[cc-community] Rcrd Lbl to offer CC and Free as in Beer Music

Terry Hancock hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Mon Nov 19 10:13:54 EST 2007


drew Roberts wrote:
> On Monday 19 November 2007 04:24:26 Terry Hancock wrote:
>>Aesthetically valued works are intrinsically non-fungible: if you have
>>two science fiction novels, that doesn't mean that one of them is
>>redundant. If you're an SF fan, you'll want to read both. 

BTW -- yes I realize now that this wasn't the sense in which Greg meant
to use the word "fungible", nor either of the hypothesis Rob suggested.

> But in a world of abundance, you can't. I would venture to say that if every 
> book ever written to date were available to download gratis and libre, you 
> would not have enought time before you die to read them all.
> 
> If nothing else, a person's time will be a limiting factor.

Absolutely, but restricting yourself to a particular licensing scheme is
 nevertheless limiting, because you are only listening to the output of
people with a particular ideological, economic, or political belief system.

Listening to only free-licensed music is like listening to only
"Christian music" or "Communist music" -- by limiting the source you are
also unconsciously limiting the genre.

So even if we assume that only a miniscule sample is taken, you are
biasing that sample -- in other words, you're rejecting freedom in what
you want to listen to. Which is why it doesn't really ring true as a
"free" thing to do.

>>OTOH, with software, you're looking for a tool to achieve a goal. If I
>>want to write a report, I need a word processing tool that has certain
>>features that make it easy for me to do that. I don't need or want two
>>of them -- thus if there is a proprietary one and a free one, I'm
>>completely free to chuck the proprietary one and use the free one,
>>because that's all I need. I don't feel deprived if I can't use the
>>proprietary one -- not so long as there is a free software program that
>>DOES the same thing.
> 
> Again, I get your point, but I need, or at least want several, at least until 
> the perfect one comes along. One light weight, one with more features, one 
> non-gui, & etc.

Sure. I have dozens of wrenches in my toolbox, too. But that's because
they all do different jobs. But every one of them is *replaceable* if I
find a "better" one.

I don't feel that way about art. My enjoyment of a new painting does not
diminish my feelings about an old one.

>>Think how different that is from a book or a music recording -- if you
>>decide to abstain from proprietary music you're really cutting yourself
>>off from a huge body of cultural works.
> 
> Yes, you are. BUT. It still could end up being a better choice when it becomes 
> possible.
> 
> I think for more than one reason, but here is one:
> 
> If you have never been exposed to non-Free works and inspiration strikes, you 
> can go for it and create it and put it out for the public with abandon. No 
> need to worry that you might be unconsciously commiting a copyright 
> violation.

But only in the genres that are released in that form. Already there are
noticeable biases -- you're unlikely to feel stifled if you listen to
electronica, but there are other genres where you are pretty limited.
And mind you, I'm not including the body of NC work, so this is an even
smaller collection of material.

I agree with what you are saying about the desirability of being able to
reuse works -- but I don't think that a licensing regime is going to cut
it for free culture.

What is needed is a broading of fair use and a shortening of copyright
terms so that ALL works become freer and enter the commons sooner.

Because in contrast to the situation with software, the fact that works
can be released into a more restrictive regime is limiting. With
software it wasn't really a big problem -- all you had to do was write
an application that was better and then you could encourage people to
switch.

Inside the community that used that software, that worked out just fine.
We have pretty much everything we need already, and if we need more,
then we write more.

But we can NEVER acheive that with art -- there will always be art
movements and works that exist outside of our pocket free-licensing
economy. You're ALWAYS "missing something" by cutting yourself off from
the mainstream ARR economy.

> But again, in a world of abudance, we are all missing something and there is 
> no way to not miss something.

But do you want to determine what you miss solely by a legal detail?
Should any law actually have that kind of power over you?

>>But if you value a work for what it IS, then that value persists -- you
>>can't just replace it with another similar work.
> 
> Right, but you can realize that there is in fact a bundle of values and that 
> if the work is bound up with a huge debt (negative value) that it may be 
> better to not mess with it because when you figure up the value of the 
> bundle, the total comes out negative. And there is no way to break the bundle 
> apart and only keep the valuable bits.

Actually there is -- you can change the copyright law. Yes, it *is*
changeable. That's why it keeps getting worse. At some point, though, we
have to turn the tide around and push back.

What I'm saying is that whereas Free Software was able to create an
immunity zone where Free Software could operate, pretty much ignoring
the mainstream copyright economy, and being none the worse for that,
Free Culture can't effectively immunize itself against that competition.

But until the law is changed, Free Culture will always be operating with
a handicap.

Just imagine how much would be freed now if only US law were changed so
that the copyright law that applied *at the time of creation* applied to
all works! We don't have to change anything retroactively so that anyone
has cause to cry foul.

Then if we restored shorter terms for all new works, eliminated the
encroachment on fair use (by defining it better), better established the
limits of what is copyrightable (I still see advertisements with
copyright claims on them, even though "advertising materials" were
explicitly exempted from copyright last time I checked), and defined
rules for universal non-commercial distribution, we would be a lot
further towards having a *REAL* new millenium copyright reform act.

> Could the last reason given not actually be an advantage of Free Culture over 
> Free Software, rather than a disadvantage.

Sure, but it also means that the strategy of establishing a pocket
economy (and then growing it) probably won't work as well.

> One of the accusations leveled against Free Software is that everyone is 
> writing their own version of the killer "text editor" and that we have 
> enough. That there needs to be way more co-ordination and direction and that 
> we need to work on replacing more variety of non-Free software... (Not worded 
> the best and I will need to work on this for future, but if you have been 
> around Free Software much, you probably know what I mean.)
> 
> So, we have one. People only need one. Another will be of no value to people. 
> And yet, despite this, programmers write more. Lot's more.

Personally I think that's a specious complaint -- competition and
cooperation are already pretty well managed within the free software
community. Divisions often occur on technical boundaries (e.g. Gnome is
written (mostly?) in C, while KDE is in C++; Inkscape is written in
C/C++, while Skencil is in Python). These distinctions mean that *for
the people creating them* they are really quite different types of wrench.

The illusion of unnecessary duplication is largely an "outside looking
in" problem experienced by end users who aren't involved in development
-- just because they don't understand the differences doesn't mean there
aren't any.

Choice is not a bad thing -- my point here was that you can make a
choice based on your evaluation of the licensing scheme, and not feel
like you've thrown something away. You've simply picked the better of
two replaceable (fungible) instruments -- as a user, you've lost nothing
(of course, if you're the Debian Project, who collects free software,
then you have -- you've lost selection).

But with art, no matter which you choose, or how you choose, you are
having to deny value to yourself in order to make that choice.

I do get what you said about acquiring negative values, and how that
might overwhelm such losses -- that's an important point that I haven't
given much thought to.

> Now let's take songs. Using your thinking...
> 
> I can point you to a BY-SA blues song. But you know what, unlike another GPL 
> text editor, that does not diminish the need for another BY-SA blues song.
> 
> So, if you want to write one, it does not matter if a hundred people have 
> already written one, write it.
> 
> Does this make any sense?

Sure. Yes.

> I really think that we are going to be faced with a whole new set of problems 
> and wealth creating opportunities after we move to a model of abundance based 
> on Free Culture. Because, like I say, we all only have 24 hours in a day. How 
> are we going to find the gems amid the junk?
> 
> How many gems have been thrown away as junk by the currently prevailing 
> system?

OTOH, the old system did select "gems", if we mean by that "hits". It
can be argued that it chose poorly or that it manufactured these hits
through some underhanded marketing, but there's no question that it
served to augment some few high quality works at the expense of less
impressive stuff.

And, I have to be cruelly honest here, but IMHO the bulk of
free-licensed material is NOT of the same quality as the work that the
proprietary system turns out, even if that has faded. Most of it still
has a feeling of amateurishness or lack-of-polish that is no doubt
partly due to the lack of studio resources and perhaps training --
things the cash flow in the old system makes possible. But also possibly
due to being able to select extremely talented people and develop them
with those resources.

At the risk of blaspheming free cultural ideology, I have to suggest:
There's no question that CC licensing works pretty well for "folk art",
but is it he right solution for "high art"?

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com



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