Copyright, Creative Commons & the Public Domain

When I logged onto Twitter this morning, it seemed like everywhere I looked there was news about implications of copyright law and copyright alternatives:

• RIAA says there’s no value in the public domain
  Fascinating post from Tech Dirt about how the recording industry group the RIAA says that there is nothing to be gained by having works in the public domain.  For them perhaps.  But for all the people who want to be able to access and use older recordings and compositions, having a vibrant public domain is essential.  That’s why copyright is supposed to cover a limited term.
• Why YouTube is adopting the Creative Commons licensing and why you should care
  YouTube is the biggest source of user-created online video, and Gigaom is arguing today that the service’s adoption of Creative Commons licensing is a big deal.  Creative Commons is an alternative to traditional copyright that allows content creators to claim certain controls over their works while offering expanded fair use in other areas.  In conjunction with this change of licensing, YouTube is now offering a mash-up video editor where users can bring together these various videos in creative new ways.
• Apple nearing completion of licensing of music for cloud
  Apple is getting ready to offer its new cloud music service and is in the process of paying music labels $25-$50 million each for the right to stream their music to people who already own it.

  Say what?

  Very simply, Apple is starting a new service that will let you listen to the music that you own anywhere.  Apple will apparently look at the music you have on your computer and then make all those songs available to you from its data center so you can listen to it over any device that is capable of receiving a data signal (wifi or  cellular).  The thing is, Apple won’t hold your specific copy of the song.  Instead, Apple will have a single copy of each song that it will stream to all the people who already have a copy of it on their computer.

  Amazon launched a similar service back in March, only Amazon claims that it doesn’t have to license the music since the people who are listening already (supposedly) have a legitimate copy of the music. (The key difference is that Amazon requires everyone to upload a copy of their music to the Amazon server.)

  How this gets handled is going to be a big deal because cloud storage (storage on a central server you connect to using wireless technology) is definitely the direction that media is moving in.