From Ken Takusagawa, Free Culture Senate Candidate:
What is the problem this idea addresses, why does it matter?
Copyright protections and enforcement are a major roadblock to a free internet. The invention of the Internet and the increased cheapness of tracking technology has led to a massive crackdown on non-commercial copying that is historically unprecedented.
What is the goal of the idea?
Copyright law should be should be changed to make non-commercial copying completely legal. Doing so would ensure and preserve a free and open internet by encouraging creativity and communication.
How does the idea work?
By making non-commercial use legal, the we can fully realize the vast potential for communication, collaboration, and the democratization of information though, for example, peer-to-peer sharing and non-profit electronic libraries. Since public opinion is likely to support the legalization of non-commercial copying which has historically been legal, at least de facto, legalizing non-commercial use will be a return to that system, which produced tremendous artistic and cultural innovation, challenging the notion that diminished copyright protection will hurt creativity. Although many individuals may support this legal change, content owners will not, and may need to be compensated for the loss of existing protections. A tax on internet bandwidth is a possible source of such compensation.
From Franny Lee, CodeX – Stanford Center for Computers and Law:
What is the problem this idea addresses, why does it matter?
The Internet is an amazing, democratizing tool that has given rise to a prolific era of creativity through user generated content. It has also opened the floodgates to unauthorized use and piracy, which destabilizes the financial incentives that can encourage and sustain creativity. Sometimes these unauthorized uses are deliberate. At other times, these unauthorized uses are because there is no accessible path to legitimate use of content.
It can be near impossible to identify who to ask for permission to use an existing work, or whether you even need to ask permission at all, and legal ambiguity can chill creativity. Copyright works are particularly difficult to manage. With no formal registration required before copyright protections exist, records from government copyright offices are usually incomplete or outdated. Copyrights in a single work can be fractured and individual chunks transferred from owner to owner. Ownership data is therefore often obscure, unreliable and highly de-centralized.
What is the goal of the idea?
This idea tries to help develop a more creative Internet.
How does the idea work?
As a first step towards one possible solution, CodeX (The Stanford Center for Computers and Law) has started building a comprehensive registry for copyright works as one component of the Stanford Intellectual Property Exchange (SIPX).
This data registry is a public good and openly accessible to society through the Internet. The catalogue is intended to encompass more than just works under copyright, and identifies public domain materials and content that can be freely or otherwise conditionally shared. Both individual copyright owners and large content aggregators should have user interfaces that facilitate easy registration of data about their works. Where a user seeks a work where ownership cannot be identified, this data should be recorded into an orphan works registry that is searchable and facilitates ownership claims. SIPX should also work with channels commonly being used to create and distribute content to harvest ownership data of newly-created content and, where possible, provide the user with a reliable URL to locate the actual content file.
From Drew Westphal:
What is the problem this idea addresses, and why does it matter?
Taking down unlicensed reuses and remixes of copyrighted content is unproductive: the copyright owner misses out on potential exposure and collaborative opportunities, and the remixer loses the ability to showcase her creative work.
What is the goal of the idea?
“Backwards Micro-Licensing” means to solve the problem of unproductive takedowns by giving content owners a way to allow popular, inoffensive remixes and reuses to stay online while still giving the copyright owner a way to be reimbursed for his work per a reasonable, partly retroactive licensing policy.
How does the idea work?
Essentially, instead of encouraging content owners who take issue with reuses of their work to file unproductive takedown notices, this solution would encourage them instead to request a retroactive license that would account for the popularity and potential worth of the idea, and then submit that offer — the backwards micro-license — to the creator of the reuse or remix.
First, a way to appraise the value of allegedly infringing remixes must be devised. Second, target organizations seeking reimbursement or licenses would need to be identified, and a framework for determining the level of use — perhaps including spiders that could find this content — would be necessary. The author of this idea suggests that popular remix hosts like YouTube and Flickr could be good trial services for such a program.
