Roger McGuinn, founder of legendary folk-rock band The Byrds, has made over 25 albums in his recording career. But besides modest advances, he's never made money on record royalties.
When McGuinn decided to record new versions of traditional folk songs, he made these songs available as MP3s for free download on his website and on MP3.com. He's since made "thousands of dollars" from the sale of these recordings.
Like McGuinn, many artists are turning to the Web to maximize exposure, yet retain some control over their work. McGuinn is just one of the artists who will publish works under a new set of licenses that offer an alternative to conventional copyright.
On Monday, Creative Commons will release its collection of free, machine-readable licenses. The idea is to give copyright holders another way to get the word out that their works are free for copying and other uses under specific conditions.
"Many of the authors, musicians, developers and other content creators we have spoken to want to be able to communicate to their potential customers that the customer can do more with their content than standard copyright law allows," said Bob Young, CEO of Lulu Press.
These licenses will "enable authors to communicate to users of their content how those consumers may use the content without requiring the user to contact the author each and every time," Young said.
"Right now there's no easy way for copyright holders to allow certain uses of their work while retaining their copyright," agreed Glenn Otis Brown, Creative Commons' executive director. "Our licenses are a best-of-both-worlds way to keep your copyright while sharing to the extent you want to. You can declare 'some rights reserved.'"
While industry organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America try to curtail the distribution of copyrighted works, Creative Commons' licenses will complement existing efforts to make online sharing and collaboration easier.
Open-source movements like the Free Software Foundation's General Public License inspired the Creative Commons' model.
"The beauty of their approach is that they're based on copyright owners' consent, independent of any legislative action and motivated out of a wonderful mixture of self-interest and community spirit," Brown said.
Creators can decide whether they want to release their work into the public domain or license it with one of Creative Commons' custom licenses. Authors can use Creative Commons' site to dedicate their works to the public domain without restriction, declaring "no rights reserved," Brown said.
Alternatively, they can select among four different licensing tools, or they can mix and match preferences. Each license grants the public the right to copy and redistribute a work freely, but under certain conditions:
Attribution: Authors can permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform their work and derivative works only if they provide authorship credit.
Noncommercial: Authors can prohibit commercial use of their work without their permission.
If a photographer licenses an image under a noncommercial license, consumers can copy and trade the image, but if a national magazine wants to print it, editors must ask the photographer for permission.
"Licensing your work under a noncommercial license does not mean that you can't make money from it," Brown said. "The noncommercial provision simply requires that others strike a separate deal with the author to make commercial use of (the) work."
No derivative works: A creator can also allow users to copy or distribute only verbatim copies of the work, but not derivative works based upon it.
Author Mark Watson has chosen to use this license to distribute his "open content" Web books. He also prohibits commercial use of these books without his permission.
Share alike: Alternatively, an author can require that if users make derivative works, they must license those works on the terms that the author granted them.
For example, musician and sound artist Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us) will allow other musicians to build derivatives from some of her works, provided that they use a license that is the same as the one that governs her work.
Once authors have chosen a custom license, they will receive it in three formats: as a commons deed, as legal code and as digital code.
A commons deed is a simple, plain-language summary of the license. A legal code presents the specific legal details that pertain to the commons deed.
The metadata, or digital code, is a machine-readable translation of the license that computers can easily recognize. This metadata can provide additional information such as the title, author or creation date.
When creators get a custom license, they are also given the metadata that explains how to post it to their website. Consumers who want to copy or reuse licensed works will be able to find them easily by searching according to a creator's terms of use. That way, an author doesn't have to be contacted each time somebody wants to reuse a work.
"We're working with search engines to collect this data and provide it as an additional option you can search on," said Aaron Swartz, a member of the Creative Commons' technical team.
But these licenses aren't for everybody.
Content originators such as Wall Street Journal reporters or Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowlings might not need to increase their distribution to generate revenue.
"They both have as much distribution as they are likely to get, and using as restrictive a license as possible will maximize their profits," Young said.
But a Creative Commons license could allow the majority of authors who never get published to achieve greater exposure than they could under conventional copyright.
An unknown photographer may want to build her reputation by permitting unlimited copying of her images. A scholar may want his articles to reach the widest possible audience through unfettered dissemination.
"The Creative Commons licenses give both the aspiring author, musician and artist, as well as the consumer, a choice they would not otherwise have had," Young said. "I'm predicting it will become a popular choice."
