Development of Creative Commons licenses

["David Dixon" <ddixon AT wi.rr.com>]

Hello,

 

My name is David Dixon, and I'm the webmaster for a band called Beatallica (http://www.beatallica.org).  Beatallica is just what the name implies:  Beatles songs, done Metallica style.  Both the lyrics and the music are almalgams of Metallica and Beatles tunes, with titles such as "Blackened the USSR." As such, there's no way we can release and sell the music without paying huge publishing costs, so we're releasing everything for free through our website, distributing it through BitTorrent, encouraging people to set up mirrors and share the tracks on p2p networks.  We rely on donations and T-shirt purchases to cover our costs.  There may also be a tour.

 

The band's lawyer knows nothing about Creative Commons, and doesn't even seem interested in learning about it.  The philosophy behind CC fits perfectly with the Beatallica idea:  share and share alike, as long as it's not financially exploitative (ie. don't sell copies of our CD's to the unsuspecting who don't know that it's freely available on the internet).  But I have a few questions before we scrap our (C) and replace it with a (CC):

 

  - Can we legally do this, considering that the material Beatallica uses is copyrighted?  There are no samples (except for a little one in "Leper Madonna"...); the music is performed, but the melodic and lyrical references are pretty obvious.

 

  - How binding is the license, really?  Would it stand up in a court of law, if we had to go that route?  Has a CC license been "field-tested" as it were?

 

 

Thanks!

 

D^2

Webmaster of Puppets