Creative Anti-Commons

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= concept developed by Dmytri Kleiner, the author of the Telekommunist Manifesto, to critique the Creative Commons licenses and their underlying philosophy.


Interview

Conducted by Marc Garrett:

"MG: In the Manifesto, there is a section titled 'THE CREATIVE ANTI-COMMONS', where the Creative Commons is discussed as an anti-commons, peddling a "capitalist logic of privatization under a deliberately misleading name." To many, this is a controversy touching the very nature of many networked behaviours, whether they be liberal or radical minded. I am intrigued by the use of the word 'privatization'. Many (including myself) assume it to mean a process whereby a non-profit organization is changed into a private venture, usually by governments, adding extra revenue to their own national budget through the dismantling of commonly used public services. Would you say that the Creative Commons, is acting in the same way but as an Internet based, networked corporation?

DK: As significant parts of the Manifesto is a remix of my previous texts, this phrase originally comes from the longer article "COPYRIGHT, COPYLEFT AND THE CREATIVE ANTI-COMMONS," written by me and Joanne Richardson under the name "Ana Nimus": http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/nimustext.html

What we mean here is that the creative "commons" is privatized because the copyright is retained by the author, and only (in most cases) offered to the community under non-commercial terms. The original author has special rights while commons users have limited rights, specifically limited in such a way as to eliminate any possibility for them to make a living by employing this work. Thus these are not commons works, but rather private works. Only the original author has the right to employ the work commercially.

All previous conceptions of an intellectual or cultural commons, including anti-copyright and pre-copyright culture as well as the principles of free software movement where predicated on the concept of not allowing special rights for an original author, but rather insisting on the right for all to use and reuse in common. The non-commercial licenses represent a privatization of the idea of the commons and a reintroduction of the concept of a uniquely original artist with special private rights.

Further, as I consider all expressions to be extensions of previous perceptions, the "original" ideas that rights are being claimed on in this way are not original, but rather appropriated by the rights-claimed made by creative-commons licensers. More than just privatizing the concept and composition of the modern cultural commons, by asserting a unique author, the creative commons colonizes our common culture by asserting unique authorship over a growing body of works, actually expanding the scope of private culture rather than commons culture." (http://www.furtherfield.org/features/interviews/interview-dmytri-kleiner-authour-telekommunist-manifesto)