domain

Che Guevara Mashup

On 5th of March 1960 Alberto “Korda” Gutierrez took two pictures of Che Guevara. In 1967 the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli received two copies of the famous print at no cost.

Che by Korda

Feltrinelli started making posters from the prints with the notice â??Copyright Feltrinelliâ?? down in the corner. The image was on itâ??s way to become an international icon â?? it has been transformed, transplanted, transmitted and transfigured all over the world.

Korda never received a penny. For one reason only – Cuba had not signed the Berne Convention. Fidel Castro described the protection of intellectual property as imperialistic “bullshit”. Does this mean that Korda’s work is in the public domain? Probably not – but it is in a serious grey area.
Today I saw a new chapter in the Korda print. Paul Frank have made their fame (at least in my opinion – but then again this is not a fashion blog) from their cartoon monkey

The Paul Frank monkey is a cultural icon. So is Korda’s Che image. Paul Frank have now playfully (?), respectfully (?), irreverently (?) created a mashup of these two icons into this inevitable (?) conclusion…

When Che t-shirts became popular again (after the fall of the Soviet Union) I remember hearing a few mumblings from people that “young people” were adopting the icons of the revolution without any knowledge about the content, struggle or ideologi – the past had in fact become a trademark belonging to no one. I tried then to argue for the role of the cultural icon – but some still stuck to their guns and argued that the young were adopting symbols without knowledge and the manufacturers were profiteering on the ideology of the revolution.

From Korda to Paul Frank…evolution?…regression? You decide…

Posted on by mklang

Serendipity

Serendipity is making fortunate discoveries by accident. It is also one of those words that both sounds good and denotes a good thing.

While looking for the bibliographic data on Lawrence Rosenâ??s book â??Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Lawâ?? (itâ??s the best on FOSS licensing and it’s also online here), I came across another Lawrence Rosen and his new book â??Law as Cultureâ??. The title was enough â?? I bought it.

Now that I have the book I read the front flap of the dust jacket:

Law is integral to culture, and culture to law. Often considered a distinctive domain with strange rules and stranger language, law is actually a part of a cultureâ??s way of expressing its sense of the order of things.

Rosen is a legal anthropologist and he presents a nice intro to the area of law and culture. All this is good stuff and I am looking forward to reading the rest. How did this book end up in my library and on my â??must readâ?? list? A case of mixed identity, two authors with the same name, an interest in software licensingâ?¦

Serendipity isnâ??t it great?

Posted on by mklang

Creative Commons Culture and Terra Nullius

I recently published an article in a Swedish journal called InfoTrend. The article included an English abstract which you can read below. The journal wanted me to sign a copyright form which I did. Their contract also included a clause granting me permission to reproduce the article on my website – so I feel I must! So here it is. I realise that I probably should refuse to sign all such documents and demand that they implement CC licenses and open access values but then not many articles would be published and I will not be able to spread the word. It’s a catch 22 kind of situation.

Creative common licensing model as an alternative The great land grab between the 15th and 18th centuries was often legitimised by the concept of terra nullius – since the land was not being commercially exploited, it was being wasted and was therefore free for anyone to take. This stance has in hindsight been criticised for its tragic impact on the cultures and ecology of the lands being taken. Thus today the concept of terra nullius has fallen in disrepute. Despite this the concept is being widely used in the debate on the ownership of copyrightable material. The actions of major cultural producers, such as Disney, show that exploiting from the public domain is a profitable business model. This article discusses the implications of these actions and presents the Creative Commons licensing model as an alternative for buildning a body of cultural material, which is secured under copyright, but can still be used in a manner akin to the public domain.

Posted on by mklang

CC tool for Microsoft Office

Microsoft and Creative Commons (CC) have released a copyright licensing tool that enables the easy addition of CC licenses in the Microsoft Office package. The tool will enable users of the Office package to select a CC license from within the specific application. The copyright licensing tool will be available free of charge at Microsoft Office, and CC. The tool also provides a way for users to dedicate a work to the public domain.

Quotes from the press release:

â??Weâ??re delighted to work with Creative Commons to bring fresh and collaborative thinking on copyright licensing to authors and artists of all kinds,â?? said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft. â??We are honored that creative thinkers everywhere choose to use Microsoft tools to give shape to their ideas. Weâ??re committed to removing barriers to the sharing of ideas across borders and cultures, and are offering this copyright tool in that spirit.â??

â??The goal of Creative Commons is to provide authors and artists with simple tools to mark their creative work with the freedom they intend it to carry,â?? said Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of Creative Commons. â??Weâ??re incredibly excited to work with Microsoft to make that ability easily available to the hundreds of millions of users of Microsoft Office.â??

â??Itâ??s thrilling to see big companies like Microsoft working with nonprofits to make it easier for artists and creators to distribute their works,â?? said Gilberto Gil, cultural minister of Brazil, host nation for the Creative Commons iSummit in Rio de Janeiro June 23 through 25, where the copyright licensing tool will be featured. Gil, who will keynote at the iSummit, has released one of the first documents using the Creative Commons add-in for Microsoft Office.

The full list of licenses available from Creative Commons is available online.

Posted on by mklang

Swedish Public Domain

Sweden, Swedish law and Swedes have a low understanding of the public domain (basically the time after copyright protection when the public is free to copy, use and adapt works, see for example Wikipedia) especially if one compares with the US approach.

One of the problems is that Swedish law does not have the concept of public domain but only the time after copyright. Americans have always been able to put things into the public domain, the closest Swedish version is extremely weak and involves releasing work anonymously (but this is NOT the same).

This â??lack of conceptâ?? makes the public domain more abstract and incomprehensible. The question is how can one increase the understanding of the public domain?

One way of not improving this concept is when the national public service radio & television begin to open up their archives but require users to have RealPlayer which is a closed standard. The whole concept is very much â??look-but-donâ??t-touchâ??

On the positive side one of the more inciteful writers on the topic is the Swedish scholar Eva Hemmungs-Wirtén her excellent 2004 book â??No Trespassingâ?? was published by Toronto University Press and in 2007 her work â??On Common Ground: a Cultural History of the Public Domainâ?? (working title) will be out.

Posted on by mklang

Free Films Online

While the main discussion on online films revolves (rightly or wrongly) on pirates downloading material. This discussion sometimes forgets that we have now reached a period when a number of films are being released into the public domain. Here is a selection of films available at the Internet Archive. Browsing their collection is lots of fun and may seriously threaten thesis work.

Things to Come (1936), William Cameron Menzies (dir.), The metropolis of Everytown is a city threatened by world war. Pacifist intellectuals try to turn the tide but efforts go unheeded by the self-interested classes, and war arrives with tanks and aeroplanes and gas bombs. The war continues for thirty years, its original purpose forgotten. Everytown is destroyed by air raids and civilization degenerates… (imdb) (Public Domain).

Le Voyage Dans La Lune (dir. George Meiles), an old 1902 film from france about a small group of scientists that travel to space on a rocket to get to the moon. (Licensed via CC Att-NC-SA).

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943) (dir. Roy William Neill) Based on the Sir Authur Conan Doyle story “The Dancing Men”, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are placed in WWII europe to help protect a scientist and his invention from the Nazis. (Licensed via CC Att).

The Kid (1921) (dir. Charlie Chaplin) The Kid was Charlie Chaplin’s first full-length movie. It, more than anything else to that date, made Chaplin a living legend. It took over a year to produce, and was an incredible success for Chaplin. (Public Domain).

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) While travelling in Switzerland, the child of a well-off couple is kidnapped. She is held to ensure that her father does not reveal what he knows about a planned assassination. Since they can’t talk to the authorities, the parents plan to begin the search for their daughter on their own. This is the original, British-made movie from 1934 and is now in the Public Domain.

Mechanical Monsters (1941) A ten minute Superman cartoon where he battles a criminal mastermind and his robot army (imdb) (Public Domain).

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) (dir. Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton) the story of a naive, college-educated dandy who must prove himself to his working-class father, a hot-headed riverboat captain, while courting the daughter of his father’s rival, who threatens to put Steamboat Bill, Sr. and his paddle-wheeler out of business. (Public Domain).

The New Adventures of Tarzan. (1935) (dir. Edward Kull) Not many realize this feature, along with ‘Tarzan and the Green Goddess’, were produced by E.R. Burroughs, himself. He wanted a screen portrayal of Tarzan as he had written him, a noble intelligent Ape Man/Lord Greystoke, not as Hollywood had made him (“Me Tarzan, you Jane”). And NO Cheetah.

Three Stooges – Color Craziness (1965) “The New Three Stooges” featured the animated adventures of Moe, Larry, & Curly Joe. The cartoons were introduced by live-action inserts with the real Stooges. These inserts were some of the only Stooges material ever filmed in color, and they also feature long-time Stooge collaberator Emil Sitka. (Public Domain).

Posted on by mklang

DROA Scammers

I received a snail mail letter from Domain Name Registry Of America (DROA) warning me that some of the domains I own will soon expire and should be renewed.

Since DROA sends its offer of re-registration several months before expiry they come before the â??originalâ?? registrar. The text, name and the US flag logo make the reader think that this is a public service offer. The fact that it is snail mail adds to the trustworthiness of the scammer. In reality it is a reasonably clear offer to change to a different domain registrar.

The scam is an attempt to get users to re-register their sites with this new company for prices which are much higher than many other registrars. DROA attempts to mimic the look and feel of a public service and fool people into paying heavily for their service.

By Googling â??domain registry of americaâ?? you easily can find lots of hits about their dishonest marketing practices.

Posted on by mklang

Public Domain Comic

Law books are traditionally text heavy with little or no pictures. Very rarely including humor or light entertainment. Therefore it is great to see what law professors can do when they want to change this!

The Center for the Public Domain have created a cool comic explaining copyright and the public domain. It takes the form of classic horror comics and describes the adventures (or misadventures) of the hero Akiko, the documentary film maker. I thought it was geat! So go look at “Tales from the Public Domain: Bound by Law” by Aoki, Boyle & Jenkins

Read it online or download it here.

Posted on by mklang

Reading tip

In an chapter entitled “Exploring Creative Commons: A Skeptical View of a Worthy Pursuit” Niva Elkin-Koren writes:

It may well be that there is nothing wrong with copyright per se, but only with the way these rights were exploited by copyright owners in recent years. Changing social practices may have a powerful signalling effect, the importance of which could not be overstated. Yet, establishing a workable and sustainable alternative to the current copyright regime would require enforceable legal measures that would restrain the power of copyright owners to govern their works. To achieve this goal it would not be sufficient to facilitate self-restraint and encourage copyright owners to treat their copyright as guardians, protecting it from any attempt to restrict access and reuse. In the long run, creating an alternative to copyright would require a copyright reform.

The chapter is part of the book The Future of the Public Domain, (P. Bernt Hugenholtz & Lucie Guibault, eds.)
Kluwer Law International, forthcoming 2006. It is also available at SSRN.

Posted on by mklang

Open Access Grows

Open J-Gate portal (www.openj-gate.com), was launched by Prof. Jean-Claude Guedon yesterday.

Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access domain. It is also a database of journal literature, indexed from 3000+ open access journals, with links to full text at Publisher sites. Open J-Gate Features and Benefits:

  • Open J-Gate indexes articles from 3000+ academic, research and industry journals. More than 1500 of them are peer-reviewed scholarly journals.
  • Links to one million+ open access articles
  • This number is growing with 300000+ new articles added every year. Full-text links are regularly validated.
Posted on by mklang