[cc-community] Copyright enforcement and CC BY-NC licenses
Fred Benenson
fred.benenson at gmail.com
Sat Aug 2 12:23:35 EDT 2008
>
> I agree, and this is my favourite nit with the NC license! It took me ages
> to get my head around this, but maybe it's actually quite simple. It's
> assumed (I think by the cc license authors) that a professional musician
> will be registered with a collection society. Therefore their right to
> collect royalties on NC released work is _not_ waivered. So, the license
> doesn't add or remove any barriers for the collection societies or
> professional musicians it preserves the royalty status quo.
IANAL but I do not believe you are reading the collecting society part of
the BY-NC license properly:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode
The Licensor reserves the right to collect royalties, whether individually
or, in the event that the Licensor is a member of a collecting society that
administers voluntary licensing schemes, via that society, from any exercise
by You of the rights granted under this License that is for a purpose or use
which is otherwise than noncommercial as permitted under Section 4(c).
I don't think this section implies that collecting societies can (or will)
collect on your behalf without your permission. The point is to allow them
to collect for you in circumstances you would otherwise consider commercial
-- you reserve the right to collect.
If you've signed up with a collecting society (say ASCAP) then you've
aligned their interests with yours, or vice versa. You've essentially said:
please find those circumstances in which I should be remunerated and collect
fees, then distribute them to me proportionally (ignoring how the obvious
liquidity of the definition of "proportionally" is) to my work's popularity.
And then you go home and release those works under BY-NC.
I don't really see why this is so inconsistent -- to the extent that
collecting societies were instantiated to protect artists rights in
situations where their work was being exploited commercially (see: plays
over radio and public venues), then why complain that they're acting against
your wishes?
In other words, if you want to release under NC but you don't want a
collecting society making money off of your work, then why bother with a
collecting society in the first place?
Don't sign up; because you can't have your cake (royalty payments from a CS)
and eat it too (the desire for them not to collect money when you're
releasing a work gratis).
>
> Why? Well, I'm assuming "look no waiver" was added to pacify the
> collection
> societies and their signed up professional musicians who were persuaded in
> the early days of CC to release stuff into the pool for remixing via
> ccMixter et al.
The "waiver" was added to make CC licenses compatible with collecting
societies. It makes it possible to release under CC and still be a member of
one. Do you object to this?
> NC protected their work from commercial "leaks", yet still
> offered them a slice of the payment for radio/blog/youtube play etc. (as a
> contributor).
I'm not understanding your objection here.
>
>
> The double-sided sticky irony :
>
> Whenever I release under NC and a small radio station plays my work, they
> have to pay the collection society irrespective of me being registered or
> not. The collection society then keeps the money (*cough* shares the money
> with their artists). I cannot opt out of this or waiver the fees, or even
> re-route the collected fees to a charity of my choice without becoming a
> fee-paying signed up member of the society....which is a commercial "merry
> go round" if ever there was one.
>
> A musician wanting a truly "money-free" license, where there's no
> commerciality guaranteed end-to-end (unless negotiated with him/her
> directly) AFIK cannot use any of the CC licenses. He/she will be guided
> towards NC as the solution by the various automated systems and general
> advice and away from SA licenses which are maybe more suitable for his/her
> purpose.
>
If you don't like NC and you don't like collecting societies collecting on
your behalf, then there is a very simple option: choose neither.
F
>
>
> Sorry if this slightly moved things off topic.
>
> Kev
>
> > xan
> >
> > jonathon
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> >
> >
>
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