A “selective openness” licensing model to ensure fair and equitable access to IP, with an integrated profit-sharing mechanism for big players.
Ensure that technology is deployed in a legal, ethically sound and equitable manner
Flexible and customizable licensing terms, tailored to different contexts and needs
Empower people to stipulate conditions for the fair and ethical use of technology.
In short : Copyfair is an Alien created type of open-source licensing, with fair revenue-sharing for commercial use.
The Copyfair license is designed to balance openness with fairness, ensuring that those who use or build upon licensed material do so under conditions that respect the intentions of the original creator. Just like many open source licenses, the Copyfair license is a general public license that applies to the world at large. However, a key feature of the Copyfair License is the conditional copyfair clause, providing the licensor with the ability to differentiate between commercial uses based on the category of actors involved (categories might be defined according to, e.g. for-profit vs non-profit status, max yearly profits, or number of active users in a month). This means that certain actors may have permission to use the licensed material for commercial purposes without additional permissions, while others may need to seek specific approval or adhere to different conditions, i.e. financial contributions. This distinction is particularly valuable in the AI industry, where significant investments and competitive pressures necessitate a more nuanced approach to licensing. Hence, the Copyfair license provides a flexible framework to leverage the power of openness (as in open source) for specific groups of actors, while also safeguards the interests of licensors by enabling them to secure a steady flow of revenues from commercial usages, especially as these emergent players become more established.
In the field of AI, the debate between open-source and closed-source models has become increasingly polarized. At Alien, we reject this binary choice, advocating for a nuanced approach that prioritizes innovation and accountability. We believe that the benefits of AI should be shared, but only in ways that uphold legal and ethical standards. Rather than fully embracing open-source or rigidly adhering to closed-source, Alien adopts a "selective openness" model. This is achieved through the Copyfair license, a novel licensing framework, instigated by Alien co-founder Primavera De Filippi, which allows us to open our technologies to a broader community, but only under strict conditions that ensure all participants adhere to specific legal and ethical guardrails.
New players in the AI industry want to use a particular technology but cannot afford to pay high licensing fees.
With Copyfair, they can access, use and build upon the licensed technology under favorable conditions, thereby creating a broader ecosystem around the technology, with potential improvements and add-ons. Only when the startups start growing and making revenues will they no longer be able to benefit from these favorable conditions, and therefore have to pay a fair amount of royalties for the use of the technology.
Large companies that do not want to develop a proprietary technology in-house might want to adopt a technology that is widely available and publicly scrutinized, one that already has many contributors in order to benefit from an open and vibrant ecosystem and innovation and growth.
Rather than using a proprietary technology that will have to fight for adoption, established companies might opt for a technology licensed under Copyfair, which is freely available to small businesses and non-profit players. The established companies will however have to pay royalty payments for the ongoing use of the technology, in order to ensure fair compensation to the licensor.
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