IP

Space Age Magazine installed the Creative Commons licensing to all work on their section of the Ning Social Network site. This was done as a de facto attribution shared alike which altered the bundle of rights to my intellectual property posted to their community. I wrote this to the “founder” of the Space Age Magazine:

Follow up:

“By placing all work under the Creative Commons concept you have violated my copyright.

I have given permission under the common publishers “compilation” copyright which has been in effect for decades. By changing to Creative Commons (even the Attribution Share) has created an atmosphere that I can not be part of by changing the way Intellectual Property protected under this network shows a lack of common courtesy to the people creating the content.

I will over the next few days hold off loading any new materials if the Creative Commons attribution-Share Alike continues to be the standard for this network I will remove all content and exit this group. I did not agree to have my copyright and trademarked property to be usurped by this network.

I think the concept of the network is fine but I do not give up my full bundle of rights under copyright and trademark laws. I have given this network the right of compilation only it was never implied my rights were to be abridged or altered. Intellectual Property is something held dear by myself by making this change has shown this may not be the proper place for my Intellectual Property to be displayed. BySilent™ is a trademark name which does not come under the Creative Commons license if I do decide to exit this network I will expect all content associated with BySilent™ to be fully removed from this network.

Thank you in advance for understanding my views on how my Intellectual Property may be used and under what bundle of rights they hold.”

Over the next few hours I received 4 emails none addressing my concern but implying my intellectual property was and should be controlled by the majority and by the “founder” and the admin staff of Space Age Magazine. The final email was to me an attempt to silence my rights to my intellectual property through embarrassment. This document is in response to the fourth email which by inference hold me the sole source of their woes to produce the Space Age Magazine and to “shame” me into allowing my property to be usurped by the group at their discretion and leasure.

First Email 5/4/09 2:14pm

“My friend, NO one has violated your copyright, so far. 100+ members begged me to put the site on Creative Commons, because under ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (as Flickr, deviantART, YouTube?, etc. operate, or they would have to write written permissions for every single work to be published at SAM. ALL begged me to go to Ccreative Commons, after we tried publishing anything under the standard US Copyright Law.

So now what?

You tell me what to do, and I will do it. But I cannot please 1 and lose 100, correct?”

Be it 100 or a million people they do not have the right to have my bundle of rights altered without my permission.

Intellectual Property is not a democracy thing it is an individual thing. The owner of the property has the say in how that property may be used hence the reason for Copyright, Patent and Trademark law.

Using the 100 people lost as your defense to justify your actions is very weak. I doubt if they will leave, Creative Commons licenses are geared to individuals to use on their property not a blanket to place over a compilation environment. You also should check the terms of use, service agreements for the sites you reference you will not see Creative Commons as the base for their legal protection. They do have clear descriptions on the use of copyright and trademark and remedies on infringements and posting content by those that do not own the content.

By placing the blanket CC license on the site you have violated my bundle of rights to my Intellectual Property as well as every person on the site. This is not a democracy issue of majority rule. The majority does not own my property…. I own it, I decide what bundle of my rights will be used or not used not the group.

2nd email 05/04/09 2:37pm

“Dear BySilent?:

As per your request, I removed all specifications of “share alike” Creative Commons and altered the site’s agreement because of ONE man, risking to loose all our other members–just to show my willingness to cooperate. However, I cannot remove the CC completely, because they offer “All Rights Reserved!” option. Please visit their site, slect a badge corresponding to your license, and post it on your page at SAM, so we may know that ALL your works are ALL RIGHTS RESERVED and you DO NOT wish them considered as automatic submission for publication, etc. In this case, you will have to grant us written permission for every single artwork of yours we publish, if selected.

BTW, if your art is displayed on any other website, such as deviantART.com, Flickr.com, YouTube.com and alike, who practice CC, then you your art has already been licensed to them (as to us) under their CC license.

Again, ONLY BUT FEW MEMBERS WANT TO SIGN LEGAL COPYRIGHT AGREEMENTS, so unless we use CC, we CANNOT have a magazine whatsoever. We have tried to solve this problem for half a year already and we’re still in the bog ;-(“

You have the right under the publishers “compilation” section of copyright law which protects you the publisher of the magazine. I do not agree with creative commons since I am very comfortable with the bundle of rights I enjoy under the copyright and trademark laws. Unfortunately creative commons for many in unenlightened circles equate to free for the taking as if they are under public domain.


You are in error to think as a publisher you cannot use the “compilation” section of the copyright laws, I do suggest you rethink your issue on this subject. As a publisher the right to use the works of others and use a copyright for the magazine leaving each individual’s copyright intact was always present and valid for you to use. If people cannot understand how compilations work under the bundle of copyright then it is your chance to educate them, creative commons is a wonderful concept unfortunately I do not hold to their conventions when it comes to this issue. Since in the long run you are intending to generate revenue streams from the sale of anthologies, DVDs, and other channels of distribution without compensation to the owners of the work being distributed. This could be a reason why you are not getting people to sign any agreement as you infer in your email.

(one of many links that cover compilations and copyright)

3rd email 05/04/09 2:49pm
“PS May I suggest you create a FORM DISCUSSION on this and ask all our members on their opinion, before calling us “usurpers” and “violators,” please? I’m willing to discuss this issue or even shut down the whole website. No one likes to be called usurper, I’m sure ;-(((“

You can have a group discussion but my Intellectual Property is my property a group discussion does not change this fact. Making a de facto decision to place your network under Creative Commons was an inadvertent attempt to alter my bundle of rights. I informed you I was not happy with your altering my bundle of rights as I will state once again too many unenlightened people see CC and default it to Public Domain(ish) and will freely pilfer content assuming they have the right to use the content unhindered by the bundle of rights under copyright and trademark.

If the shoe fits … by altering the rights of the Intellectual Property on the site you have usurped my Intellectual Property.

Altering the bundle of rights of people is not the way to function. You as the publisher of the magazine had the compilation right all publishers have had under copyright law. To alter the bundle of rights to Intellectual Property you do not own is technically Intellectual Property theft.

“usurp (y¡-sûrp´, -zûrp´) verb
usurped, usurping, usurps verb, transitive

1. To seize and hold (the power or rights of another, for example) by force and without legal authority. See Synonyms at APPROPRIATE.
2. To take over or occupy without right: usurp a neighbor’s land.

verb, intransitive
To seize another’s place, authority, or possession wrongfully.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language”

The term usurp fits what has been done I can only defend my bundle of rights of my Intellectual Property. Your cavalier attitude towards the Intellectual Property of others is the reason I may remove all my content from your network.

As I have stated in my first response to you on this subject only I can defend my rights to my property a group discussion does not change who owns my Intellectual Property. To de facto alter to Creative Commons licensing under the argument other sites use it is not a valid argument against an owner of Intellectual Property defending their property. You should actually read the terms of use of the sites you reference people have the option to place their work under Creative Commons if they so choose the sites themselves do not place the content of the site under Creative Commons license.

From Deviantart: (and being used under Fair Use)

“3. Trademarks

All brand, product and service names used in this Service which identify Deviantart or third parties and their products and services are proprietary marks of Deviantart and/or the relevant third parties. Nothing in this Service shall be deemed to confer on any person any license or right on the part of Deviantart or any third party with respect to any such image, logo or name.

4. Copyright

Deviantart is, unless otherwise stated, the owner of all copyright and data rights in the Service and its contents. Individuals who have posted works to Deviantart are either the copyright owners of the component parts of that work or are posting the work under license from a copyright owner or his or her agent or otherwise as permitted by law. You may not reproduce, distribute, publicly display or perform, or prepare derivative works based on any of the Content including any such works without the express, written consent of Deviantart or the appropriate owner of copyright in such works. Deviantart does not claim ownership rights in your works or other materials posted by you to Deviantart (Your Content). You agree not to distribute any part of the Service other than Your Content in any medium other than as permitted in these Terms of Service or by use of functions on the Service provided by us. You agree not to alter or modify any part of the Service unless expressly permitted to do so by us or by use of functions on the Service provided by us.”

You may also wish to check this Deviantart page:
http://about.deviantart.com/policy/copyright/

Nowhere in the terms of service or other documentation does Deviantart reference Creative Commons to protect Deviantart from legal action. However, Creative Commons disclaimers does not protect the user from being held liable for violating the bundle of rights of the owner of a copyright and Creative Commons gives no protection against trademark violations/infringements whatsoever.

How you were using Creative Commons licensing altered my bundle of rights to what you feel my bundle should be which is a violation of the Creative Commons licensing agreement. So you violated the CC license by making the license altering the rights of Intellectual Property you do not own. There are many problems with Creative Commons licenses dating back to at least 2004.

” The Notion of Commercial Use is Vague and Unfair: Boradell points to several scenarios, including a non-proft book and placing advertisements on a blog that raise a heated debate about whether the use is commercial. He also worries that granting commercial use favors corporations that love Creative Commons “even better than Third World child labor”.”

” Many people expect Creative Commons to be a magic wand that fixes all of the copyright problems we have. With a simple wave all of the license spammers, confusion and bad guys are supposed to disappear. It doesn’t work that way and was never supposed to.

Creative Commons is a series of copyright licenses, just like any others. People are going to ignore them, people are going to misinterpret them and people are going to abuse them. It is no difference than the GPL, BSD, Mozilla, Apache and other copyright licenses.

It does not eliminate the need for you to protect your content from those who violate your license. However that number will be significantly less than if you didn’t have a CC license and chose, instead, to enforce a traditional copyright license on your content.

It is also true that many of these misuses stem from confusion, but confusion is equally prevalent when dealing with copyright law itself. There is a reason that copyright myths articles are so popular.”

Both quotes are from an article by Jonathan Bailey on the PlagiarismToday? website:

I prefer to protect my bundle of rights to my Intellectual Property under copyright and trademark laws and not a licensing organization that has no real authority to ensure my property is protected. Case in point is your use of the Creative Commons license to subvert my bundle of rights so my property can be used in ways I had not given permission.

You as publisher as well as your admin staff have not placed a valid reason to alter my bundle of rights to my Intellectual Property. I am sure many others who take their creative works seriously will find the altering of their property rights without their permission a usurpation of their property. Inadvertent as it may have been you still cannot take a car owned by your neighbor and register or license it as your own vehicle. Simple example but I think it shows the actual action you have taken by altering the bundle of rights to the members of the Space Age Magazine community.

4th email 05/04/09 4:42pm

“Dear BySylent?:

Congratulations, our admins created a Copyright Forum just for you, because they would like to know why you call them usurpers and copyright violators, if the whole world is mow using CC–especially online magazines and art galleries–not just us.

The ball is in your court now. Feel free to explain your line of reasoning. I simply forwarded your official email and made them know that we have an urgent issue to discuss and solve ASAP. Until then, the magazine publication is suspended.

THX”

This document in its totality is in response to the 4th email which in my opinion does reflect the type of leadership Space Age Magazine operates under. Trying to embarrass me into silence and to let my property be used as the “majority” deems fit has not worked nor will it ever work.

I have noticed you have been busy altering the group’s terms of service and guidelines you still have many holes where you are liable and litigation can result. But under your new terms I cannot in good conscious be part of the Space Age Magazine group. Since I will be removing all my work I will require Space Age Magazine to remove any references to my property. You have 5 business days to comply with this request.