creative commons non-commercial use session at dlf

My somewhat unstructured notes from a presentation by Virginia Rutledge, an attorney from Creative Commons, at the DLF Fall 2008 Forum.

• Copyright is a bundle of rights. She went over this in some detail for those who are less familiar.
  
• Creative Commons exists to support the ability to share, remix, and reuse, legally.
• Example of recent Library use: the entire UCLA Library web site is under a CC license to clarify its content re-use status.
• The Creative Commons definition of non-commercial is tied to the intent of the user -- no intent towards commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. BUT, there is no single definition of non-commercial.
• There are undertaking a research project in many phases. 1st (done) – focus groups. Identified 4 communities: Arts, education, web, and science communities. This proved to be a VERY bad idea, as the boundaries are actually way too fuzzy and interdisciplinary. The work invalidated the assumption that they could do this on a community-based basis.
• A number of issues of importance to rights holders in allowing non-commercial use were identified in the discussions: Is there a perceived economic value? Who is the user-- an individual or an organization? Non profit or not? Is any money generated? Is access supported by advertising or not? Is the use for the “public good” -- for charity/education? What is the amount of distribution? Will the work be used in part or in whole? Is this use by a “competitor?”
• There are also subjective issues: Is it an objectionable use? Is it perceived as fair use?
• Personal creator and personal use versus institutional ownership and use is a distinction that really makes a difference to people, but has no meaning in US law.
• Some of the confusion over how to define "non-commercial" is not understanding what activities the prohibition of non-commercial use actually prohibits. Most rights holders don’t really want to prohibit all commercial uses, just some, and it varies wildly by person/organization.
• Based on the research so far, there is no checklist they can come up with.
• As of November 17, a poll will be available online, and they are encouraging librarians to participate.