Undercurrents

Video Activism - Ruff Cut's

Extract from http://www.dsl.org/copyleft/

"All knowledge all discoveries belong to everybody. ... All knowledge all discoveries belong to you by right. It is time to demand what belongs to you." -- William S. Burroughs, The Job

Copyleft and the Information Renaissance

One of the most important philosophical and social issues confronting humanity in the beginning of the 21st century is the sharing of information.

The working assumptions in the dsl.org copyleft grand strategy are the following: data, or information, is not physical; data exists in constant relative abundance; computer software program "source code" is data; with the digital computer it became possible to make unlimited verbatim copies of information without disadvantage -- when you copy data, the original is neither changed nor destroyed. It became apparent that human expression and communication across digital computing networks is actioned through referencing, copying and sampling this weightless, non-physical data. For there to be a free society, any published data ought to be freely shareable -- contrary to current copyright law and assumptions of ``intellectual property.''

"Copyleft," in the popular usage of the term, means "a copyright notice that permits unrestricted redistribution and modification, provided that all copies and derivatives retain the same permissions."

Computing's free software movement was the first to use contract law to implement "copyleft" and other open-source style licenses for the sharing of software programs. However, these licenses only applied to software programs, and not any other kind of data; experiments were carried out to apply computer software licensing to non-software information, but eventually this "kludge" had to be replaced by a more graceful solution.

Meanwhile, other specialized licenses began to originate, for use only with certain special-case categories of works as recognized by copyright law. No current public, open source licensing addressed the issue of copylefting data in a generalized, comprehensive manner, regardless of its specialized use or application. So it was necessary to invent one.

The Design Science License

The Design Science License [8k text] is a copyleft-style license that you can use to "copyleft" any work that is recognized by copyright law. It is not a specialized license that only applies to certain kinds of works or subject matter, or only for the products of certain organizations, but it is a comprehensive, generalized license that anyone can use for any work recognized by copyright law. It also ensures that the attribution integrity of a work is kept.

Wendy Seltzer, Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, gave an initial review of the license draft and provided her expertise and advice throughout the enitre process.

There has also been some review and discussion of the license on the linart mailing list.

While the idea is to have a free society where any license or copyright is unnecessary, and where anyone could share all published works for the common good with no sovereign-nation laws dictating who can say or use what in their expression or communication, in the meantime this "copyleft" licensing, already proven with the free/open source software movement, may help engineer this goal.

More information

 

DESIGN SCIENCE LICENSE

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

Copyright © 1999-2001 Michael Stutz <stutz@dsl.org> Verbatim copying of this
document is permitted, in any medium.

0. PREAMBLE.

Copyright law gives certain exclusive rights to the author of a work,
including the rights to copy, modify and distribute the work (the
"reproductive," "adaptative," and "distribution" rights).

The idea of "copyleft" is to willfully revoke the exclusivity of those
rights under certain terms and conditions, so that anyone can copy and
distribute the work or properly attributed derivative works, while all
copies remain under the same terms and conditions as the original.

The intent of this license is to be a general "copyleft" that can be applied
to any kind of work that has protection under copyright. This license states
those certain conditions under which a work published under its terms may be
copied, distributed, and modified.

Whereas "design science" is a strategy for the development of artifacts as a
way to reform the environment (not people) and subsequently improve the
universal standard of living, this Design Science License was written and
deployed as a strategy for promoting the progress of science and art through
reform of the environment.

1. DEFINITIONS.

"License" shall mean this Design Science License. The License applies to any
work which contains a notice placed by the work's copyright holder stating
that it is published under the terms of this Design Science License.

"Work" shall mean such an aforementioned work. The License also applies to
the output of the Work, only if said output constitutes a "derivative work"
of the licensed Work as defined by copyright law.

"Object Form" shall mean an executable or performable form of the Work,
being an embodiment of the Work in some tangible medium.

"Source Data" shall mean the origin of the Object Form, being the entire,
machine-readable, preferred form of the Work for copying and for human
modification (usually the language, encoding or format in which composed or
recorded by the Author); plus any accompanying files, scripts or other data
necessary for installation, configuration or compilation of the Work.

(Examples of "Source Data" include, but are not limited to, the following:
if the Work is an image file composed and edited in PNG format, then the
original PNG source file is the Source Data; if the Work is an MPEG 1.0
layer 3 digital audio recording made from a WAV format audio file recording
of an analog source, then the original WAV file is the Source Data; if the
Work was composed as an unformatted plaintext file, then that file is the
Source Data; if the Work was composed in LaTeX, the LaTeX file(s) and any
image files and/or custom macros necessary for compilation constitute the
Source Data.)

"Author" shall mean the copyright holder(s) of the Work.

The individual licensees are referred to as "you."

2. RIGHTS AND COPYRIGHT.

The Work is copyrighted by the Author. All rights to the Work are reserved
by the Author, except as specifically described below. This License
describes the terms and conditions under which the Author permits you to
copy, distribute and modify copies of the Work.

In addition, you may refer to the Work, talk about it, and (as dictated by
"fair use") quote from it, just as you would any copyrighted material under
copyright law.

Your right to operate, perform, read or otherwise interpret and/or execute
the Work is unrestricted; however, you do so at your own risk, because the
Work comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY -- see Section 7 ("NO WARRANTY") below.

3. COPYING AND DISTRIBUTION.

Permission is granted to distribute, publish or otherwise present verbatim
copies of the entire Source Data of the Work, in any medium, provided that
full copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty, where applicable, is
conspicuously published on all copies, and a copy of this License is
distributed along with the Work.

Permission is granted to distribute, publish or otherwise present copies of
the Object Form of the Work, in any medium, under the terms for distribution
of Source Data above and also provided that one of the following additional
conditions are met:

(a) The Source Data is included in the same distribution, distributed under
the terms of this License; or

(b) A written offer is included with the distribution, valid for at least
three years or for as long as the distribution is in print (whichever is
longer), with a publicly-accessible address (such as a URL on the Internet)
where, for a charge not greater than transportation and media costs, anyone
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the section above; or

(c) A third party's written offer for obtaining the Source Data at no cost,
as described in paragraph (b) above, is included with the distribution. This
option is valid only if you are a non-commercial party, and only if you
received the Object Form of the Work along with such an offer.

You may copy and distribute the Work either gratis or for a fee, and if
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The aggregation of the Work with other works that are not based on the
Work -- such as but not limited to inclusion in a publication, broadcast,
compilation, or other media -- does not bring the other works in the scope
of the License; nor does such aggregation void the terms of the License for
the Work.

4. MODIFICATION.

Permission is granted to modify or sample from a copy of the Work, producing
a derivative work, and to distribute the derivative work under the terms
described in the section for distribution above, provided that the following
terms are met:

(a) The new, derivative work is published under the terms of this License.

(b) The derivative work is given a new name, so that its name or title
cannot be confused with the Work, or with a version of the Work, in any way.

(c) Appropriate authorship credit is given: for the differences between the
Work and the new derivative work, authorship is attributed to you, while the
material sampled or used from the Work remains attributed to the original
Author; appropriate notice must be included with the new work indicating the
nature and the dates of any modifications of the Work made by you.

5. NO RESTRICTIONS.

You may not impose any further restrictions on the Work or any of its
derivative works beyond those restrictions described in this License.

6. ACCEPTANCE.

Copying, distributing or modifying the Work (including but not limited to
sampling from the Work in a new work) indicates acceptance of these terms.
If you do not follow the terms of this License, any rights granted to you by
the License are null and void. The copying, distribution or modification of
the Work outside of the terms described in this License is expressly
prohibited by law.

If for any reason, conditions are imposed on you that forbid you to fulfill
the conditions of this License, you may not copy, distribute or modify the
Work at all.

If any part of this License is found to be in conflict with the law, that
part shall be interpreted in its broadest meaning consistent with the law,
and no other parts of the License shall be affected.

7. NO WARRANTY.

THE WORK IS PROVIDED "AS IS," AND COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
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8. DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY.

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT,
INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF
THIS WORK, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS