[okfn-discuss] Fwd: "Free Culture Conservancy" exploratory meeting in NY, April 12th.

Tue Apr 10 11:02:12 UTC 2012

Sounds great-- perhaps talk to SFLC about this?

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 04:41, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org> wrote:

> May be of interest to members of the list (those based near NYC!).
>
> Rufus
>
> -----
>
> From: Karl Fogel <kfogel at questioncopyright.org>
> To: <a bunch of people>
> Subject: "Free Culture Conservancy" exploratory meeting in NY, April 12th.
> Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:40:57 -0500
>
> This mail is written so you can easily respond with just "Yes" :-).
> Feel free to forward it within your organization.
>
> It's about an experiment we want to try -- and we want to be able to
> say that your organization agrees the experiment is worth making.  Can
> we say that?  Read on.
>
> (We're not asking for material help.  We'll do a Kickstarter campaign for
> that.)
>
> Also, you are welcome to come to our meeting about this in New York
> City on Thursday, April 12th at 2pm, at 1995 Broadway, 17th floor.
> This is short notice, so if you can't make it, don't worry -- there
> will be other chances with longer notice.  But we'd love to see you
> there.
>
> So:
>
> We're considering forming a Free Culture Conservancy, a long-term
> non-profit that would perform several interrelated functions:
>
>  * A repository for copyright estates.
>
>    We've heard from some artists (including one very well-known
>    one, who has asked to remain anonymous) that they'd be
>    interested in having their works released under free licenses
>    [1] after their death, and that the mechanism they feel most
>    comfortable with is to will the copyrights to an organization
>    that commits to such release.  There various reasons why
>    artists might prefer that mechanism; for one thing, an actual
>    transfer of the "property" can avoid certain kinds of
>    resistance from heirs.
>
>  * A liberation facilitator.
>
>    Some time ago, we had an idea that government copyright
>    offices could serve as a registry of liberation prices [2]: a
>    copyright holder could record publicly the amount they would
>    accept to liberate a given work either into the public domain
>    or into free licensing.  (There are a couple of more steps to
>    it, but that's the basic idea.)
>
>    Then we realized that a private foundation could serve as
>    such a registry too -- there's no need to wait for
>    governments to do it. Furthermore, doing it in the private
>    sector makes an interesting model possible:
>
>    On one side, the Conservancy approaches publishers and other
>    groups that have large, unprofitable backlists, and
>    negotiates liberation prices in binding contracts (i.e., "You
>    agree that if we bring you the specified amount of money,
>    you'll liberate this specific work.  If we don't bring the
>    money, nothing happens.")  It also approaches individual
>    authors with the same message, when the author has the
>    necessary rights.
>
>    On the other side, the Conservancy solicits confidential
>    requests from anyone (say, a cause-driven group with an
>    interest in a particular work being publicly available); it
>    also encourages such requests where it can.  When such a
>    request is received, the Conservancy keeps it confidential,
>    but makes sure to include the requested work among the works
>    discussed in some larger negotiation with the relevant
>    current rights holder.
>
>    The Conservancy is explicit about the fact that this is going
>    on; it just doesn't reveal the exact works, in order to avoid
>    affecting a rights holder's assessment of backlist market
>    value.  (Another way to say it is, the Conservancy plays an
>    information asymmetry game, but is open about the fact that
>    it is doing so.)
>
>    For some works, the stars will line up, and there will now be
>    a credible way for people to fundraise (e.g., on Kickstarter)
>    to liberate that work -- because the target price has been
>    set and won't suddenly go up as soon as the buyers get near
>    their fundraising goal. The Conservancy may stay in the
>    middle, enabling it both to take a small percentage on top of
>    the actual liberation price in order to fund its operations,
>    and to enable contributions toward liberation to be
>    tax-deductible for U.S. citizens.
>
>  * Institutional backing for takedown counterclaims.
>
>    There are many instances of videos or music being taken off
>    of sites (e.g. YouTube) due to incorrect infringement claims.
>    It's tough for an individual author to handle these, but an
>    organization might be able to provide some economies of
>    scale.
>
>  * Training and instruction on how to free works, distribute, etc.
>
>    Question Copyright has already been doing a little of this,
>    but fundamentally we're an advocacy organization that
>    concentrates on reframing public debate -- which is different
>    from a service organization that works with artists and
>    distributors.
>
>    Nina Paley has held "How To Free Your Work" workshops.  We've
>    also helped several artists negotiate free (or "free-er")
>    licenses with their publishers, and see an increasing need
>    for that -- e.g., for template contract language, guidelines
>    for authors on how to negotiate time-delayed free licensing
>    into their contracts, etc.
>
>    But all this would be more appropriate for a separate Free
>    Culture Conservancy to do it, with a mission & program
>    profile better suited to such services, and without a
>    provocative name like "Question Copyright" making it hard for
>    organizations such as the Authors Guild to even sit down and
>    talk.
>
> Our next step, assuming the idea survives the NYC meeting :-), is a
> Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to start it.  I think its
> prospects are good; the idea is explainable, and there are a lot of
> people out there who would be willing to try this experiment.
> Kickstarter funding will probably be decisive: major initiatives need
> funding, and if we don't raise enough, then this one will have to
> wait. There's a certain value to just having the idea circulating
> anyway -- but we'd like to do more than just have the idea circulate,
> and being able to claim your support for this experiment would make
> our Kickstarter pitch that much stronger.
>
> In the long term, this won't be a program of Question Copyright; it
> should be an independent organization (hopefully with your
> involvement). We may start it off as a QCO program, to take advantage
> of our existing 501(c)(3) infrastructure, bookkeeping, etc, in the
> early stages.
>
> We would appreciate your feedback, and feedback from others in your
> organizations.  If you can make it to the meeting in New York next
> week, that would be great.
>
> Thanks,
> -Karl Fogel
>
> [1] "Free licensing" in this context is shorthand for any license that
> meets the Freedom Defined terms -- so CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC0, for
> example, though not -ND and -NC.
>
> [2] http://questioncopyright.org/declared_value
>
>
>
> --
> Co-Founder, Open Knowledge Foundation
> Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
> http://www.okfn.org/ - http://blog.okfn.org/
>
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>

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