CHAPTER 7
On Licensing in Cultural Affairs
Now, having made an analysis of three models on the governing of cultural affairs, I feel armed enough to analyze some specific realities. Namely, I want to analyze how licensing works for an author.
A critical issue is: How does an artist make a living? He may earn money in different ways, all of which work well when the artist is famous. Fame is that magic tool that turns an author’s work into
money.
Hence, the question is, in fact: How do different licenses help expose an author?
Let us see what we have on the plate.
Possible License Features
Currently, an author may or may not relinquish to the general public some or all legal rights to his work. As a result the work can be used:
- Never (if rights are not relinquished)
- Non-commercially
- With notification to the author
- With attribution only
- Freely
Rights can be simply relinquished or sold to another entity. There are no legally enforced perpetual rights; all rights granted by law are for rather long periods of time.
An additional feature of licenses which has been in place for some time is the licensing of the license text itself. That is, a license itself may indicate whether it can or cannot be used as a foundation to build other licenses.
