Report: UK Artists, Copyright and Creative Commons

The Arts Council England und OpenBusiness.cc haben einen gemeinsamen Report zum Thema „UK Artists, Copyright and Creative Commons“ (PDF) veröffentlicht.

The focus of the report is twofold:

* to investigate how artists working in a digital environment view copyright, which structures many commercial relationships, but often prohibits sharing, copying and the easy adaptation of existing artistic works.
* to examine why some artists use Creative Commons licences, which, in contrast, facilitate sharing, copying and, depending on the terms of the particular licence used, allow derivative use for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

The report suggests that one key reason for artists’ using CC is that they perceive standard copyright as too complex and costly. CC licences are an effective and practical tool for new media artists, who adapt existing work. Artists are also using CC to exploit network effects and to better market their creative work. CC is still used by an avant-garde of mainly rather young artists; more than 140,000 websites in the UK make use of such licences.