Creative Commons apoya la reforma del Copyright

“Las licencias Creative Commons son un parche, no una solución” expresa la organización.

Creative Commons internacional ha publicado hoy una posición de políticas expresando su apoyo a los esfuerzos para reformar el Copyright alrededor del mundo.

La necesidad de cambiar las regulaciones de Copyright había sido expresada en numerosas ocasiones por diversas instituciones afiliadas a Creative Commons, entre ellas, la Fundación Vía Libre. El tema había sido abordado en 2012 durante la Conferencia sobre Propiedad Intelectual para el interés público en la Fundación Getulio Vargas de Brasil y sostenido durante la Cumbre Global de 2013.

Fue aquí, en Buenos Aires, Argentina, donde Creative Commons consolidó su posición en este sentido, y es fruto del trabajo realizado por los afiliados en la Cumbre Global que Creative Commons llega a posicionarse de este modo. En su Charla Plenaria en la Facultad de Derecho de la UBA, el propio Lawrence Lessig había anticipado esta posición al expresar que “necesitamos compartir más, y necesitamos hacerlo legalmente. Pero si queremos hacer eso, necesitamos cambiar la ley”.

Finalmente, Creative Commons se suma formalmente a las iniciativas globales por un sistema de Copyright más justo y equitativo con la siguiente declaración:

Creative Commons (CC) has enabled a new approach to copyright licensing over the last ten years. CC licenses facilitate novel social, educational, technological, and business practices, and support productive relationships around networked knowledge and culture.

We are dedicated stewards of our licenses and tools, and we educate users, institutions, and policymakers about the positive benefits of adopting CC licenses. Our licenses will always provide voluntary options for creators who wish to share their material on more open terms than current copyright systems allow. But the CC vision—universal access to research and education and full participation in culture—will not be realized through licensing alone.

Around the world, numerous national governments are reviewing or revising their copyright law. Some proposed revisions would broaden the scope of uses of copyrighted works permitted without the rightsholder’s permission. In response, it has been suggested that the very success of CC licenses means that copyright reform is unnecessary—that the licenses solve any problems for users that might otherwise exist. This is certainly not the case. CC licenses are a patch, not a fix, for the problems of the copyright system. They apply only to works whose creators make a conscious decision to affirmatively license the right for the public to exercise exclusive rights that the law automatically grants to them. The success of open licensing demonstrates the benefits that sharing and remixing can bring to individuals and society as a whole. However, CC operates within the frame of copyright law, and as a practical matter, only a small fraction of copyrighted works will ever be covered by our licenses.

Our experience has reinforced our belief that to ensure the maximum benefits to both culture and the economy in this digital age, the scope and shape of copyright law need to be reviewed. However well-crafted a public licensing model may be, it can never fully achieve what a change in the law would do, which means that law reform remains a pressing topic. The public would benefit from more extensive rights to use the full body of human culture and knowledge for the public benefit. CC licenses are not a substitute for users’ rights, and CC supports ongoing efforts to reform copyright law to strengthen users’ rights and expand the public domain.

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