new licensing model

[Nikolai]

New licensing model

This article is my explanation why, from my point of view, the new licensing model is necessary.

I decided to start developing new licensing model a few months ago after several email talks with people regarding some ideas about Open Source, KM standards, Social Networks Analysis, Text Structuring, Text Viruses and Media projects based on citizen's journalism and multi-blog software platform jDnevnik.com - http://jdnevnik.com  , which won this year Russian Sun Microsystems contest in J2EE category - http://ru.sun.com/news/press/2005/september/pr010905.html .

All these talks indicated me that something stops the constructive dialogues and this must have some general explanation. That was a question.

In my understanding the relevant problem is following:

Currently content based business, free content exchange and growing deluge of content in the web are lacking in opportunities:
- to get global recognition for authors and their works;
- to see what's new, the derivative works, based on the original and other derivative works and therefore not to "invent a wheel", decide which work is worth to develop further, forecast a progress and trends of the development and education;
- to give authors the opportunity to get paid even when their works were used in the works of other authors and the copies of the works of other authors are used for making money.

Yes, you can add some other problems. But if to consider all this as a whole, I see a contradiction between old-fashioned business and non-profit models (with their complicated legal restrictions to use content and with closed strategies) and social nature of the web with its growing speed of copying and sharing content in every corner of the Earth.

Consider:

1. Licensing.

I did not find a proper solution among the licensing models I saw. Maybe it is because they are not business, that normally must generate equivalent value for its insiders and outsiders.

These models declare some protection of copyright, but author can not see who and how uses his/her work legally. In my understanding it opposes free exchange of content to the opportunity to commercialize it. Any restrictions to develop the works further (because author does not see the ways to get paid from this development) stop innovations and give rise to piracy and break copyright. Open Source movement for any sorts of content (source code, text, graphics, audio, video, etc.) would be more attractive for people if the mentioned problem will be solved.

Also I consider copyright as a fundamental human right (for everyone) - it should not be even registered according the law of many countries. To be the right and since the web has not national borders a proper scheme relevant to this reality must be established to stop the war between content authors and users. Tell me who can win this war and why we must spend resources for legal "weapon" instead of legal peace?

2. News service.

Big commercial media represent the fragmented picture of the events with the short term perspective and according their own policy - they are not about derivative works (how things go further). Citizen's journalism may look like the big commercial media with one difference - displaying what big commercial media usually refuse to display.

3. On-line sale.

It is not about paying every author, whose works was used in the commercialized work.

So, that is why I started developing the new licensing model (the Licence itself, the structure for its software implementation, the business model for partnership) with a use of my methods of structuring texts.

One of the Licence's ideas, which I represent here, is to make the sequence of digital works (from the original work to the last derivative work and back) visible for everyone to decide where to connect with variants of use. Also I tried to combine free copying of works in any quantity, their free use for not making money and paid use for making money. Paid use means for authors the opportunity to get paid even when their works were used in the works of other authors and the copies of the works of these other authors are used for making money.

I think this Licence may accelerate innovations because authors could focus on their works and be interested in their further development by other persons.

The Licence v. 0.1 - http://tvl.ton.net.ru/Lic_ru_en_v01.pdf  is not yet ready for use because it needs corrections, software and organizational infrastructure. It needs thinking people as well.

Why not think about a precedent to establish a business, which could provide free global service for authors to assist them in creating innovative content and benefiting from it even if they have only knowledge and access to the web? I am entirely open for any well-founded criticism, comments, suggestions and partnership to make it real. There are many variants to implement this. Let's talk via email or at my blog -  http://jdnevnik.com/upravlenie .

Link to this article - http://jdnevnik.com/upravlenie@2005.12.15:1 

Special thanks to Liza Wohlfart http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-site/whoswho.cgi?action=detail&id=118110&authorid=724122 and Ed Mitchell  http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-site/whoswho.cgi?action=detail&id=105288&authorid=706152 , who explained me the need to transform my abstract http://jdnevnik.com/upravlenie@2005.11.28:1/$comments 
to the article.

Nikolai Krjachkov