Many of us who believe in public and community radio get upset when we hear that the public airwaves are being auctioned off to the highest bidder rather than being allocated in a way that maintains common ownership and access to this valuable resource. Some see the same type of "enclosure" happening not only on the public airwaves but also in the public domain and the intellectual commons. A convergence of law and technology is combining to limit access to information, creative work, and just simple facts in a way unknown previously in American history and--some argue--in a way that is contrary to the spirit of our Constitution.

For example, copyright protection is now automatic (whether the creator wants his or her work copyrighted or not), and lasts for close to 150 years for a person who lives an average lifespan (life of the author plus 70 years). This length of protection does not, in the eyes of many, conform very well with the Founders' intent when it comes to copyright.

All very interesting, you say, but what does this have to do with producing for radio? The answer, I think, is quite a lot. I'd like to offer a thought or two about how we as radio producers can draw from--and can contribute to building--the public domain and the intellectual commons in our day-to-day work.

Material in the public domain is free for us to use in any way that we want without asking anyone's permission. Material that its creators have affirmatively placed in the intellectual commons may be used without obtaining prior permission as long as whatever conditions the author has stipulated for use are respected. Examples include Roger McGuinn's contemporary performances of traditional folk songs (at http://www.ibiblio.org/) because he has affirmatively placed those performances in the public domain.

Woodie Guthrie is similarly generous: "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

We are welcome to use and/or modify pretty much anything created before 1923 in the U.S.--anything created by the Federal government is in the public domain.

We may also be able to use the materials available at the following websites since the creators of those materials have released them under some form of less restrictive license than full copyright: www.gutenberg.net, www.pdmusic.org, www.vorbis.org, and www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/fma.html. Just be sure to check licensing conditions before actually using material found there.

Such conditions apply to a Creative Commons license (http://www.creativecommons.org/), which allows an author, musician, or radio producer to select some restrictions that would apply under copyright law, and, providing that the end user respects those restrictions, grants a license to use that work without getting prior permission.

For example, a creator may stipulate that as long as attribution is always attached, others may use his or her work however they please. The creator may decide that others may copy the work freely but not modify it, or may allow copying but not for commercial purposes. As long as we adhere to the conditions of the license, we can use these materials in our own works.

We can also contribute to the intellectual commons by releasing our own work under a Creative Commons-type license so that others may use or build on it. (PRX uses a version of this idea to affix license conditions to pieces put on the PRX site.) Why would a producer want to do that? After all, our work is (or we'd like it to be) our living. In the case of work produced under a grant or underwriting, we've already received some compensation for our work. And while it is possible that ancillary uses may contribute some income in the future, well more than 95 percent of copyrighted works have exhausted their income potential in less than five years, yet they can remain under copyright restrictions for over a century longer. (My suspicion is that the income-generating duration is probably much less for most radio pieces.)

In the case of other non-grant funded work, we may want to keep commercial rights but otherwise allow people to listen without payment to what we have created as a way to get a wider audience. If we do believe that our work will generate income for a while, we may want to assert a "founder's copyright" for 14 years (the original duration of copyright protection) or for some other limited period of time. Then we can release the work into the public domain so that future producers won't have to try to find us 50 years hence to get permission to use a clip from one of our pieces.

If we choose to release any of our work under any of those conditions (or others described at the Creative Commons website), we not only potentially gain a wider hearing for our own work, we also offer our work to those who come after us to build upon without having to wait 70 years after we pass on to do so. In short, we help to keep the public commons public.

Jim Campbell has been kicking around non-commercial radio for an unspecified number of decades. He currently produces science and technology programs as a volunteer at WERU-FM in coastal Maine and, in his dotage, has returned to academe to (hope springs eternal) finish a Ph.D. in Spatial Information Science and Engineering. Contact him at modmedia@earthlink.net.