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Sunday March 11, 2007

Creativity from Difficulty

The New York Times has an interesting article today, Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved, in which Gil, the Brazilian minister of culture, makes some excellent points about creativity (Gil will speak on Wednesday at SXSW, do read the article soon as it is All Rights Reserved).

Mr. Gil's complaints about the inequities of copyrights are derived in part from his own experience. Like many other musicians he signed contracts early in his career that essentially gave away publishing rights to the songs he wrote. But he waged a seven-year court battle to regain his rights, which ended recently with a favorable ruling that opens the door for other Brazilian artists to regain their rights as well.

[...]

Why give up something as gratifying as playing music for the wear and tear of public administration? "Life is not just pleasure," he said. "The first phrase of the Vedic scriptures is that 'All is suffering.' Difficulty is stimulating, challenging, it's an element of the pulse of life."

[Gilberto Gil, Lawrence Lessig and Ronaldo Lemos]

A great deal has been written about modernizing copyright of creative works -- especially for music. Perhaps the most important reference on this topic is Lessig's book Free Culture which provides an eminently readable overview of the complex legal environment for art and culture. I anticipate this struggle for authors to retain copyright of their works will extend beyond music to all sorts of creative endeavor. Knowledge workers are often creative people who leverage their skills with their employers time and materials as part of their day job, but who may also, like Gil, exude other expressions of creativity after they punch the time clock.

Just as Gil has secured rights for musicians in Brazil it seems that knowledge workers could benefit from modernization of employment agreements in the context of the digital age. Typically all work for hire is owned by the employer (except, of course, for states like California that have special limitations).

NOTE on submitting comments: The Roller software we use here at Sun is quite aggressive about which comments it likes. Please be patient if your comment which includes HTML is not displayed immediately. I will ensure it gets published the next time I check e-mail.

Posted by tmarble ( Mar 11 2007, 12:47:13 PM CDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Monday January 29, 2007

Minnesota Will Remember

Last spring there was a great deal of excitement about Minnesota considering Open Document Format as part of proposed legislation to mandate that state agencies use open data formats.

Sun's Open Source scion, Simon Phipps, consistently advocates open data and makes the case eloquently in Application Development Trends:

The debate over office document formats is nothing short of a battle for our collective memory, says Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist at Sun Microsystems. Phipps coined the term "corporate Alzheimer's" to describe the drifting file format phenomenon.

Finally it appears that there is some movement as new bills have been introduced in the Minnesota House and Senate.

So hopefully we can make Open "not just a good idea -- it's the law" and add l'Etoile du Nord to the list of organizations and world governments which promote access to public information for us and future generations.

Posted by tmarble ( Jan 29 2007, 07:00:45 AM CST ) Permalink

Wednesday October 18, 2006

IANAL and That's OK!

One of the neat people that I met last week at ApacheCon was Cliff Schmidt, Vice President of Legal Affairs for the Apache Software Foundation.

I only got to attend one of Cliff's talks last week, but it was a lot of fun. The session was very interactive and he only got to cover a sampling of interesting issues surrounding Copyright and Patent law -- we didn't get to Trademarks and trade secrets. And I missed the open source "license junkie" talks

Cliff and I had a chance to catch up at the airport before leaving the conference. I was fascinated to learn that Cliff is not a lawyer and yet he is having loads of fun and cannot hardly keep up with the demand for his own consulting business (Symbioss Strategy [Cliff do you have a website?]). He confirmed what I've suspected for a long time: there is value in crossing the beams between law and technology. This makes sense. Most all creative work is becoming knowledge work. And as technology has a huge impact on society it follows that understanding how to apply and leverage Intellectual Property law to empower creative work is and will be in great demand.

And it doesn't necessarily require being a lawyer. Cliff (nor I) would ever purport to giving legal advice. However it is becoming apparent that there are no "boilerplate" answers for tough questions of how to handle IP issues in technology. This isn't to say that productivity gains are impossible. In fact one of the most influential voices in this area is Lawrence Lessig of the Creative Commons project. Lessig has done the world an enormous service in conveying difficult legal and technical issues in his book Free Culture. And Creative Commons has pioneered a novel approach to combining a human readable deed to accompany legalese in designing the set of "Some Rights Reserved" Creative Commons Licenses.

One of my co-workers and mentors is Carla Schroer. Carla has been very influential in her role in legal affairs for Java since the Java™ platform was created. I have really enjoyed learning from Carla about how Sun has handled IP issues in technology -- and specifically Java -- through our work on the DLJ and also our work to open source Java. Carla is not a lawyer, and you may not have heard about her, but I cannot imagine how the Java Software organization could possibly address the complex issues around compatibility, licensing and branding without her guidance.

Another one of my co-workers, Simon Phipps, you probably already know. But did you know that while Simon is not a lawyer he is a confirmed legal geek and license junkie? For sampling of his writings please check out The Zen of Free, Free and Open Source Licensing, and The Jurisdiction Paradox.

Of course I couldn't talk about my favorite examples of IANAL without mentioning Pamela Jones. I have never met PJ, but her top ranked legal blog provides a continuous flow of education on technology and IP issues.

Some of my friends have suggested that I go to law school. But, as my Java Marketing colleague Rich Sands mentioned, "Tom, you just have too much fun with technology to give it up!". Rich is right. And I've had the opportunity to meet some very tech savvy lawyers who "get it"... Therefore I shall continue to focus on technology while keeping on eye on the right to be creative.

Posted by tmarble ( Oct 18 2006, 03:03:13 PM CDT ) Permalink