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Intellectual Contributions in transition

Posted to: Intellectual Contributions by Nicholas Bentley (CCAL30) (303), Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:59:25 PDT
Feedback score: 0
Tags:  content copyright ic intellectual-contributions rights transition
Comments: 4 by 1 members
Viewed: 36 times by 6 members

Some of the content in the Intellectual Contributions group is licensed to omidyar.net under a Rights office license!

  • What does this mean?
  • What can be done with the content?
  • Can this content be transfered to another community?
  • Can rights to this content be transfered?
  • Will it be more clear what can be done with this content compared with other content submitted by other members of this community.
  • Had omidyar.net been more active in helping to develop this system would transition be easier and more contributions available to the world?

Click for a description of product rights It is this Rights office logo that is attached to some of the content and the rights identifiers associated with it that provide links to the rights holders metadata and license information.

In this discussion I will try and answer these questions and layout what can be done to transfer this content to alternative sites/communities.


By Nicholas Bentley (CCAL30) (303), Sun, 29 Jul 2007 05:02:25 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0

What does this mean?

All my contributions on o.net have been licensed to the Omidyar Network using a standard Rights Office license:

Standard Rights Office license:

These are the default rights granted to an identified person or organization [1] to an item of content released under a Rights Office license as part of the Intellectual Contributions model:

Identified User Rights to Rights Office Content

Non-identified Rights

An identified rights holder has all the rights of a non-identified user.

Copying

An identified rights holder can make unlimited copies to maintain access to the identified content provided that the Product Rights Descriptor (PRD) identifiers and content remain intact and unmodified.

Access to Content

An identified rights holder has the right of unlimited access to the identified content.

Further Rights

An identified rights holder could have further rights to the content however these would be individually negotiated and recorded with the primary rights holder.

[1]An 'identified person or organization' is an entity that owns one of the Product Right Descriptor (PRD) identifiers associated with an item of intellectual content.

This allows o.net reproduce my content on the web site and make any number of backup copies etc. that are necessary to maintain the content.


By Nicholas Bentley (CCAL30) (303), Sun, 29 Jul 2007 05:24:51 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0

What can be done with the content?

Community members only have non-identified rights to content posted by me.

Basic default rights:

These are the default rights granted to non-identified persons [1] to any content released under a Rights Office license as part of the Intellectual Contributions model:

Non-identified User Rights to Rights Office Content

Adsorb Content

Any person who has access to an item of content that has a valid Product Rights Descriptor (PRD) [2] is entitled to view, listen to, read, or otherwise adsorb the content.

Hold Content

Any person who has access to an item of which has a valid PRD is entitled hold this content in their possession indefinitely but are not permitted to make further copies or transfer the content in any form to another party.

Fair Usage / Fair Dealing

Under copyright law in some territories some uses of copyrighted content are unregulated such a quoting short passages of the protected work. This use is also unregulated under the Rights Office license however any unregulated copies should also contain the original PRD.

[1]Non-identified persons are anyone who has access to an item of content but does not own one of the Product Right Descriptor (PRD) identifiers.
[2]A 'valid PRD' is a combination of two unique URI's that are associated with an item of contnet. (Further information can be found here.)

This means that you (an o.net member or visitor to the site) can read the content but not much else. Very similar to traditional copyright.


By Nicholas Bentley (CCAL30) (303), Sun, 29 Jul 2007 05:43:09 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0

Can this content be transfered to another community?

A copy of all my content can be given to a third party under the Rights Office license. This is not the case with any traditional copyright material on the site. However, this third party, the new community, would not be allowed to make further copies or post the content without obtaining new rights from me.

This situation is still be better than that for traditional copyrighted material which can't be copied:

  • At least the new organization can hold the content until it get permission from me to publish. and
  • The Property Rights Descriptors (PRD) will link to my rights office where a request to make copies can be made.

Can rights to this content be transfered?

Not by Omidyar Network but as the primary rights holder I can grant rights to any new community.


By Nicholas Bentley (CCAL30) (303), Sun, 05 Aug 2007 01:45:43 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0

O.net has opted for a Creative Commons license to allow members to transition their comments. Probably a good idea under the circumstances but here is my response:

response:

I have not signed-up for the CC license (yet) because all my comments and workspace pages are already covered by another license - a Rights Office license and a discussion of how this works can be found here.

In addition I wonder if a CC Attribution-NonCommercial license would be better?

My Rights Office licenses is different from the Creative Commons Attribution license in a number of respects:

  • I have specified different licenses for different content. General comments are covered by one license and some individual workspace pages are covered by others.
  • The license identifiers (URLs) point to where further permissions can be found. (i.e. My email address can be found so that you can ask me if you can reproduce my work)
  • Once the CC license is applied to a work anyone can, from then on, claim that license whereas the Rights Office license is always directs the licence to an individual or organization. Hence, I can have more control of some of my workspace pages that contain specific business plans.
  • There are plans for a 'Public Domain' Rights Office license that would provide equivalent licensing to the CC-Attribution license but sadly this is not implemented yet due to lack of funding.

Of course, the problems of dealing with more than one license system, especially one that is not well established yet, during this busy transition period might not work which is why I still considering signing up for the CC license because on the whole I have no problems with transferring all my comments to another platform.

and here:

Response 2:

ted ernst (CCAL30) said:

Nicholas, I would say your final statement is the most important.

Under the current circumstances you are probably right which is why I am considering my options and probably will join in with the Creative Commons license.

If I have to email you about every specific comment or edit you've ever made, and others were to follow your model, and I'd have ot email each of them individually as well, it would never work. How is this different from now, where I can email you to ask you? Ah, I don't have your email address. :-)

I was just pointing out that everything I have published on this site was already licensed (all my comments are lumped under one license) and that there was a way for anyone to ask permission to reuse any of them by clicking on the license URL and asking. Had everyone here been using this license then a new site using this content would have to email everyone to get permission but this is not much different to o.net PM-ing or creating a system message that asks everyone to sign up to CC?

The interesting point was that under my license I was ahead of the game. Omidyar.net already had permission to copy my contributions to another organization or to put them in an archive somewhere so a CC license was not necessary for them to close operations and still make the content available. Any new entity would have to ask me before they republish anything however there would be a link to my email address.

All this is rather academic at this stage but it is the reason why I joined o.net three years ago. Three years ago I was trying to contact Ebay because at the time they were trying to get into electronic music distribution and needed to deal with all the rights issues. I thought I had an inventive way for them to do this without the need for restrictive DRM. This lead me to research Pierre, which lead me to o.net, which lead me to believe that if I posted my ideas here and they were any good they would 'bubble up to the top' and someone would take notice. Did it work? :-(

I wonder if there's a way to CC-by some of your works, and use your more restrictive license in other places.

I'm working on this.
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