Creativity has always been widespread. But the means of turning mere talent and spark into actual movies, television shows, radio programs, recorded music, and other fully produced media has long been concentrated in Hollywood and a few other industry fortresses. Outsiders, regardless of their level of talent, have always had an enormously difficult time breaking in.
Technology is changing this. First, the explosion of inexpensive high-quality cameras, microphones, musical instruments, and PC-based editing systems is allowing the great majority of interested individuals to produce complex media. Second, people now have the ability to mass-distribute that media themselves using the internet, broadband access, PC-based printing of CDs and DVDs, on-demand book publishing, and user-driven web applications such as YouTube, Flickr, and RSS.
There is a missing element, however. To be fully empowered, citizen producers need a supply of the raw materials of media – music, sound effects, stock photography, b-roll footage, and other “sweeteners.” These “media workparts” are, in large part, responsible for the production-quality gap between the professional gleam of Hollywood productions and the unrefined look of the inspired efforts of home-based creators.
I have put together a proposal for a new sharing license scheme I call “copysquare.” The copysquare project follows in the tradition of the open-source free-software “copyleft” movement and the Creative Commons free-content movement, but it uses different licensing mechanics than those regimes in order to achieve something for which prior regimes are not well-suited – fostering the creation and sharing of media workparts.
Copysquare uses three basic license provisions to pursue its aims: (1) a requirement of notification, (2) a right to reject, and (3) “favored nations” treatment. The copysquare license says, in short, “You can use my creative work – film footage, picture, sound effect, etc. – in your creative work, but you must notify me that you are doing so (the notification provision), give me a chance to opt out (the right to reject), and you need not pay me or credit me, but if you pay or provide credit to others for the same kind of contribution, you must pay me and credit me on an equal basis (the favored-nations provision).”
I have drafted a law review article which lays the philosophical and legal groundwork for copysquare. The draft will soon be posted on a website I am developing for the project at copysquare.org. I would very much appreciate your feedback, comments, and suggestions.
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