What’s His is Mine: A Case Study in Creative Commons Theory

“All knowledge and ideas should be universal, unless of course it’s nuclear.” It was this witty anecdote that led to the following discussion between Carlo and I, which led to this subsequent blog entry, which led to — what I believe — is a perfect microcosm example of how the Creative Commons theory should work.

This conversation was born as Carlo and I sat in the library over the weekend, working on our respective blog entries — me writing my Wikiscanner entry and him drafting his semi-late copyright page.

I had chosen to write about the controversial case of former Russian KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko. As the blog session dwindled on, Carlo mentioned a visit by a former co-worker to Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, as part of a side procrastination conversation we were having over the Iranian nuclear situation.

Getting back to my Litvinenko article, I began crafting up what I felt was a clever analogy relating Wikipedia flagging and the intrusion warning system at the Lawrence Livermore testing site Carlo had mentioned during our conversation.

As I opened the Litvinenko post, writing . . . “Just as the alarm bells in Lawrence Livermore National Labs warn of intrusion”, I paused and asked Carlo how I might fold in the nuclear lab anecdote about the warning system at Lawrence Livermore into the Wikiscanner article.

After a few back and forths, and some minor stylistic tweaks, I wrapped up my Litvinenko leade with the line . . . “flags send the determined Wikipediast scurrying towards revision.”

While still oblivious that Carlo was drafting his own blog post in response to the Creative Commons – intellectual property question, I asked him just how much credit did he believe he would be entitled to, if our collaboration on my Wikiscanner blog leade had been between two journalists working on a story.

Initially, he was adamant that he should not only be credited for informing me about that little tidbit regarding the alarm at Lawrence Livermore, but also for his contribution to my work — in the way that news stories often carry either a double-byline or a “contributed to” line.

Then it clicked. What had started as a conversation over a colorful anecdote for my Wiki scanner blog post had developed into a perfect microcosm of the intellectual property debate

A little background . . .

The furor over intellecutal property, as with many of the arguements surrounding digital communications, came about after technologial advances — particularly peer-to-peer file sharing techology — surpassed people’s comprhension of such leaps in technology.

Beginning with the landmark case between the P2P filsesharing service Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the question over who owns what once it hits the world wide web remains one that is not easily answered.

Back to the conversation . . .

As we talked, Carlo made the point that I would not have had the sentence I wanted for my Wiki scanner post if it had not been for his nuclear facility factoid.

That said, I reverted back to the Creative Commons standpoint that ideas and information should not be seen as proprietary, but as a shared available resource. Carlo on the other hand, argued that such proprietary rights can and should at least be acknowledged.

We concluded that if knowledge was never shared than there would be no such thing as a Beatles remix , for example, since the remix would never have been possible with out the original.

As that remixed iteration of an original Beatles song cannot claim to be a purely original song, Carlo could not pretend that my analogy between the warning system at Lawrence Livermore and the Wikiscanner flag system was a purely original idea without contribution from an outside source.

After some debate, we agreed to recognize each of our contributions to my Wikiscanner post, acknowledging it as a collaborative effort that we would each post up on our respective blogs.

So there you have it, a collaborative blog entry. Do you agree with the approach — information use with acknowledgement? As I said before, “All knowledge and ideas should be universal, unless of course it’s nuclear.”

Post script: We also agreed on the collaborative use of the word Wikipediaest. The extent of that discussion was whether it should be spelled with an e or an a. Jimmy Wales beware. Better check those boxes.