New License Draft
(thread in General forum)by David Evan Harris on Oct. 13, 2010, 2:08 a.m.
(New license draft)
Dear Global Lives Collaborators,
I've posted the following draft of a new license policy with the specific intent of allowing for us to continue to protect the rights of all people who appear in our videos, while at the same time giving as free access as possible to our footage to audiences and would-be collaborators around the world.
This issue comes up at present because I am specifically interested in uploading our footage to the Wikimedia Commons, as I see the educational mission of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia as lining up completely with our own cultural and artistic goals.
This proposal is still in draft form, as I am awaiting word from the Wikimedia Commons community as to whether or not a statement like this would make our footage eligible for upload. You can see the discussion thread on this at the Wikimedia Commons Village Pump.
In the interim, I invite any and all questions, comments, suggestions for changes or other thoughts on licensing to this thread.
Thank you!
David
- - -
Global Lives Project Licensing Change Draft
June 2, 2010
Drafted by David Harris (GLP Executive Director) and Elizabeth Miles (GLP Counsel, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP)
Proposed draft text for http://www.globallives.org/license
All Global Lives Project footage, unless marked otherwise, is available under both the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Sharealike and Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike licenses.
What does this mean?
This means that the Global Lives Project and our collaborating artists allow for specific forms of reuse of our video and photo work under the CC-BY-NC-SA and CC-BY-SA licenses. The Creative Commons licenses only extend to the copyright of our work, and do not apply to any other non-copyright intellectual property rights in the work. As such, we do not license any non-copyright rights in our works to you by the Creative Commons licenses.
Among the rights we do not license to you is the right of publicity of our on-screen participants. The people who appear in the footage have entrusted the Global Lives Project with their images for use in meeting the artistic and educational mission and goals of the Global Lives Project. This means that the images of our on-screen participants may not be used in any way that would violate their rights of publicity or reflect negatively on their character. Such violations may include any commercial use without consent on or in products, merchandise, or goods, or for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of, products, merchandise, goods or services, or as otherwise prohibited by law. Educational (i.e., Wikipedia entries; distribution to teachers) and artistic uses (i.e., video art, film) in keeping with the mission of the Global Lives Project and in conformance with the law are encouraged, as long as they are in no way derogatory to the individuals who appear in our work.
We also highlight the Creative Commons license text that reads "...you must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation..." and note that the Original Author in this case includes the Global Lives Project, collaborating artists, and all on-screen participants. Before reusing our work, we encourage you to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the Creative Commons licenses linked above. If you are uncertain as to whether or not your derivative work violates our license terms, please do not hesitate to send an email with your questions to info at globallives dot org.
Attribution:
The Global Lives Project name and logo and the names and titles of all members of the production team for the footage in question must be listed in the credits to the work, at least as prominently as the credits for the other contributing authors. The Global Lives Project website (http://www.GlobalLives.org) must also be listed in the credits, as well as a reference to the specific clip being used (i.e., http://globallives.org/video/a6845154-993e-49de-820b-0b3438ca48ae/) and, in the case of web uses, such listings must be hyperlinked to the relevant web pages. For names of production teams, see http://globallives.org/crews . You may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection, sponsorship or endorsement of your work with or by the Global Lives Project.
by Jason Price on Oct. 18, 2010, 2:46 a.m.
(Response 1)
Hi David,
Thanks for getting this up, though I think it might be better on base camp in order to optimize participation by members of the collective.
Would it be possible for you to clearly and concisely, without any CC or legal-speak, to explain the precise shift in licensing and its effect, both positive and negative?
The sense I get is that we are dropping the Non-Commercial part of our CC license in order to free our video to be used on Wikipedia, and that this is believed to be good for GLP because it would increase exposure, and the ethical and legal risks to our subjects would be negligible because of the work that our Orick attorneys have done. Is this the case?
Two questions:
1) This would mean that people can use our footage for commercial means, yes? (I mean, provided they hold up to our ethical guidelines.) Under what conditions would someone use our footage commercially, for example?
2) Who is the "Original Author"?
My main concern is that there are subtle ways in which GLP's collaboration with Wikipedia would undermine our mission. For example, if I am the "original author" of the GLM shoot, and partly what i hope we are doing is complicating mainstream representations of Malawians as poor, and then someone uses or tag our video for an "African poverty" wikipedia entry. This is a rather crude example, but the point is that there is a lot of power in the subtle framing of the video according to particular categories and if a big part of our mission is to challenge those categories and how they are deployed and internalized, then this is really very dangerous and counterproductive.
Thoughts/Comments?
Jason Price, GLP Board Member and Producer/Director Global Lives Malawi, Edith Kaphuka 2007.
To make posts to this forum, email web@globallives.org to request "confirmed collaborator" status. Please include your username/email in the request.