| | Photo taken at Gilberto Gil’s concert in Palermo, Italy, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Luisa Mandou um Beijo, - by fans Debora Engiel and Guilherme Sorgine, CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 Images photo taken at Pan American Games, in Rio de Janeiro, by reader Banda Larga Tour brand CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Luisa Mandou um Beijo: "All band pictures look the same..." CC BY-NC 2.0 Take a look at the terms of use of the "citizen journalism" area in one of the most popular newspaper's website in Brazil:
While citizen journalism area of the main Brazilian newspaper website
"According to this term, the collaborator ... assigns to Infoglobo, free of charge and for a perpetual term, rights over artistic, photographic, audiovisual and literary works posted on 'I-Reporter' Project, authorizing its use and reproduction, ... encompassing, for instance, the following activities: publication, communication, reproduction, dissemination (also on products and advertisement), offerings to third parties, exhibition, edition, re-edition, broadcasting, commercialisation, distribution, circulation ..."
This particular citizen journalism initiative was created by one of the largest newspapers in Brazil. It probably resembles George Lucas' models, in which users’ contributions to the website are actually owned not by the user, but by the website alone. This "I own your own words" model seems to be popular not only in Brazil, but also in initiatives created by the recording industry in other jurisdictions in order to promote audience creativity. At recent videomaking contests, besides promoting the creativity of its customers (and possibly saving money in production costs), the industry was also demanding the assignment of copyright over the contributed videos.
Fortunately, there are alternatives to this peculiar model which are in favour of less restrictive rules. For example, top Brazilian artist and Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, is currently in Europe performing his new tour called "Banda Larga", the Brazilian word for "Broadband". The name is not a coincidence. Minister Gil is encouraging the audience to record and post online any content from the concerts, such as videos, songs and photographs, using a Creative Commons license. This allows for flexible re-use of the content. According to Gil’s official website, "even Banda Larga's trademark and visual identity is licensed under a Creative Commons license. This is the first initiative of its kind in Latin America". Users are encouraged to go ahead and "make their own versions of Banda Larga's brand". For that, the website provides a toolkit, making it easier to tinker with the logos.
In a recent New York Times article, the former Grateful Dead lyricist and activist, John Perry Barlow, called Gilberto Gil "the spearhead" of free culture and said: "He's been thinking about Intellectual Property issues forever and clearly gets the importance of all of this. But he's also in a unique position to implement his ideas". Another symbol of this position is the fact that Gil's latest music video was shot on a mobile phone by a Brazilian filmmaker. The filming took place in the artist’s kitchen while dinner was being prepared. One can see kids running around and Gil’s wife stroking his long dreadlocks, while he performs his new song, also entitled "Banda Larga". The video was released directly on YouTube. On the video, Gil explains what he thinks about the future of culture:
-- Banda Larga is the new road, through which will pass all the herds, carts, storks carrying other carts to other roads, wagons, souls, hearts, minds, books, photos, theater, cinema, television. Everything will pass through the broadband. And it must start with the possibility of inclusion. It is where all content, all human subjectivity, all libraries, all archives, everything will go through.
Initiatives like Gil’s are shedding light on a phenomenon that has already been taking place in Brazil for some time. At Rio de Janeiro’s "indie" music scene, bands such as Luisa Mandou um Beijo, a group whose music is a fusion of rock, pop and bossa nova (the name can be translated as something like "Luisa Sent you Kisses") have been experimenting for a good time now with Creative Commons licenses. Fernando Paiva, the lead guitar player and band lead-composer, reports enthusiastically about the results of the experiment:
-- We had the perception that most of the people using Creative Commons were people already involved with free culture issues. That was not our case, and our fans did not know about what the license means. So we started explaining how CC works, and encouraging them to produce their own music videos based on our work. And we pointed out all the time that we were talking about independent artworks, with their own lives.
So far, five out of eight of Luisa's music videos are produced directly by fans, a number that is not bad for an independent artist. Fernando reports that fans used to contact the band in order to ask for permission to use their songs, but now things seem to have changed. Paiva says:
-- The other day, I was searching YouTube for shootings of our concerts when I bumped into a video of one of our songs that I had never heard of. I was surprised and honored: that was the first time a fan used the licensing information to go ahead and use our works according to the permission we grant.
Fernando says he takes this as a signal that the audience is finally starting to feel comfortable to use the band's work to create new content, and without the hassle of going through otherwise formal authorisation requests. By choosing a general public license, the band is aware that it helps to reduce "transaction costs" -- including time, logistics, and lawyers.
However, it seems that this same strategy of cutting transaction costs is also behind the growing number of initiatives that simply include, in their terms of use, an assignment of the full copyright – not to the collectivity, but to the company itself. In those cases, it seems to be eliminating both the transactions costs as well as any benefits to the artists. |
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