever published, pops it on a thumbdrive, and gives it away to other pianists, I have a hard time seeing any difference between that pianist and most scholars. Probably, true enough, this is sowing some seeds of destruction, but it also contains the seeds of creation. And I don't know why doing this is fair-use if you work at a university but piracy if you, well, work for a living. But of course, if academics ran the world, we'd replace copyright with open access on day one, or at least some generous implementation of Creative Commons licensing.

We can't say something is okay in one instance, wrong in the next -- which is illustrated by buying used books and by counting pass-along readership. Speaking of which, a friend of mine just e-mailed me a NPR article on the fate of the weekly news magazine -- because said friend wants my input as we as a group at Uncharted.net ponder how we can enter the print market. We've already published our first book. We published a four-page "magazine" in order to secure copyright on the Uncharted name in print media. But the big question remains: Will we be flogging a dead horse? We can't get our website to pay for itself, let alone paying to print books and magazines. And in the meantime, I paid no one to read that article. In its entirety. E-mailed to me at home so I didn't even have to search it out.

Here's something along the lines of what my BNL writes about: Tony Woodfield, writing for the Wall Street Journal, about the incredibly high fees he's being asked to quote copyrighted material in a book he's writing. I've got the same problem with another book I'm working on. If the fees are like this, the song that partially inspired me will have to be excised -- and at a dear cost, since the song is almost a character in the novel.

But don't people who create something have the right to expect -- and receive -- some kind of remuneration for their creativity along the way? Creative Commons licensing may foster creativity, but as an author myself, one of these days, I reserve the right to make the following statement:

Awl Ah Wahnt is Mah Monnnaaayyy. . . 

This video clip is, of course, copyrighted by 20th Century Fox. It comes from Episode 21, Season 10, of M*A*S*H, which I'm posting here under our nation's comically vague fair use laws, in order to prove a point. May God have mercy on my soul. Does it take the curse off it if I say it comes from the Season Ten DVD set that we bought -- legitimately -- and since I'm not posting the entire episode, but only a portion, nobody can really pirate this? I don't know . . .