Commercial Use of Copyleft Works - Art

Art

In art, making commercial services out of a copylefted creation is more difficult to do in practice than in software development. Public performances could be considered as one of a few possibilities of providing such "services".

The music industry objected to peer-to-peer file exchanging software, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) gave some suggestions to resolve the issue.

Objections to the appropriation of ideas for commerce believe intellectual works should not be compared to material property. Giving someone a physical object results in lost possession and control of that thing and can require asking for something in return, payment or barter. But when someone gives an idea to someone, they lose nothing, and need not ask for anything in return.

Often copylefted artistic creations can be seen to have a (supporting) publicity function, promoting other, more traditionally copyrighted creations by the same artist(s). Artists sticking to an uncompromising copylefting of the whole of their artistic output, could, in addition to services and consultancy, revert to some sort of patronage (sometimes considered as limiting artistic freedom), or to other sources of income, not related to their artistic production (and so mostly limiting the time they can devote to artistic creation too). The least that can be said is that copylefting in art tends toward keeping the art thus produced as much as possible out of the commercial arena—which is considered as an intrinsic positive goal by some.

Some artists, such as Girl Talk and Nine Inch Nails, use copyleft licenses such as the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license that don't allow commercial use. In this way they can choose to sell their creations without having to compete with others selling copies of the same works. However, some argue that the Attribution-NonCommercialShareAlike license is not a true copyleft.

Where copylefted art has a large audience of modest means or a small audience of considerable wealth, the act of releasing the art may be offered for sale. See Street Performer Protocol. This approach can be used for the release of new works, or can be used for the conversion of proprietary works to copylefted works. See Blender.