Open Content

What can I do with Open Content?

Open content includes any content released into a format which explicitly declares itself to be free for use. Open content does not, usually, include selling rights, but usually will include just about every other right. For example, you can take an open content novel and create a movie out of it, but you cannot sell that movie to Paramount studios and make a million bucks, not even if you are willing to share that income with the book’s author. You could take an open content song, listen to it as many times as you want, remix it, make a music video for it, or use it in a movie, but you cannot sell the movie, the remix, or the music video in any context where money changes hands, unless you first get permission from the author.

Open content music is free to listen to, as is an open content film put on youtube, etcetera. It’s free to remix and rehash to your hearts content, just so long as you are not charging any money.

This is in contrast to free content. Free content is content which is literally free for any and all purposes. Anyone who remixes, rehashes, re-releases, publishes, or manipulates the original work in any way is free to do whatever they like with the end product, including selling it and distributing it however they see fit. Free content is literally content with no owner, whereas open content has an owner who is willing to share.

There has been some confusion regarding the two terms.

Most famously, perhaps, was the case wherein the rap producer, Timbaland was accused of plagiarism. In this case, Timbaland had sampled the song “Acid Jazzed Evening” for his song “Do It”, with vocals by Nelly Furtado. The original owner of the song, Tempest, was neither asked permission, given credit, or paid for the music.

Incidentally, even if Tempest had been offered pay, the plagiarism charge would still hold up. Tempest’s music was released as open content, and Tempest claims no exclusive rights to the song. The dispute comes from the fact that Timbaland released the song for commercial purposes.

Had Tempest released the song under the more usual copyright protection, Timbaland could have paid royalties, but since Tempest specifically released the song as open content, intending for nobody to ever have to pay for the song, this wound up not being the case.

On many open source music sharing websites, this becomes a regular occurrence. Many mainstream artists will find songs on open source websites and, misunderstanding open content to be about the same as free content, will swipe a small piece here or a small piece there, and put that into their own work, and then sell that work for commercial purposes.

On the other hand, parody and educational purposes are still protected by fair use doctrine, whether the open content author likes it or not. Fair use literally extends to all existing content and intellectual property, be it free content, open content, or copyright protected. As long as the author can reasonably argue that the derivative work is, in fact, a parody of the original, and not just plagiarism, or if an educator can reasonably prove that he or she was using the work to educate, and not to say, charge admission, then the fair use defense will hold up, regardless of the work’s status as open content.

It is possible to license open content works and put them into something intended for commercial purposes, and in that event, it goes through the same channels and regulations as any licensed work, regardless of copyright status.

However, many artists in the open source community disagree with selling their work. This is similar, in a way, to Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson argued that he had only ever intended Calvin and Hobbes as a comic strip, and he disagreed with selling the characters as say, stuffed animals or t-shirt decoration, feeling that it would compromise the integrity of the original work. Fair use would cover parody or education (and in fact, there is plenty of parody out there that targets the strip), but with regards to licensing and commercial use, it is entirely at the artist or copyright holder’s discretion. An open content author has the same exclusive right to say yes or no to any derivatives of their work intended for commercial purposes.