This is an excellent question, and one which every
Creative Commons Project in a developing country must
ask.
Since in many developed countries amateur musicians
and film makers have been amongst the most
enthusiastic users of Creative Commons licences, it is
not just scientific knowledge which is at issue .
There may be thousands, possibly millions of people
with the leisure, and technical equipment to create
and digital works, and distribute them away via the
Internet in developed countries. This is obviously not
the case in Africa where even the limited Internet
access is often low bandwidth access. There are few
people with the time or leisure to create and give
away digital music and movies.
Does this mean that Creative Commons licences are
useless to most Africans?
I have spent some time pondering this question, and
these are my personal responses. I would be most
interested to hear what others engaged in this field
think.
In respect of art I suggest that it is to the
advantage of Africans to have thier works become known
globally. Indeed, current distribution mechanims often
favour a one way import of content from developed
countries to developing countries. If creative commons
simply facilitates distribution of African content
within Africa it will have achieved a great deal. If
Creative Commons further enables African creators to
be known outside of the continent this will be useful
in having African voices heard in other countries and
may potentially give African creators access to
markets which they don't have.
Anyone who licences their work under a creative
commons licence chooses which rights to retain and
which to allow others to exercise. Thus a musician
might allow others the right to make copies for
personal use, but retain the right to commercial
exploitation. Thus a someone making an advertisement,
cutting a CD of African music, or making a film, might
get to know the musicians work, BECAUSE IT IS
DISTRIBUTED UNDER A CC LICENCE, and thus approach the
musician to licence the work for a commercial use,
such as inclusion in a film.
The question in each case is which licence is most
appropriate.
Similar considerations apply to scientific knowledge.
If this knowledge is published under a proprietory
format it will be available to international
corporations and wealthy academic institutions in
developed countries. It will not however be easily
available to most people in developing countries who
will not benefit from it. If it is licensed under a CC
licence more people will benefit.
If it is not disclosed at all then it is questionable
what the point of producing the knowledge is.
What about the creators of the knowledge? Copyright in
scientific knowledge does not generate much revenue
for scientists who publish their work in scientific
journals. These are largely the work of academics and
research scientists who are paid by institutions. Few
if any scientists are directly renumerated for
publishing scientific work, only publishers, few of
whom are African corporations, benefit from charging
for access to this knowledge. How will Africa lose if
these publishers are disintermediated?
Copyright is not generally the appropriate way to
protect possible revenue from scientific knowledge,
patent is. Creative Commons licences do not preclude
the registration of patents since Creative Commons
deals only with copyright.
It is important however to ask this question each time
a person considers licencing a work under a CC
licence:
is a CC licence most appropriate for THIS work?
--- barnabe@oridev.org wrote:
Français :
Merci à Andrew Rens pour son texte sur Creative
Commons. J'ai une
question: puisque nous nous avons constaté au cours
du débat que
l'Afrique ne produit pas énormément de connaissances
scientifiques,
comparativement aux pays/continents plus développés,
pourquoi
devons-nous moins protéger le peu de connaissances
que nous avons en
utilisant les licences creatives commons? Ne
devons-nous pas plutôt
mieux protéger que les autres? Les licences
creatives commons sont-elles
réellement bonnes pour l'Afrique? Je ne pense pas
qu'elles vont bien
marcher en Afrique.
English
Thanks to Andrew Rens for his note on Creatives
Commons. Since it is
assumed that Africa does not produce much scientific
knowledge, in
comparaison with Western countries, why have we to
protect less the few
knowledge that we produce? Maybe it should be the
contrary. So are
Creatives Commons really good in Africa?
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