A tale about technology, creativity and copyright that we anyone can read and also freely rework, thanks to a Creative Commons license.

di Nicola D’Agostino

Greg Pak is one of Marvel’s top writers and is the creative force behind some of the biggest characters and storylines of the House of Ideas. But he is also an independent author and director, and together with R.B. Silva, artist of DC’s “Jimmy Olsen”, has created “Vision Machine”, a comic books story released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.
I contacted him and he promptly accepted to answer my questions and tell me more about the project.

First of all: what is Vision Machine? What’s the idea behind the comic book?

“Vision Machine” is a sci fi thriller that follows a group of friends as the explore the incredible potential and confront the terrifying dangers created by the iEye, a revolutionary piece of personal technology that allows the instant recording, editing, and sharing of anything a user can see or imagine. You can download the book for free in pdf form at www.visionmachine.net or get it for free at comixology.com.

Vision Machine was funded by the Ford Foundation. Did you pitch it or did they contact you?

Orlando Bagwell at the Ford Foundation had a vision of a comic book that would help independent media makers imagine the technological, social, and political changes that will affect media, copyright, trademark, privacy, and surveillance in the near future. Orlando and I have known each other for years and he was familiar with my work in science fiction, independent film, and comics. So he called me up and asked if I’d like to pitch a story for the project. I was immediately hooked — every theme the project touches on is something I’ve been hugely interested in for years. So I pitched a big crazy sci fi story, Orlando loved it, and we were off to the races.

Whose idea was it to release the work under a Creative Commons license?

This was Orlando’s idea from the very beginning. The project explores big questions of copyright and trademark — it made sense to put our money where our mouths were and release this project under a license that takes a stab at another way of getting work out into the world. I’m not saying that Creative Commons licenses are the solution for every creative project. But for a fully-funded project like “Vision Machine,” it made perfect sense and was a great way for me to experiment and get my feet wet with the whole CC thing.

What are you aiming by releasing it with the CC license and providing a wordless version?

The hope is that it encourages more people to pay attention to and read the project — and to interact and engage with it on a much deeper level. In the best of all possible worlds, the story takes on a life of its own far beyond what I could have imagined as people remix it according to their own visions.

How much can an author change and modify the story, words and art?

You can do whatever you want with it, as long as it’s done non-commercially, you credit Pak Man Productions, and you release your derivative work under the same license.

Have there been any remix attempts yet?

A few artists have drawn their own versions of some of the characters in the book, which are awesome. But we just released the textless version of the book to make remixing the original art much easier. A Sacramento comics shop called Empires Comics has just launched a “Vision Machine” remix contest with a $100 prize. I’m eager to see what happens next! 
Text and images are (c) Pak Man Productions and available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License.