Analyzing the Art of Creative Commons

NYConvergence ORIGINAL
by: Amy Berryhill

If there is a fight in the mind of any creator, where the battle between sharing and profiting begins, Creative Commons licensing offers a treaty.

A panel discussion about Creative Commons' open copyright licenses took place at an Arts, Culture and Technology meetup last night. Speakers included a museum technology director, artists, a lawyer and a representative from Creative Commons.

"The great thing about Creative Commons is that it gives you a lot of choices," said Shelley Bernstein, chief of technology at the Brooklyn Museum. "You can start with a level of risk where you are comfortable, and move forward from there if it makes sense."

The Brooklyn Museum uses Creative Commons licensing on their website and is reviewing their entire collection to determine appropriate levels of copyright for each piece. "The Brooklyn Museum has a community oriented approach and we take that very seriously," said Bernstein.

According to Fred Benenson, a product manager at Creative Commons and professor at NYU, that is precisely the point. "The founding fathers knew that public access was important to the public good," Benenson explained. He outlined how open standards like TCP/IP, Ethernet and HTML have led to quantum leaps in innovation, advancements that he argued would not have been possible with restrictive copyrights.

Because the Internet developed from open standards and protocols, it is no surprise that digital works often enjoy less restrictive rights than their non-digital counterparts. "I would never make a purely digital product without the intention that it would be copied," said Tim Whidden, an artist with MTAA and frequent user of Creative Commons licensing.

"You have to be on your customer's terms," added Bernstein, "and those terms have changed."