A guest lecture held at the University of Mary Washington on 6 October 2009 regarding trends in openness and licensing of software, music and other types of content.

1. The Open Triumvirate
✦ Open Standards
✦ Open Source
✦ Open Content
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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Who has the right to use, copy, repurpose, remix content, software, writing or other creative
works?

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What do these two have in common? “My Way” (1968, 1978). Covers in music require
permission, called a mechanical license in the industry.

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The White Stripes’ album White Blood Cells had a bass line added by Steve McDonald of Redd
Kross. Permission was verbally granted by Jack White when Steve ran into him _after_
creating the work. The new album was removed after more than 60K downloads.

6. "In many ways, this online-only album lives up to the dream
that music fans originally had for the internet. It is an
example not just of a musician delivering work directly to
his fans, but also of performers bending the rules for the
sake of art."
-- Neil Strauss, The New York Times
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Regarding the release of Redd Blood Cells

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Most software, music and other content created so far has been proprietary. Owned by a
company and licensed to you when you “buy” it. You don’t really buy it! You license it.

8. ©
Copyright © All Rights Reserved
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Copyright is the legal framework by which proprietary works are protected.

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Copyright law changed in the US in 1978 to automatically copyright everything created.

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Some software and content enters the public domain - we all own it. This can happen
because someone gives it away without restriction, or after a period of time has passed after
an author’s death.

11. ©
Public Domain: No Rights Reserved
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12. The Spectrum of Greed
- +
Public domain Copyright
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Is there a middle ground?

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The Web - a triumph of open standards. Open standards allow proprietary software to be
written so that it will interact with others.

15. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man. "
-- George Bernard Shaw
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How is progress made? In trying to define a middle ground, we can start here.

16. "People said I should accept the world.
Bullshit! I don't accept the world."
-- Richard Stallman
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We’ll meet Richard in a few minutes.

17. Verba volant,
scripta manent
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To define the middle ground, we need a contract.

18. Get it in writing
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If we can write down what we want to do, we can figure out a legal way of doing it. Licenses
do just that.

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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master and if you use the program, he is your master."
“Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as
productive. It ought to be as free.”

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Two types of freedom. Free as in beer...

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...or free as in speech.

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The GNU General Public License: What is free must stay free. Free as in freedom (speech),
probably also free as in beer.

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Stallman was followed by Tim Berners-Lee (Web), Eric Raymond (Open Source Initiative,
Cathedral and the Bazaar), Linus Torvalds (Linux), Lawrence Lessig (Creative Commons) and
many, many others.

24. 1976 1983 1986 1991 1994 1998 2001
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ITU X.25 standard (1976), GNU (1983), FSF (1985), IETF (1986), Linux (1991), W3C (1994),
OSI (1998), Creative Commons (2001)
Movement from Open Standards to Open Source to Open Content

25. The Spectrum of Greed
Richard Stallman David Hyland-Wood Bill Gates
- +
Public domain Eric Raymond Larry Lessig Copyright
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Open Source/Content ≠ public domain! It is licensed and users must comply with the
licenses.

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29. The information economy accounts for
~10% of the GDP of most developed nations, and
more than 50% of their economic growth.
Source: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf
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FLOSS *usage* survey; use more popular in the EU than the US.
NB: Copyrighted material used for didactic purposes under fair use provisions.

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32. Open Source
• Run
• Study Open Content
• Modify
• Consume
• Share
• Study
• Modify
• Share
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Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV, consisting of 36 instrumental tracks licensed under a
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license on 2 March 2008.

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Creative Commons allows creators to mix and match four concerns into licenses.

35. © All Rights Reserved.
Ask Permission.
©
Reproduce, adapt,
distribute,
but license the same.
© CC
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Some Rights Reserved.
Some permissions granted.
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ccmixter.org - a Creative Commons sponsored site to expose CC-licensed music for
remixing.

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Movies: 74K, Audio: 303K, books: 37K and 266K “other”.

39. Also iTunes U, MIT Open Courseware, etc.
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40. What should you do?
• Only use, reuse, remix work that you have
rights to.
• License your work!
• Avoid situations like CourseHero - or at
least give yourself the legal rights to fix any
problems.
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How can you participate? License your tweets! (music, plays, novels, software, movies...)

42. Credits - CC Licensed
Triumvirate http://www.flickr.com/photos/reidab/393803339/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poper/179970823/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/iguanajo/
Web
277209483/
Roman bust http://www.flickr.com/photos/angerboy/532691310/
Policeman http://www.flickr.com/photos/kk/12722162/
Beer http://www.flickr.com/photos/marui/460581081/
Bill of Rights http://www.flickr.com/photos/anselor/67025021/in/set-1457202/
Copyright extensions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_term.svg
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Richard_Stallman_speaking_at_Wikimania_2005-08-07.jpg
Richard Stallman
and http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolasrolland/3063010427/sizes/s/
GNU Logo http://johnbokma.com/gnulogo.html
Mapa Open Source 2009 (Red Hat) http://www.flickr.com/photos/arrayexception/3500434664/sizes/o/
Eric Raymond http://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/224766598/
Tim Berners-Lee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tim_Berners-Lee.jpg
Linus Torvalds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linus_Torvalds.jpeg
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43. Credits - CC Licensed
Lawrence Lessig http://www.lessig.org/info/photos/
Open Source Initiative logo http://www.flickr.com/photos/27316226@N02/3000888100/sizes/o/
Street crowd http://www.flickr.com/photos/rayan_jeroen/207239822/
Wii Play packaging http://www.flickr.com/photos/20179579@N00/461808859/
Reach http://www.flickr.com/photos/kharied/486001659/
Creative Commons options http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/freedoms_license.jpg
Creative Commons logo http://www.flickr.com/photos/10243775@N05/3482370143/
FLOSS used in MS Windows http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinbekkelund/2397647179/sizes/l/
GPL street sign http://www.flickr.com/photos/svensson/45394401/
License your tweets? http://za.creativecommons.org/blog/archives/2009/09/13/cc-license-your-tweets/
GNU and FLOSS differences http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
Open Content examples http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_movies
Open Course logo http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcwathieu/2412755417/
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44. Credits - Fair Use of Copyright
White Blood Cells album cover by The White Stripes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_White_Stripes_-_White_Blood_Cells.jpg
Redd Blood Cells album cover by Stephen Banes http://www.reddkross.com/features/RBC/
Nine Inch Nails Web page for Ghosts I-IV http://ghosts.nin.com/main/home
ITU logo http://www.itu.int/PublishingImages/logos/ITU-official-logo_75.gif
Credits - By Permission
Linux logo by Larry Ewing <lewing@isc.tamu.edu>
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45. The Open Triumvirate
David Hyland-Wood
University of Mary Washington
6 October 2009
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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