The Pursuit of Efficient Copyright Licensing How Some Rights Reserved Attempts to Solve the Problems of All Rights Reserved
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Herkko Hietanen The Pursuit of Efficient Copyright Licensing How Some Rights Reserved Attempts to Solve the Problems of All Rights Reserved Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Science (Economics and Business Adminis- tration) to be presented with due permission for the public examination and criticism in the Auditorium of the Student Union House at Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland, on the 9th of December, 2008 at noon. Acta Universitatis Lappeenrantaensis 325 Supervisor Professor Jukka Kemppinen Department of Business Administration Lappeenranta University of Technology Finland Reviewers Professor Brian Fitzgerald Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation Law Faculty Queensland University of Technology Australia Professor Raimo Siltala Faculty of Law University of Turku Finland Opponent Professor Brian Fitzgerald Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation Law Faculty Queensland University of Technology Australia Copyright © 2008 Herkko Hietanen This text of this book is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Fi –license. The license is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/fi. Accordingly, you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work under the following conditions: (1) you must give the original author credit, (2) you may not use this work for commercial purposes, and (3) you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. ISBN 978-952-214-655-7 ISSN 1456-4491 Lappeenrannan teknillinen yliopisto Digipaino 2008 Abstract Herkko Hietanen The Pursuit of Efficient Copyright Licensing – How Some Rights Reserved Attempts to Solve the Problems of All Rights Reserved Lappeenranta 2008 311 pages Acta Universitatis Lappeenrantaensis 325 Diss. Lappeenranta University of Technology ISBN 978-952-214-655-7, ISSN 1456-4491 This dissertation analyses the growing pool of copyrighted works, which are offered to the public using Creative Commons licensing. The study consist of analysis of the novel licensing system, the licensors, and the changes of the “all rights reserved” –paradigm of copyright law. Copyright law reserves all rights to the creator until seventy years have passed since her demise. Many claim that this endangers communal interests. Quite often the creators are willing to release some rights. This, however, is very difficult to do and needs help of specialized lawyers. The study finds that the innovative Creative Commons licensing scheme is well suited for low value - high volume licensing. It helps to reduce transaction costs on several le- vels. However, CC licensing is not a “silver bullet”. Privacy, moral rights, the problems of license interpretation and license compatibility with other open licenses and collecting societies remain unsolved. The study consists of seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the research topic and research questions. The second and third chapters inspect the Creative Commons licensing scheme’s technical, economic and legal aspects. The fourth and fifth chapters examine the incentives of the licensors who use open licenses and describe certain open business models. The sixth chapter studies the role of collecting societies and whether two institutions, Creative Commons and collecting societies can coexist. The final chapter summarizes the findings. The dissertation contributes to the existing literature in several ways. There is a wide range of prior research on open source licensing. However, there is an urgent need for an extensive study of the Creative Commons licensing and its actual and potential impact on the creative ecosystem. Keywords: copyright, Creative Commons, open content, commons, licensing UDC 347.78: 004.738.5 Foreword The expertise in this dissertation has accumulated through several university re- search projects and by counseling the clients of Turre Legal law firm in the legal and business challenges of open licensing. First I want to thank Jukka Kemppinen for the long and seemingly off topic conversations which connected later on for a so much bigger picture. Marko Turpeinen, Ken Rimey and Martti Mäntylä; thank you for trusting that my research had relevance with all the engineering work and Matti Niemi and Seppo Villa for providing me support at Lappeenran- ta University of Technology. Big thanks go to Raimo Siltala for helping me find the connecting factor and a method for the dissertation and Brian Fitzgerald for coming to Finland in the middle of our dark and cold winter to be my opponent. I have had chance to work with some of the brightest people in the open con- tent field. Mikko Välimäki and Ville Oksanen have made me realistically think about the licensing when we have advised our clients. I must also thank people who have commented the work on the way: Katri Lietsala, Niklas Vainio, Olli Pitkänen, Perttu Virtanen and especially Jussi Kari who bravely went through my footnotes and helped me to build the list of references. I would like to especially thank Mia Garlick for the fruitful discussion we had and the CC staff for giving me a chance to see the insides of the open content revolution while working with the Creative Commons headquarters as a research scholar. Liikesivistysrahasto and its Kaarnalahti fund, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Jenni & Antti Wihuri’s foundation, Oskar Öflund’s foundation and the Sonera’s research foundation have all given me financial support for my research. I am deeply grateful for it. The outside funding meant that I have did not had to worry about the high cost of living in the Silicon Valley. The biggest thanks go to my wife Riikka who has tolerated long days that were necessary to finish the work. Someone said that PhD dissertations are done for three reasons: To make the world a better place, to solve problems, or to get it over with. I hope that my work creates more understanding of the subject and helps to provide the next generation a future where collaboration is easy. For this reason the dissertation is dedicated to my children Alvar and Aamu. Espoo, 29th of August 2008 Contents ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. 3 FOREWORD .............................................................................................................. 5 CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... 6 ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................ 9 1 SCOPE AND METHOD .................................................................................... 11 1.1 THEME OF THE WORK ..................................................................................... 11 1.2 HISTORICAL CONTEXT .................................................................................... 18 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVE ........................................................... 22 1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................................................ 23 1.5 TERMINOLOGY, PERSPECTIVE AND LIMITATIONS ............................................. 25 1.6 ACADEMIC CONTEXT AND SOURCES ................................................................ 29 1.7 STRUCTURE OF THE DISSERTATION .................................................................. 31 2 CREATIVE COMMONS’ APPROACH TO OPEN CONTENT ...................... 35 2.1 DIGITAL COMMONS ........................................................................................ 36 2.2 THE CREATIVE COMMONS .............................................................................. 42 2.2.1 Creative Commons and Open Source Licensing ................................ 45 2.2.2 Choosing and Applying a CC License ............................................... 47 2.3 MACHINE READABLE LICENSES ....................................................................... 48 2.3.1 Economics of Automated Licensing and Metadata ............................ 51 2.4 LAWYER READABLE LICENSES .......................................................................... 64 2.4.1 Definitions ......................................................................................... 66 2.4.2 License Grant and Restrictions .......................................................... 68 2.4.3 Attribution ........................................................................................ 72 2.4.4 NonCommercial ................................................................................ 75 2.4.5 Derivative Works and Moral Rights .................................................. 82 2.4.6 ShareAlike ......................................................................................... 91 2.4.7 Disclaimers and Miscellaneous .......................................................... 94 2.5 HUMAN READABLE LICENSES .......................................................................... 98 2.6 CONCLUDING REMARKS ................................................................................ 101 3 ANALYZING THE NATURE OF CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES ....... 103 3.1 ARE ALL LICENSES CONTRACTS? ................................................................... 105 3.2 FORMATION ................................................................................................. 111 3.3 IMMUNITY .................................................................................................... 113 3.4 REMEDIES AND INJUNCTIONS .......................................................................