Edythemighty (dot) com

On December 15th, 2009 BoingBoing posted this entry, about an anti-copyright project by Nina Paley, known for Sita Sings The Blues, an animated full-length movie released under Creative Commons. The project entails releasing an animated video under a Creative Commons license and allowing anyone on the internet to work on the audio. This is a very interesting project which could easily show the power of open collaboration, however...

One of the first comments in that entry reads as follows:

I don't know about you, Ms Paley - but there are plenty of my things I do not want copied. Things like my bank details, along with my social security number, passport number and deed numbers on the properties I own (etc)

Yes, your animation is cute and your voice and song are catchy. Real catchy.

Is it all right if I copy the entirety of it then change the mood and intention of it ("copying is against the State") and take entire credit for creating it?

I've always wanted to be an animator. And by copying your work
I can live my dream.

Though cute, I absolutely do not agree with your premise. Thanks!

I've heard comments like these many times before, in defense of current copyright, and they always miss the point. This person, like many others, is using plagiarism as a reason not to adopt Creative Commons licenses. Plagiarism is defined as use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work. This is something which most Creative Commons license do address.

To use Nina's video as an example; the video is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike. Many, if not most, of Creative Commons licenses include the Attribution clause. What this means is that anyone who uses your work, whether building upon it or simply displaying it, have to credit you with your work. The other part, Share Alike, is optional and only means if you build upon the work then you have to allow others to do so as well.

Whether or not it's Share Alike doesn't stop you from using the work commercially, as renowned author Mark Pilgrim can attest to. Mark Pilgrim is an author famous for writing acclaimed books on topics in computing and other areas. Mark Pilgrim is the author of Dive Into Python, one of the best selling books about programming in Python. Mark's book is published under the GNU Free Documentation license, a type of license similar to Creative Commons licenses. This license Mark chose for his book gives anyone the ability to take his book and sell it themselves, as long as it retains attribution...which did in fact happen. Someone took Mark's book, and sold it through Amazon.com, and reaped all the benefits. Copyleft licenses, as they are referred to by their creators, allow completely free redistribution of the artworks, as happened to Mark. However, they do not excuse plagiarism, some of the licenses go to greater lengths than others in establishing firm authorship. 

Another, better example of the success an artist can achieve under Creative Commons while still being protected from plagiarism would be Jonathan Coulton. Jonathan started life out as many of us in the internet do, as a meager programmer. To quote one of his more famous songs, he was a 'code monkey'. Don't recognize that line? This song inspired, among other things, a tv show on G4 by the same name. Another of Jonathan's achievements was writing and performing Still Alive, the theme song of the massively popular game Portal. Jonathan Coulton has been able to leave his job programming to go touring full time thanks to the massive fanbase he built distributing his music for free and allowing his fans to build upon it, creating music videos and much more to help spread the word about one of their favorite artists.

Copyright in its current form does protect you against plagiarism...but it also restricts culture. Nina Paley may be an excellent animator, but me, you, or anyone else out there could probably do a better job with the audio. Under current copyright, you can't engage in participation in your culture, and remix Nina's video and give it better audio, or help make Mark's book better. Copyleft, Creative Commons, GNU Free Documentation, they all seek to allow you the freedom to do this, but also protect author's rights against plagiarism.