UK Artists and Copyright 7 February 2007
The Arts Council England and OpenBusiness.cc have created a report, which represents the results of a six-month study into artists’ attitudes towards copyright, creativity and alternative licensing practises, in particular Creative Commons (CC). Although the number of UK artists using open licensing has been growing for the last decade there had been no investigation into how or why such licences were being used.Click here to read the report.
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.
The survey points towards a possible confusion between evolving working practices that involve re-use and remix and an individual caution about their own work. In general it can be summarised that artists are in need of simpler and more appropriate guidelines, which might be provided not only by the law, but also through funding and policy bodies such as Arts Council England.
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