Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

David Dixon said:
> 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.

IANAL

Grey Tuesday shows some differences between the sound recording and
the composition/sheet music.
http://www.eff.org/IP/grey_tuesday.php

apparently, copyright to the sheet music for most Beetle's songs
is owned by Michael Jackson and Sony.

You can use a Cumpulsory License to do a "cover" of the song.
http://www.megalaw.com/top/copyright/17usc115.php
Your lawyer should know this bit.

as far as "style", I don't think metallica can copyright
their "style". If you start playing riffs from their songs,
then you'll have a problem.

a compulsory license does not allow you to
relicense your "cover" under CC-SA or something similar.
You would need Michael Jackson/Sony's permission for that.


>   - 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?

I'm not sure I get what you mean by "binding"?
It's as binding as "All Rights Reserved" is,
with all the advantages and disadvantages that
come with that.

I don't think any CC license has undergone a
major lawsuit that proves it's "field tested"

The GNU-GPL has withstood 20 years of pressures,
but the SCO lawsuit that start only last year has
a lot of people running around like Chicken Little
screaming that the open source world is going to end.
But I think they're overreacting.


>
> Thanks!
>
> D^2
> Webmaster of Puppets
>
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> cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
>


-- 
Draft the Gift Domain:
Put Free/Libre/Open/Public licensing
concepts directly into Copyright Law.
http://www.greglondon.com/dtgd/html/draftingthegiftdomain.html