Meeting link: https://bbb.constantvzw.org/b/fem-wjx-dcj
cc4r 1.0
Genealogy
A G E N D A
10:00 Welcome + who's in the room + why we need collective conditions for re-use (Femke)
10:15 Reluctantly legal? Introduction to what is at stake in the cc4r (Séverine)
10:30 Discussion: A different concept of Author: Legal Author, Future Author, community-as-author and questions around attribution
10:50 Discussion: Work/oeuvre as a dynamic concept and 'milieu'*; authorisation or invitation for re-use
11:10 BREAK
11:20 Comment: Sarah Magnan (OSP, Just For The Record, teaching to transgress toolbox)
11:30 Discussion: Conditions (clause 0) and responsible use
11:50 Closing + towards cc4r 2.0 (Scope of rights)
N O T E S
...
(Severine)
speakes about the legal dimension of the licence
'legal check on the practices' < we are not there to do that :)
why: "I dont care. That is not the point."
legal compliance, and standing in opposition to that
*reluctantly* we use the copyright system..
-> sort of defense in regards to copyrights that should be taken into account
why / how law does (not) matter (at the moment)
most of licenses are inserted into what the copyright laws allow
normally free lincences first of all assert copyright law, then use it (differently/?).
Q: is it a weakness to have a 'licence' that is not legally compliant?
not the idea is not to make a legal chack on the license; the cc4r opens the imagination and better conveys the practices of licenses' users
it starts from the practices and not from the law.
GPL using language of computer scientists, not lawyer
but still worked in court, when relevant..
court decisions on free licenses generally taken as legal decisions..
open source licences validated at court.
legal author rights and copyright is still pointed/hinted to in CC4r, not central in any way, though.
what is important is that the license doesn't contractually impose but instead demands responsibility and liability; it's a commitment
a call for responsibility
the reference to legal framework of Belgian/French law not necessary.
license need not be attached to a national jurisdiction. ( can go.. but maybe reluctance is important? :P )
Still:
notion of the artist as an individual
notion of a licence as an authorization; giving access
points to discuss/focus on today:
1) legal author, future author: how to bring in another understanding of authorship. How is authorship conceived differently in this licence?
2) what is authorised? How does it conceive the work as a dynamic process
3) the conditions: what are the consequences of calling for responsibility
1)
concept of "individual author" is still sneaking in.
legal author, interesting concept -- produced by the legal framework? and given certain rights, etc.
legal author gives the right to use.
implicit authors -- how you are generally not the 'only' author of the work whether that's recognized or not
lots of people should be recognised as authors.
the license starts with the assumption that there is something to be shared, used and authorised
when people start a collaboration with others they ususally are bound to convential ideas of ownership...
how could we diffuse authorship, distributed authorship
contributions by people whose work is not acknowledges as "authorship" (washing the dishes/care work)
by using the very word of copyright - authors - ... - we are still very glued on copyright laws
Do you really intent the licence to be legally binding. If not you dont have to use the legal terms.
- what would it mean to 'free' ourselves from reference from the copyright law?
- what is the point to keep some shadow of a judge potentially deciding on the base of this text?
we can rely on other basis than contract binding agreement.
Natural Relation [Obligation] ("obligation naturelle" within French Law).. a notion that indicates a duty to comply with what has been done for you
It is less than a contract.
notions as withdrawal [i think it was another word]? or debtor? stick more to your reality.
not someone that provides or gives to the others, but instead who relies on a community
belonging to something broader
owing? you owe something to somebody else.
we could use "contribution" in the vocabulary; is it necessary to describe the quality of the contribution (someone who cleaned in comparison to someone who wrote a text)
copyright was indeed the legal framework onto which we built the license; torn between a suggestion "could you take more resonsibility" and a legal position of saying "you have to take responsibility"
struggled to find a framework other than copyright
example of obligation naturelle:: you give money to someone, you have no duty to do that but it becomes an habit to give this money. It creates an obligation naturelle, and the person can ask you to keep giving them money; it triggers responsibility and liability. It's not much used, it lies somewhere between law and moral. it does't have to be money it can be doing something
wary of shifting to the debt framework... other examples than money?
obligations are not necessarily only about money, but generally doing something for someone
a duty to behave according to some standards that you have
if we want to escape the vocabulary of debt, we can go back to community
communityi / commons / communus - a charge together - something you take care together of
community - contains the idea that you are in charge together
participant instead of author?
communard/commoner ' ' ';
co-conditioned participant-contributor in charge
contributor-gatherer
co-conditioned participant-contributor in charge
if we leave author behind, it will only be defined through the lens of copyright
we are not forced to use subaltern words >> subject
reluctant author [!!] reluctant bearer of authors rights
use of authors instead of author. the use of singular is problematic.
"I would not give up on authorship." Insert "community" somewhere.
thinking of the work as milieu; flipping the object-subject relationship
relationship between Work and Author.
how can this relationship be div/inverted from its normal frame ( author produces work ) > blanga gubbay
in original copyright the author is the starting point...
how is it at Varia? Flipping the direction, the order of who invites whom (?) care, maintenance, obligation. understanding 'obligation' as gestures of commitment to others rather than the implied aspect of liability or accountability the word has
Daniel Blanga: the work exists, the authors tap into the "cloud", temporary intensifying it but never owning it.
the point trying to get rid of the disdtinction between subject and object. (Melanie Clément-Fontaine PhD: "L'oeuvre libre")
the work is free, before the license 'freeing' it
if the work is free it can circulate, it runs with its own status
always already free
Milieu: (Sarah ?) she works on the land, terre, tangible things; we don't own things, the object itself is a milieu that we can inhabit in different ways; we can inhabit because we are the owner, the user, the tenant. So she starts from the resource that we inhabit and non individual object and non human also inhabit the mileu. it could be another way of looking at the object as a milieu that doesn't come to being, it's there. we could start from the work that initiates the license and not the opposite
'i am the work, ... ' and as the work, i invite you to use me
Peter: the milieu seems apt in the sense that the licence then formalises the relations of the inhabitants in the form of responsibility in regard of the work but does not create the need to authenticate those relations... (chat)
the work is what is important to share, not really who decide what;
the first scholars who spoke about copyright were really into ecology > james ??
Sarah has used the license in various situations; what happens when using and discussing the license in different settings
Comments on the practice level, in the milieu of the practice when we discussed the license after proposing it in other collective Sarah's is involved in. With Teaching to Transgress, production of many works (text, videos,...) so the question of the license appeared (which was not thought of initially) what would be the condition for (re)use. At first open license was proposed, because it was european money they had to make it 'as open as possible'.
in the CC4r a paragraph arrives a bit late in the license, the one on the 'why' this license, what is this license trying to achieve
'this is a license but also not really a license" confuses ppl, what does it imply? is it just an advice then? it's interesting but confusing for some. the use of the word 'responsibility' is well taken as responsibility but it feels it was more about 'engagement'; it's not clear where/why you're have right, it is subjective.
the question of 'anauthor' is not really clear, we don't say what it does
"All future authors are considered coauthors, or anauthors. They are anauthorized because this license provides them with an unauthorized authorization." indeed a bit cryptic/loopy ^^
In medor, having different practicians (text, videos, pictures) the different practice make different scope and angles on how they'd want to open. Maybe some example would be helpful. There's fear because the opening up can provoke loss of income for photographs for instance
How to do the incorporation of the license in different works; when collective work gather different licensing practices (non-exclusive licence, can there be an interoperability betw licences or does it need to be exclusive?)
Sometimes it misses a bit of speculative ideas (it is the case with most of licenses), to imagine, engage more what it could be; the idea of speculation could help going away from the legal document
Do you think the questions you encountered were stronger than what you would experience with other known free licenses? For TTT, they ended up using creating commons because it was more a package into which everyone could choose what they wanted/needed. the multiplicity of authors and practices makes it difficult to deal with this license
It's not a license to end all license, it's a second generation copy-left, difficult to talk about it without being linear in its history. it talks about sharing works, keepin the complexity of what that involves and that's why we struggle with 'simplier' document such as those of the creative commons. Its drop-down choice system makes it easier for those just starting to think to licensing questions
Let's go back to the commitment question. Idea of conditions and implications of those conditions. Nice that it is conditions and not obligations. We don't use the usual license vocabulary ("the author grant you the right"...).
Severine: likes the terminologies of "invitation"
need to better articulate the use of "authorisation". clarify the relationship between the two. community/ hospitality. Is authorisation still right? Courtesy? to which court? :P haha
courtesy, natural obligations.. courtesy obligation.. (international law)
'somewhere below-law'
is it between morals and laws?
"Anauthor" > serge gainsbourg l'anamour haha
does the license applies to itself or is something external?
the statement is a comitment to rethinking the existing frameworks.
willing to avoid the work license and empahsize more "invitation" which then brings out more environment
"licence" would grant the right, this is why we speak about "invitation".
Severine: "Conditions" is good--a middle ground.
I give you the right... or these are the conditions under which we work together.
It can refer both (legally) to the conditions under which work can be reused and (not-legally) the conditions under which the work was made
"condition" is triple
- condition under which the work can be made (legal)
- condition under which the work can be shared (legal)
- the condition produced by the work itself (milieu/community)
the cc4r is more than a contractual agreement, more a status than a licence.
Marriage is not only a contract. it is a status. the fact that they are married is visible to the community.
the document would declare ... a state of fact that applies to anybody who want to use it. Declaration: this work belongs to a status.
it goes beyond the willingness of the parties involved
some act of language perfom something; "i declare you married" it has a legal effect immediately. Judith Butler says "speak is also act"; if you say something about a work it gives this work a particular status
this gives the power to the 'author(s)' again, something we're trying to get out of, of being the ones who can declare something
Austin: "How to do things with words": Performative utterance. According to J. L. Austin, "performative utterance" refers to a not truth-valuable action of "performing", or "doing" a certain action. For example, when people say "I promise to do so and so", they are generating the action of making a promise.
NoT good because we dont want to "authorise" the author to "declare"
"acknowledgement" is very useful it's a commitment but also making emerge the conditions
we dont want to "authorise" the author to "declare"
We want to aim for another writing session in the fall;
Possibility to comment on the current text https://constantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r.en.html
would be interesting to think of scenarios for concrete application of the CC4r; making an imagination exercise
is there ways of tracking the use of the license, where is it circulating; Eva's phD was the first 'official' use of the license
P A R T I C I P A N T S
Valérie-Laure Benabou
Cristina Cochior
Séverine Dusollier
Sarah Magnan
Martino Morandi
Karl Moubarak
Elodie Mugrefya
Jara Rocha
Femke Snelting
Eva Weinmayr
Anne Laforet
Caterina Mora
Eric Schrijver
Peter Hermans
* See also: Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Being Danced by the Dance https://diversions.constantvzw.org/wiki/index.php?title=Potential_authorship