5: Want to work together? (or) Don’t Compete, Collaborate!

Following week 10 tutorial’s exercise, explain why you chose the Creative Commons license that you added to your blog and discuss the relevance (or not) of adding the license.

The vision being pursued by Creative Commons is to “achieve universal access to research and education, full participation in culture and driving a new era of development, growth and productivity” (creativecommons.org). It was with this vision in mind that I settled upon my chosen form of CC License, the legal specifics of which are shown here: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Video Credit: “Wanna Work Together?“. Uploaded to YouTube by lessig

The basic crux of my license is that individuals may take my work and freely “share” and “remix” it as they desire, but with the provision that the original work is attributed back to me, and providing that the remixed form of the work must be licensed under the same/similar license as the original piece.

Importantly, by the creative commons license I have applied to my work, I am getting my idea ‘out there’ into the melting pot that is the general community and “substantially gaining increased awareness” (Abrahams, 2010: 1). It will be out in the commons, in the democratic public domain from which anyone can draw (Lessig, 2005: 352). Applying great restrictions to my product such as preventing future collaboration without seeking my express consent would effectively cordon off my work from the general community. It would become a museum piece which nobody may touch as it slowly gathers dust in the corner and becomes irrelevant.

“In any intellectual field, one can reach greater heights by standing on the shoulders of others” (Stallman, 2002: 128)

Contribution of this kind is central if the product I create is to remain current. Unless I dedicate myself to constantly updating it and progressing it as society/ expectations/ technology/ information progresses, it will fall behind the times and seep slowly into insignificance.   Third party contribution ensures continuous growth.

“The total contribution of [an idea] to society is reduced by assigning an owner to it” (Stallman, 2002: 124).

Fundamentally, the case for openness in products is that that it is not only morally right but practically beneficial, as open systems work more effectively than closed, centralised systems of development & innovation (Abrahams, 2010:2).

Consider the Xbox Kinect – the motion tracking  hardware and software made for Xbox. Upon developing the Kinect, Xbox published a press release actively encouraging people around the world to develop uses for it which “go  beyond gaming”. Since then Microsoft has been stunned by the remarkable variety of inventions and developments made possible through open and unrestricted tinkering with their technology and repurposing of the device (Hoffman, 2010: 1).

Programmers, robotics engineers and technology students from Australia to the USA and Germany have all been able to develop and build upon the platform which the Kinect gave them, a platform they may use due to the open and unrestricted nature of the CC license attached to the technology. The motion tracking sensor of the Kinect is now helping blind people navigate and being used in a robotic helicopter, allowing it to sense moving objects and navigate away from them.

Had the product been placed under lock and key, and modifications to the technology had been prevented and punished with punitive action, the world would have been robbed of these new technologies and product development would have ceased. The Kinect would have been at the forefront of gaming for a time, and then eclipsed by something else; such is the nature of technology. By allowing others to take the product and run with it, to splash a new perspective, idea or concept onto the existing technology, Xbox has illistrated an acknowledgement of the power of progress and specifically – how sharing equates to growth.

This reflects an ideology espoused by Stallman (2002: 128), that software development [and development more generally] is an “evolutionary process”. Many minds will work better than one, and the multitude of perspective that this contribution-based form of creation provides will always be more effective than one mind working alone.

The idea that one must lock up their work so that nobody can ‘steal’ it is one grounded in selfishness. Ultimately what you receive from this is an imperfect product and a system in which people contest for sales or views, spending their energy in competition rather than collaboration. If the contest for significance would cease and information was shared, the result of the collaboration would be better ideas, faster programs and greater understanding.

As Lessig (2005) suggests, an idea is the property of everybody. Once the idea has been divulged, “it forces itself into the possession of everyone” (Lessig, 2005: 353). I have tried to allow my CC License to reflect this ideology by opening it up to the contribution which could never be achieved if it was kept behind lock, key and copyright lawyers.

References:

Abrahams, D (2010), “How Creative Commons Licensing benefits Industry”, <http://davidabrahams.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/how-creative%C2%A0commons%C2%A0licensing-benefits-industry/> accessed 13/5/2011

CreativeCommons.org, “About”, < & http://creativecommons.org/about/&gt; & <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/au/legalcode> accessed 13/5/2011

Dutton, F (2011), “Kinect Helps Blind People Navigate”, <http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-17-kinect-hack-helps-blind-people-navigate> accessed 28/5/2011

Hoffman, S (2010); “Microsoft Gives Green Light to Kinect Hackers” <http://www.crn.com/news/security/228300410/microsoft-gives-green-light-to-kinect-hackers.htm;jsessionid=3RlE7y5+IanOMG9FEOEOUg**.ecappj02> accessed 28/5/2011

IGN.Com (2010), “Best Kinect Hacks We’ve Seen So Far” <http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/113/1137920p1.html> accessed 28/5/2011

Lessig, L (2005), “Open Code and Open Societies”, in Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam and Karim R. Lakhani (eds), “Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software”, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp.349-360

Richard (2009), “The benefits of Creative Commons licenses”, <http://www.spreadingscience.com/2009/03/05/the-benefits-of-creative-commons-licenses/> accessed 13/5/2011

Stallman, R (2002), “Why Software should be Free”, in Joshua Gay (ed.) “Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard Stallman“, Boston: GNU Press, pp121-133

Video: “Quadrotor Flight Control Using Hough Transform and Depth Map from a Microsoft Kinect Sensor “ <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PSOU_es1EM> uploaded to YouTube by nzjrs, accessed 28/5/2011