From For the Hearts

Copyleft originates from the computer software business. Is a play on the word copyright and is the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on the distribution of copies and modified versions of a work for others and require that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions. Copyleft inspired the arts with movements like the Libre Society and open-source record labels emerging. For example, the Free Art license is a copyleft license that can be applied to any work of art.

In art copyleft has to hinge on broader notions regarding authors’ rights, which are even more complex (and more differing between countries) than mere copyright law, moral rights, droit d’auteur, intellectual rights and the Berne Convention.

Many artists copyleft their work on terms requiring that those who copy it and then edit it in some way must credit the initial artist. There are problems with this however – the artist’s work may be used in a way that is against his or her will. If the artist is credited, he or she might then seemingly be associated with an undesireable group or ideology.

The Creative Commons enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.

The project provides several free licenses that copyright owners can use when releasing their works on the Web. They also provide RDF/XML metadata that describes the license and the work, making it easier to automatically process and locate licensed works. Creative Commons also provide a “Founders’ Copyright” contract, intended to re-create the effects of the original U.S. Copyright created by the founders of the U.S. Constitution.

All these efforts, and more, are done to counter the effects of what Creative Commons considers to be a dominant and increasingly restrictive permission culture. In the words of Lawrence Lessig, Chairman of the Board, it is “a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past”. Lessig maintains that modern culture is dominated by traditional content distributors in order to maintain and strengthen their monopolies on cultural products such as popular music and popular cinema, and that Creative Commons can provide alternatives to these restrictions.