Showing posts with label permission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label permission. Show all posts

31 January 2009

I'm Sorry, Joi, I Can't Do That

Is Joi Ito barking?

In the future according to Ito: "Every object on the Internet will have a licence and copyright information and the author and the owner attached to the object, and if it's a derivative work, where it's a derivative work of." The licence Ito has in mind will be a Creative Commons one, but there seems no reason why other classes of licence couldn't use similar mechanisms.

And, "what will happen is, once we start building it into all the tools, into your camera, into Adobe Acrobat, into Google, you don't need DRM and watermarks. As long as it's built into the HTML, most of the people who matter will follow it."

In what way will they do this? "You downloaded some music, and say, 'I want to use this in my YouTube video,' it [the software] will say, 'Bap-bap! You can't do that because the copyright says you can't.'" Which does kind of look and feel like DRM, but as Ito says, it's not, it's a way to get away from DRM.

Great: we do away with DRM and end up with an even more intrusive and repressive system of total digital control for everything on- and off-line. That's what the Creative Commons is working towards? Where's Larry Lessig when you need him?

Update: Confused of Calcutta takes these ideas further in his great post "A simple desultory philippic about copyright".

17 April 2008

The Evolution of Knowledge

This is moving in the right direction - towards *all* knowledge, freely online for *everyone* to use in *any* way - rather like free software:

Darwin's private papers online - the largest publication of Darwin's papers in history. Read about it here. Browse the papers here.

This site contains Darwin's complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; [Click to enlarge] also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.

Almost all is online only here: such as 1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, Descent of Man, all editions of Origin of Species (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th & 6th); important manuscripts: Beagle Diary & field notebooks, Journal, transmutation notebooks and Autobiography.

Forthcoming: more editions, translations, introductions & manuscripts.

But:

These materials may be freely used for non-commercial purposes and distribution to students; republication in any form requires written permission.

Why? Isn't knowledge for sharing?

Ah well, it's a good start.