[Cc-uk] collecting societies and creative commons

Cory Doctorow doctorow at craphound.com
Fri Oct 15 08:14:09 EDT 2004


I think that that was Finland -- it wasn't that they forbade CC 
licensing, but rather insisted that any distribution, save through the 
author's website (i.e., not via P2P or other low-cost alternatives to 
hosting large audio files) would disqualify members from ALL rolayties. 
They've since abandoned that position (yay!).

WRT colelcting societies in the UK; there's nothing about CC that's 
inherently inimical to collecting societies. It's true that a CC 
licensed pool of material would be exempt from royalties in 
noncommercial contexts. This material doesn't displace revenue -- 
generally, noncommercial venues are exempt from collecting society fees 
anyway.

There IS a minority of commercial-use-permitted CC material that might 
displace some collecting-society material, but that's not a major 
problem. In most instances, we can imagine that a traditional 
collecting society venue (say, a pub or a concert hall) takes out its 
license not because no public domain material will be performed there, 
but because SOME non-PD material will be played there.

It's conceivable, I suppose, that someone might create a (commercial? 
noncommercial?) service aggregating CC-licensed material and creating a 
"radio station" for hairdressers, bars, and other venues that are now 
subject to a collective license offered for a lower cost than the 
license, but at that point, the collecting society is in the position 
of objecting to CC because it creates a competitive market in 
collective licenses; hardly a sympathetic argument!

On Oct 15, 2004, at 1:04 PM, Rufus Pollock wrote:

> Recently someone raised the question of the attitude of collecting 
> societies to Creative Commons. Under (some) CC licenses the collecting 
> society, I believe, will not receive any revenue. Is this correct and 
> if so will collecting societies oppose CC licenses? For example it was 
> said that in Germany the main collecting society had forbidden its 
> members to release CC work (is this true?).
>
> Regards,
>
> Rufus Pollock
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