James G. on Creativity and Ownership on There

James Grimmelmann has a really interesting piece on Gaming and IP, post State of Play. The Friday morning session had Second Life renouncing any copyright interest for anything its players make while engaging its games. At the session, Yochai Benkler (one of my heros! Because his voice is captivating -- he could read the phone book and I would listen -- but really because he thinks in such interesting ways -- just rethinking what he says, turning it and rethinking again -- I could do that for hours) asked about hurdles to creativity Second Life had placed within There, because he was confused about this announcement, in the context of these hurdles. James is now looking at the issues that question brought up.

One important other point James makes:

Now, the immediate response that Rosedale supplied to Benkler's question was the Creative Commons one: Larry Lessig has offered us advice on this one. We're looking very seriously into rolling Creative Commons licenses into our code, so you can stamp an object as Creative Commons when you upload it. Benkler makes the same response to the idea of an in-game Creative Commons that he makes to the real-life one: a Creative Commons is a second-best substitute for a real commons. You're bringing in all the faults of copyright law, and then you make this jujitsu move, that we can somehow compensate for these faults. Why not give them true sharing?

This is exactly the problem I was describing about Creative Commons licenses the other day with someone, when we were discussing the short and long term issues with compulsory licenses. Basically, in the short term (a few years) CC licenses and compulsory licensing solve many problems. But longer term, as we do more with digital media, create more within digital environments (verses digitized analog media), develop digital communities with shared input on creative works, across many people and locations, I worry that we are putting a band-aid on something that needs a complete overhaul.

Basically, we need digital IP, digital copyright. And these solutions (CC and CL) are in many ways analog, with a little digitization. They don't truly reflect digital media's properties or issues, or reconcile how to give creators the right amount of control and compensation and ownership, and the public (and other creators) the right amount of access to the public domain, sharing, fair use and other concepts we have already acknowledged in the analog world as important balances to IP ownership, as well as collaboration and sampling, which will be central issues in the creation of digital works. And they don't give the flexibility we will need as increasingly, digital information development transcends our current analog metaphors, and our culture with it.

Anyway, excellent essay by James. Read it.

Posted by Mary Hodder at December 07, 2003 02:07 PM | TrackBack