[cc-community] using Creative Commons as a fig leave
Hessel van Oorschot
hessel at tribeofnoise.com
Tue Jul 7 01:41:15 EDT 2009
Dear Paul,
I have to say I feel both sad and disturbed by your posting.
Behind the scenes my team and I have worked very hard over the last 2
years to create a legal alternative for sharing music and in this
period we were grateful for the groundbreaking work Creative Commons
has done so far. But there is a discrepancy between the ideas you have
on paper and the real world activities we deploy. There is a lack of
jurisprudence and not many real life examples to help you mirror ideas.
That is why, from the start, we tried to get as many people involved
as possible, ranging from musicians, lawyers, CC itself, collecting
societies, open source entrepreneurs etc.
Our door is always open and our minds are even more open to good
constructive suggestions.
What we set out to do was to prove that what the open source community
has done can be done with open content as well: make it professional,
make it successful even in a commercial sense, so it can and will be
widely adopted.
As for our business models, we will have to start making money, we are
a private
initiative, we have invested a lot of time and resources in the Tribe.
But our business models are all indirect, we've learned that from the
open source community. The models are build around the music. Not
directly derived from the music.
Now we have a prove of concept; initially people thought musicians
would not understand CC or would not upload their music. Our next step
will be the revenue sharing model for the musician. You seem to think
that the share alike part is a constraint, we actually see it as the
opportunity;
the opportunity to waive the 'share alike' part and/or the
'attribution' part if a company wants to use your song but can't
comply with (one of) the two conditions. As a musician you can charge
money for waiving those rights (with CC+). Videographers, game
developers, advertisement agencies are paying for this additional
option. We even provide CC+ licence agreements for free.
CC+ and CC By Share Alike, together with our terms of use, upload
agreement, user guide and tips about copyright provide a solid legal
framework for musicians to share music, stay in control and make money
in the end. Our legal department together with two major law firms in
the USA and Europe AND hopefully with the input of Creative Commons
will make sure it stays that way.
And yes we have generated a lot exposure and I will promise you we
will do our best to keep up this pace. Because if we get exposure the
artists on Tribe of Noise get exposure! It's one of the main reasons
why they join our community.
At Tribe of Noise we want to move forward from the theory of law
towards getting things done in the real world; transparent, open and
100% legal. And yes, we will need feedback and sometimes we will
differ in opinion in this hardly explored terrain. But instead of
being suspicious and selectively reading between the lines, I feel it
would be more constructive if you give me a call and say: "Hey Hessel
I feel you have some contradictions in your terms of use."
You know we would welcome you to our office, have a coffee, and
discuss how we can improve.
And Paul that people think Creative Commons can be the base for a
brilliant business model should fill you with pride (excellent legal
framework) and worries since that means not many people have heard
from it yet and we still have a lot of words to spread!
We had the kahuna's to actually invest in the CC by share alike
license, and everybody is allowed to see them, so no fig leaves here
Paul!
More information about the cc-community
mailing list