[cc-licenses] choosing a new license at freesound, please help
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Fri Oct 27 02:38:12 EDT 2006
Bram @ Freesound wrote:
> so, ok, I understand some of the (good) reasons to be against
> Attribution, and even more reasons to be against
> Attribution-NonCommercial. But, pandora's box is open, and the 822
> people (and rising) who have submitted to freesound will want to
> *choose* a new license for their currently Sampling+ released
> content, and new people will need to be able to choose at least
> between.
>
> I would like to support PD, BY and BY-NC...
Quite frankly, Bram, you should use By-SA instead of By-NC.
By-SA acheives more precisely what you want, since it allows the works
to be used in free works, but not in ones which are taken private. Your
objection to this, IIRC, is that commercial users might want a monopoly
on works made with the work. But the answer to this is the same as with
NC: they can negotiate with the author to purchase additional rights.
The difference is that non-proprietary, "free" works can use the By-SA
content, but not the By-NC, which is basically useless (presumeably
people aren't uploading these samples simply for self-gratification, but
would actually like to see them used?).
You rightly observe that By-SA eliminates some of the profit-motive for
commercial users. This is a much better way to be "non-commercial",
because it's much more precise about what it demands, and it leaves the
work open to use in free-licensed works (to be precise, in By-SA
licensed works).
I concede the "derivative"/"collective" issue. It seems like it's a
much safer bet to assume that the samples render the work subject to the
By-SA if the samples are so licensed (I think you should probably
represent it this way to users of the site).
From a business-model perspective, though, I just can't see any
motivation for the NC licensing. The samples you are collecting have
very limited value as final works. Yes, I'm sure some are entertaining
to listen to, but it's not music. People are going to download sounds
primarily with the intent to re-use them. People are uploading
primarily so their sounds will be re-used. Hence, there's no motivation
for a "try before you buy" strategy.
Using SA ensures that whatever the downloader makes with the works will
need to also be By-SA, thus re-contributing to the community. For those
who are concerned about possible commercial uses -- well, you've already
noted that By-SA makes "exploitation" of the works (through
monopoly-based pricing) difficult.
And that basically accomplishes everything you're hoping that NC will do
for you.
NC, on the other hand, won't really prevent exploitation very well, and
it will block creative uses of the site that most users will probably
find to be unintended consequences (e.g. the people that NC excludes are
mainly individuals like the participants on the site, trying to create
free content).
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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