Greetings, Interesting stuff. Heres my personal take on this:
Using Creative Commons means that people certainly dont have any obligation to contact you first in order to fully redistribute (including re-host) your work, or make derivative works from parts of your show. Under the terms of the license you use, they can pretty much do what they like with your stuff so long as its non-commercial, they give attribution to you, the new work is shared by the same terms, and they display your license. The wording on their site which made it sound like you were a member, is probably not a copyright/creative commons issue, unless they failed to disclose your cc license, or attribute/link back to you. In cases where they do that but still make it seems like you are an active member of their community, I would think areas of the law that deal with misrepresentation and fraud are more likely to apply. Your own site does not appear to link to your creative commons license info, which strictly speaking means you arent using creative commons properly, according to their own instructions. The knock-on affect of this is that other sites do not have to put a URL to your page when they show your work (because the creative commons license specifies that the page linked to must have creative commons license details within it) The issue of controlling how your show is represented, what quotes are used, whether a misleading impression is given, is not often discussed in the vlogging community so far. Copyright (and thus creative commons) are only part of this side of the things. The following is taken from the creative commons site, it may not be 100% applicable in this case because I dont know if ourmedias use constituted a derivative or collective work, but its in the right area of the law: "I don't like the way a person has used my work in a derivative work or included it in a collective work; what can I do? If you do not like the way that a person has made a derivative work or incorporated your work into a collective work, under the Creative Commons licenses, you may request removal of your name from the derivative work or the collective work. In addition, the copyright laws in most jurisdictions around the world (with the notable exception of the US) grant creators "moral rights" which may provide you with some redress if a derivative work represents a "derogatory treatment" of your work. Moral rights give an original author the right to object to "derogatory treatment" of their work; "derogatory treatment" is typically defined as "distortion or mutilation" of the work or treatment, which is "prejudicial to the honor, or reputation of the author." All Creative Commons licenses (with the exception of Canada) leave moral rights unaffected. This means that an original author may be able to take action against a derivative work that infringes the moral right that protects against derogatory treatment. Of course, not all derivative works that a creator does not like will be considered "derogatory." So you need to study moral rights or equivalent US law (if any) to see how much this applies. Bear in mind this is largely a copyright issue, using creative commons does not change things very much here. For example, even if your work was fully copyrighted, some countries have 'fair use' rights, which include certain educational uses, parody, and quoting. There are therefore various circumstances in which I would be fairly confident I would be able to take a snippet from your show and highlight it or use it in some other context, even if you use ful copyright. This is a fairly grey area, but the point is that even normal copyright has its limitations. Personally I think your fear of beind misrepresented by others is understandable, as is the instinct to try to stop this, but it is something most creators have to put up with to a certain extent, and is an issue that have existed long before vlogging and the internet came along. To clamp down on this stuff to the maximum extent possible, other laws need to be used, in areas such as trademarks, libel and defamation. Even then there are limits to how far you can take things, and the specific case you highlight does not seem like a prime candidate for using any of those laws. Consider trademarking your name and logo as a way of stopping people misusing you in ways far greater than are being considered today. But when it comes to how much to try and clamp don on people casting you in the 'wrong light', I think you are hoping for too much control. Politicians have to get used to being misquoted, and of all sorts of accusations. There are legal mechanisms which they can use to try to put people off the worst of this, but at the end of the day they have to take most of it on the chin. Creative people in traditional media are powerless to stop reviewers etc from saying almost anything they like. Michael Moore, The Dixy Chicks and many others, are powerless to prevent a billion words of hate from right wing media, even if its totally blown out of all proportion, although they can of course go down the libel route if the lie gets too big. If fox news decided to paint you as liberal propaganda, or of 'helping the enemy', is there anything to stop them taking a load of clips that make you seem more onesided than the shows actually are? Despite all my waffle, I dont know. In conclusion, its a personal choice for you to find a balance you are comfortable with or can live with, and then see whether the laws realistically match up. Being misrepresented is a pitfall that anybody who puts stuff out there can suffer from. Id say to be wary of being too heavy handed lest the measures you take in response end up doing more harm than the original act. If you want to be approached by people before they reuse your stuff in any way, would rather they always err'd on the side of caution and contacted you first to discuss, then you probably shouldnt be using creative commons, because its supposed to remove that doubt from the mind of the re-user under most scenario's. The reality of internet copyright and how it maps to peoples morals and what businesses think they can get away with, means that even full copyright wont stop abuses of various kinds, but at least those who want to do the right thing will have a clearer idea of what you expect of them. Specifically regarding your stuff and being seen as biased, Im afraid its inescapable to a certain extent. Iraq war is closely associated with Bush and the rightwing. If it had been a success and your videos of real life in Baghdad showed a happy and safe people, so much better than when Saddam was in power in every way, then the left might generally regard your show as being pro-bush and to the right. But as the realities of Baghdad are not so kind, and the war is largely seen as a failure, virtually anything that mentions Iraq at all, and deals with reality, is likely to be damaging to Bush & friends, and so some on the right may think its leftie propaganda. Now in both of these scenarios Alive In Baghdad would have been showing the reality without bias, its those on the outside who will project bias onto it depending on their own politics. Being an impartial source does not prevent your stuff being used by one side or the other to suit their cause, unfortunately. I dont know if history has any hints for good ways to deal with this. Im not quite sure what ourmedia has to do with the openness of the community in general. I dont think theres one community, I dont think openness about certain things, due to culture of blogging & vlogging about stuff that used to be 'behind the scenes', actually translates to general openness, 'if in doubt, ask', extra moral-sensitivity, or any sort of 'guarantee' that humans and services within the community will automatically behave any differently to what we've come to expect from humans. I recognise that there are quite a lot of people I would describe as having 'homourable intentions' within the various ever-changing groups that have comprised this community, and much of the pioneering stuff on the videoblog front. But I hesitate to put too much emphasis on this, it is no guarauntee that the whole vlogosphere will have ethics to be marveled at as a result. Theres always a need for people to speak up, openness does not mean they will always make the first move or be hyper-aware of their actions and never make a mistake, its a lot about how they respond once complaints have been made. Youve raised some interesting issues, the response will be the key to how good and open the community is, the original mistake is surely not about openness? Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, brian conley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hey Videobloggers! > > I am running into some problems with a content aggregator, and I could use your advice. We have been discussing these issues a lot latelyand I have a new one, that is beginning to make me reconsider my creative commons licensing and would love to know what you all think. > > (I apologize in advance for the length of this email, but I believe this is important to discuss thoroughly) > > This is a different issue than MyHeavy or the others who aggregate without attribution and/or commercially exploit our work. > > This morning I discovered that the work of one of my projects, Alive in Baghdad, had been posted on the front page of http://ourmedia.com. (I have enclosed a screen capture for your reference.) Not only did noone request the use of our work, or inform us of our inclusion on this site, but OurMedia presents our work in a way that could be significantly harmful to our project. > > At first glance, the presentation of our work on OurMedia suggests to the average viewer that AIB has a political, anti-war stance and that AIB is a part of OurMedia. In fact this could not be farther from the truth, AiB takes pains to present a balanced view of life in Iraq, that simply shows the experiences and feelings of Iraqis, without adding a political tone. > > Basicallyin representing AIB, OurMedia selected a thumbnail of a woman with a translated quote underneath that says "May God Curse Bush and all those that brought him here." Obviously, this is not a quote that we would choose to have represent us. We worried about including that segment at all and feared that, out of context, separate from our other work, it could cause harm to the public face of the project, bring flamers, etc. However, inside of the entire episode, we felt it was acceptable and was reflective of the situation in Iraq. We care deeply about building a project that gives voice to Iraqi citizensnot towards pushing a political agenda. Such a posting can damage the perceptions of Alive in Baghdad and our future opportunities. > > Additionally, OurMedia indicates that we are a member of their organizationi.e. you'll notice to the right of the thumbnail, it lists a link titled "member page" that links to AliveinBaghdad.org. AiB is not, nor has it ever been, a member of Ourmedia. Given our experience, we question whether they actually have 125,000 members.... > > OurMedia claims: > 1) We're a nonprofit, open-source, volunteer effort to support the community...Ourmedia is for users, not just consumers. > > 2) Ourmedia also says at the top of their front page: Do NOT post other artists' copyrighted works without permission. Ourmedia is about showcasing your creativity! Register now <http://www.ourmedia.org/user/register> ! > > Noone from OurMedia has contacted us in any mannerand we are not members of their community. However, we are well known throughout the "vlogosphere" and eminently approachable. And yet, they chose to post our video in the most incendiary manner possible, without our permission. > > If this is permissible under our creative commons license, we will need to reconsider our licensing choices and how freely we allow the distribution of our videos. It also makes us question the openness supposedly present in the Videobloggers community. I'd really appreciate your thoughts and advice on this issue. > > Thanks, > Brian > > > > > --------------------------------- > Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check. > Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta. > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] >
