[cc-community] CC music and webcasting
Kevin Phillips (home)
tacet at qmpublishing.com
Thu Mar 22 20:09:23 EST 2007
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Phillips" <jon at rejon.org>
To: <cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 10:46 PM
Subject: Re: [cc-community] CC music and webcasting
> On Sat, 2007-03-10 at 19:36 -0800, Eric Garner wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I posted this question already in the "licenses" discussion, but
> > just in case that wasn't the appropriate forum, I'll post it here too:
> > In light of the new Soundexchange arrangement for webcasting
> > royalties, I can see where many webcasts that are able to stay
> > online might switch to music deemed 'podsafe'. However, given
> > language in the DMCA that mandates royalty collection on all
> > non-interactive delivery systems, it looks like webcasters will
> > have to pay royalties on all music regardless of label affiliation,
> > including CC-licensed music. In fact, the Soundexchange
> > website indicates that independent musicians might have money
> > already held on their behalf, but that they must become
> > Soundexchange members in order to collect.
> > This brings about the following questions:
> > 1) Is it possible for people who choose to produce podsafe
> > music to opt out of the mandatory Soundexchange royalty
> > collections so webcasters can freely use the music?
>
> That is a good question for soundexchange actually. Others might know
> here as well.
I had the same question a year or so ago when an internet radio station
wanted to play a track I created. It got so costly in terms of their time
sorting it out, they dropped the idea. The station have since again
contacted me and asked about the situation with CC and sound exchange, and
they'd be interested in playing a lot more CC music if it meant ultimately
they could zero some timeslots in those extortionate pay per listener feeds.
RAIN and other organisations are currently campaigning against the royalty
rates, but I personally don't think they'll get much change, literally. So,
ironically CC music could get a way in if we can campaign to have the
royalty removed, for those of us who want that....it could help reduce the
costs to run indi-stations.
> > 2) If so, can a CC license act as a de facto opt-out notice for
> > this purpose, or does a musician have to contact
> > Soundexchange and explicitly tell them each time they introduce
> > a song with a podsafe, royalty-free intent?
>
> I'm not sure about this, but yet again think you should put this burden
> onto them. In the end, the second you make a work, its your copyright.
> The CC licenses use copyright to give notice to others of what they can
> do with your work...others might be more clear about how soundexchange
> works...I have a contact there now, so will bring up when I get a
> chance...cheers
I agree. We should contact Sound Exchange, but to be fair to them there's a
bigger issue. There's the question of attribution, and ownership.
Commercial recordings are cut and dry for SE, if XYZ indi-band produce a
song then it's easy to collect or zero the royalty. If a song/track is
played from ccMixter source then it's a communal project, often with 3 or
more contributors. On ccMixter the last artist to contribute has the
"handle" but it makes him/her no more of a contributor than the other
previous two, if you get my drift.
In my conversations with the radio station previously, we got into a long
discussion about attribution trees and listing somehow the attribution
threads to ensure the spirit of the CC attribution license was upheld. I
know CC has done a lot of work with meta information embedded into ID3 but
I'm not sure if there's a full attribution tree.....even ccMixter doesn't
have that yet (you have to trace back through the samples to see the
attribution - a bone of contention for some contributors).
I'm not even sure this is needed, but it would be a great motivator for
contributors, and it would help the radio stations to feel they're doing the
right thing by supporting the licenses to the full.
> > It really came as a surprise to me that podcasting is different
> > from webcasting in that mandatory royalties are collected on the
> > latter, regardless of label affiliation or licensing choices on the
> > artists' behalf. It seems like I, as the music's creator, should
> > have the right to opt out of this scheme.
> > Thanks,
> > Eric Garner
>
> I feel your pain. I think bring this up with soundexchange (and
> hopefully you'll get a reply ;) Please let us know here what you find
> out...
>
I didn't know podcasters got off lightly, maybe it's just a matter of time
;)
Kevin (aka tacet :: ccMixter)
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