[cc-community] CC+?

Terry Hancock hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Tue Oct 9 15:40:05 EDT 2007


Giorgos Cheliotis wrote:
> However, I find Terry's idea of paying the author to completely
> switch a work over to a more liberal license very interesting (though
> I am not sure CC can or should do something about this now, as an
> author can set this up independently of CC).

Actually, anything CC has ever done can be set up independently, the
point is making it so that artists don't have to.

What makes me think of this is a personal experience with Magnatune that
 I found frustrating.

1) I was working on a free-software/free-content game

2) A friend suggested sources for "free" music, including Magnatune

3) I first saw the site and was frustrated that everything is NC
licensed. Sadly, I am very used to "free" not meaning "free", so I was
not surprised, but I was frustrated.

4) I experienced momentary elation when noting that there was a
pay-for-licensing option (maybe we could raise enough to pay for
SA-licensed work?)

5) I experienced major let-down when I realized that NONE of the options
made any sense for licensing music to a free game -- even if you
licensed the full commercial rights (which I couldn't afford to anyway
at $45,000!), that only grants the rights to one entity -- there's no
equivalent concept in "commercial licensing" to what you get with free
licensing. Also, of course, such an agreement is paying for exclusivity
that I wouldn't want anyway.

6) So, Magnatune is a total bust for this sort of application

Yet, if Creative Commons actually cares at all about fueling a commons,
then this sort of thing is precisely what they should be supporting.

Neverminding about pooling funds -- that's something that could be
managed by existing sites. Also, as CC+ appears to support multiple
license brokers, it seems more likely that one of them could specialize
in collective-funding arrangements, so that it's not a CC+ problem.

But I'd like to see CC+ be *compatible* with that sort of option.

>From the description, though, CC+ appears only to have been considered
with respect to the Magnatune entity-exclusive licensing model.

In my experience, it's not uncommon to find an artist who publishes most
of their work under an NC license, but who'd be willing to relicense
some work to SA -- especially for a project they like or in exchange for
some cash :-)  So I don't think this is an idle question -- I suspect
there can and would be many users of such an option.

Cheers,
Terry


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



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