Digital Copyright Canada

Fully linked (and possibly updated) version is at:
  http://www.flora.ca/makelegal200403.shtml

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ottawa -- March 1, 2004 -- FLORA Community Consulting wishes to announce
the "Make it legal: don't litigate, use creative licensing" campaign to
encourage software authors, musicians, and other creators of works of the
mind to use Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and Creative
Commons licensing.

In March 2002, Roaring Penguin Software Inc. started a campaign called
"Stay Legal - Use Free Software". CAAST, the Canadian Alliance against
Software Theft, has been promoting a truce for businesses and
organizations with improperly-licensed software. We believe the best way
to manage improperly-licensed software is to switch to Free/Libre and Open
Source Software (FLOSS - `free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free
beer.'') where license maintenance is much simpler, and there are no
per-desk, per-user or per-server obligations.

While this campaign has been a success and many software users have
switched to FLOSS, the current litigation by the Canadian Recording
Industry Association (CRIA) suggest it is time to extend this campaign to
the creator community. Incumbent content and "software manufacturing"
industrial associations in Canada such as CRIA and CAAST wish to place the
blame for current problems on their own customers, and create considerable
customer relations problems by suing their own customer base. FLORA
Community Consulting wishes all creators to acknowledge that the source of
their problems is not lawlessness of their customers, but their
pre-Internet era business models which make illegal common and often quite
helpful activities of their customers which should be royalty-free.

In the software industry most of the largest to the smallest software
companies have either fully or partially adopted FLOSS licenses and
business models. The larger companies include IBM who is a large Linux
promoter, Novell which recently bought SuSe Linux and Ximian, Sun
Microsystems who sponsor OpenOffice.org as well as market and support
derivative StarOffice, Apple Computer with MacOS-X which is built on top
of their Darwin project, RedHat Linux, and more than are possible to
count. This model is being looked at seriously and positively by most of
the software industry, with only a few well-known exceptions such as
Microsoft, Microsoft dependents, and Microsoft led industry associations.

We wish the success seen in the software marketplace for modern
Internet-era business models to also bring success in other creator
communities. While we strongly support the right of creators to protect
their creative rights through copyright, including the right to sue those
who infringe copyright, we do not believe that the current lawsuits
launched by various intermediary industry associations will benefit
creators. "The protection afforded in copyright is to the creator as water
is to humans; too little and you dehydrate and die, too much and you drown
and die. Survival requires understanding this delicate balance", explains
Russell McOrmond of FLORA Community Consulting.  With this in mind the
first step of this new campaign was to sponsor the Canadian File-sharing
Legal Information Network (CanFLI), now hosted for free at FLORA.ca's ISP.

"CanFLI is a network of technology law students and organizations across
Canada who wish to gather and disseminate information to help people who
are sued by the CRIA", explains Andy Kaplan-Myrth, M.A., law student and
president of the Information Technology Law Society at the University of
Ottawa. "We will provide FAQs and links to articles on the status of the
law in Canada with respect to file-sharing, contact information for
lawyers or organizations who may act for them, and perhaps information
about how ISPs are responding".

The next stage of this campaign will be to offer creators some of the same
free consulting services as the "Stay Legal - Use Free Software" campaign
did for software users. Rather than making suggestions of what software to
use, we would investigate alternative business models that make use of the
great opportunities of the Internet to the creators advantage, rather than
choosing business models which make the Internet appear as a threat. As
with the existing campaign, many creators would be offered a free day of
consulting.

"The Internet, and digital audio technology in general, provide great
promotional tools", explains Neil Leyton, musician and manager of
Toronto-based indie label Fading Ways Music. "Music fans can be
inexpensive, often free, music promoters. We intend on putting the
Internet to good use by no longer using the old copyright logo on our new
releases, opting instead to display a Creative Commons license. These
licenses are loosely based on the concept of Open Source which the
software industry became familiar with years ago."

The idea is simple: musicians would take the activities which the
recording industry claim are a great threat and make them legal. Rather
than sending your money to lawyers to sue your customers, you shift these
activities in your business model from being considered a lost revenue
stream to being a gained form of marketing and promotion. Rather than
trying to make money off of the private non-commercial communications of
your work you would leverage this new marketing to make more money off of
other aspects of your business.

Neil Leyton further explains, "One common misconception about Creative
Commons licenses is that they eliminate royalty payments to artists. With
the CC license we have chosen this is not so. Radio play remains a
commercial activity, as they are in the business of selling advertising.
That station, under the CC license, is still required to pay royalties for
playing a Creative Commons song. Similarly, mechanical licensing would
still apply with the obvious exception of the Canadian Private Copying
levy. TV usage, commercial film usage, and all other such uses remain
unaffected by a CC license. CC complements and clarifies Copyright. It
does not take it away."

There are many types of Creative Commons licenses, some that allow
commercial communications, and some that even allow derivative works such
that the Internet can become a worldwide musical jam-session. While all
creative commons licenses make non-commercial private distribution of
works royalty-free, and thus makes P2P Internet distribution of those
works legal, the creator has many options for other aspects of their
business. The Creative Commons concept is that rather than being "all
rights reserved", you have "some rights reserved" under the control of the
creator.

As the old industry associations like CRIA and CAAST continue to head to
the courts to protect their old business models and special interests
against the interests of creators and their audiences, it is hoped that
these creators and audiences will make important choices to protect their
own interests. Creators and citizens need to turn the Internet into a
great opportunity to build better relationships between them, and keep
everyone out of the courts. As the animations from Creative Commons
suggests, "it can be that easy when you skip the intermediaries."

For more information please contact: Russell McOrmond. 
Full contact information can be found at http://www.flora.ca/#contact

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Important Links:

Stay Legal - Use Free Software
http://www.stay-legal.org/

Canadian File-sharing Legal Information Network
http://www.canfli.org/

Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org

Fading Ways Music mission statement
http://www.fadingwaysmusic.com/mission.html

Perspective of a digital copyright reformer on past Heritage minister 
Sheila Copps, contrasting with Internet entrepreneur Bob Young, co-founder 
of RedHat, founder of Center for the Public Domain, and Lulu.com.
http://www.flora.ca/russell/drafts/copps-ndp.html

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 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 "Make it legal: don't litigate, use creative licensing" campaign.
 A modern answer to P2P: http://www.flora.ca/makelegal200403.shtml
 Canadian File-sharing Legal Information Network http://www.canfli.org/

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Digital Copyright Canada

[d@DCC] "Make it legal: don't litigate, use creative licensing" campaign.

All Canadian Citizens are "Rights Holders"!