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On Copyright and creativity
Trained as an artist the line between my creative work and my occupation has been blurred ever since I can remember. For this ability to live off the arts I am eternally grateful, often marveling at all the blessings (material and relational) that have come to my family and I. As someone who makes works of art in the world, the importance of a website has been critical ever since the internet became the main way to show one’s face in the world. Until recently, at the bottom of my website, a small awkward sentence read something like this:
The material on this page was created by Jorge Lucero. Absolutely no rights reserved. Please use the material, build on top of it, and then just credit your source.
This long explanation was in lieu of me putting this symbol “©” next to my name. This act of disowning ownership over my intellectual property, although it appeared trivial, was a very scary thing to do. During the writing of my PhD, I became afraid. I replaced my open source statement with the usual copyright denotation: “Jorge Lucero ©2009.” The fear, I am ashamed to say, overtook me and I built –however shabbily – a fortress out of straw to protect myself with. I am now much less afraid of what happens to the work that I put into the world. In fact, I'm interested in the risk that sharing brings to my life.
Recently I read a portion of David Korten’s book Agenda for a New Economy. Korten's text, juxtaposed next to portions from Wendell Berry’s What are People for? has helped me to recontextualize the issue of copyright in the work I contribute to during my lifetime. I’m interested in reinstating the cycle of sowing and reaping in every aspect of my life, including my so-called creative practices. I renounce the strict retention of ownership that others tell me is my “right”and recommit myself to the responsibility of helping grow and hopefully feed the work of others. My wife and I acknowledge the transience of what’s been sown in our lives, especially our children. We don’t see this in a nihilistic way, melancholy as it may makes us; we look at our kids –our favorite “creative work" –and admire them in all their potentiality. In the way a small garden looks, right as all it’s produce is coming to fruition, I am excited at the potential of a communal tilled soil. I want to share my works as well as my workload.
Wendell Berry (1990) put it this way:
Works of pride, by self-called creators, with their premium on
originality, reduce the Creation to novelty –the faint surprises of
minds incapable of wonder.
Pursuing originality, the would-be creator works alone. In lone-
liness one assumes a responsibility for oneself that one cannot
fulfill.
Novelty is a new kind of loneliness. (p. 9)
Berry’s text is not meant to be self-explanatory. It’s not meant to be a powerful nugget like a proverb, fortune cookie, or bumper sticker. This text only makes sense in a creative practice. Those who make, will know and then be faced with a choice: Will I make with others or will I be my “own” person? Perhaps David Korten’s (2009) tenth suggestion for a new economy built on real –as opposed to phantom –wealth can help to further stimulate our sharing capacities. If we are to think of our endeavors in the world (educational, inventive and productive, reconciliatory, amorous, etc.) as economies than a market theory for the revision of intellectual property rules might tell us something about which way to proceed. Korten’s idea is worth being quoted at length here.
Market theory also tells us that for the market to allocate efficiently, buyers and sellers must be fully informed and aspiring entrepreneurs must have free access to relevant technology –no trade secrets. Particularly at this time, when rapid innovation and adaptation are essential to the transition to a new economy, there is an overwhelming public interest in the free sharing of essential information and beneficial technology. Information is the one resource that is nondepletable and increases its real-wealth value when widely shared.
The desire to learn and to innovate is integral to life. Until some twenty to thirty years ago, the driving motivation behind most science was the desire to learn, discover, and share. Academic prestige and rewards came through the publication of new knowledge for others to use, not its monopolization through patents. The idea that needed innovation will be forthcoming only to the extent it is motivated by significant financial rewards is to elevate pathology to a social norm. (p. 136)
It is sharing that I want to do. I won’t be alive long enough to hold on to some of these things and I’d rather see them grow at least incrementally during my lifetime. So these things that I make are yours, if you care to take them and build on top, around or against them--please do so freely. If you wish to include me, or credit me, in your recreation than please do, either way I'll be there.
References:
Berry, W. (1990). What are people for? North Point Press: New York
Korten, D.C. (2009). Agenda for a new economy: From phantom wealth to real wealth. Berrett-Koehler Publishers: San Fransisco, CA.
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