Creative Commons Monitoring Czech Copyright Developments

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Last Thursday, we broke the story that the Czech government was drafting a copyright bill that would legally gut the usability of Creative Commons. Since then, we've asked Creative Commons what their view on the situation was.

It's becoming the draft copyright bill heard around the world. The draft suggests that the government is preparing a bill that would require anyone wanting to take out a Creative Commons license to first submit their work to a copyright collective. After that, the creator has to prove that their work is authentic. Only then would they be permitted, under the draft legislation, to license their work under Creative Commons.

This sort of limitation would legally gut Creative Commons. Many are now arguing that if such a limitation is put in place, then all works should have this limitation including copyrighted material.

Someone on Slashdot suggested that this move is a violation of the Berne Convention, citing the following explanation from Wikipedia:

Under the Convention, copyrights for creative works are automatically in force upon their creation without being asserted or declared. An author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work and to any derivative works, unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them or until the copyright expires. Foreign authors are given the same rights and privileges to copyrighted material as domestic authors in any country that signed the Convention.

With all this discussion, surely Creative Commons has taken notice. We spoke to Diane Peters, a spokesperson for Creative Commons who confirmed, "We have been watching this development."

"As we understand it," Peters told ZeroPaid, "the situation is that there are several changes proposed to improve the current situation with respect to CC. There are other parts of the proposal that may be troublesome (were they to be adopted), such as the general royalties included in the price of copying machines and media, but these are a burden for everyone, not just CC licensed works."

For reference, an English review of the leaked draft of the bill can be found here.

There's been some suggestion that the bill would be passed without a problem, but as Peters told us, passage of the bill isn't a sure thing. Peters told ZeroPaid, "We understand that the new Minister has suspended movement on the bill to address some of these issues, and it will be rediscussed later this year."

It will, no doubt, be interesting to see how this legislation develops. Will some of the more controversial provisions be axed before it is officially tabled? Only time will tell.

"We will continue to monitor the situation" Peters said.

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