Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

The way I see it, CC-NC is for generating
fan-based word-of-mouth buzz about a work.
Fans can pass the work around for free,
post it on their websites, their blogs, etc.
But record labels have to pay to play.

When you say this:
> Greg: CC-BY-ND would not provide the artists enough protection.

I take that to mean you are looking at this
Yet-Another-License as something along the same vein:
something that generates buzz for the work,
but retains commercial rights for a work to the original artist.

If that's the case, then I see this idea as splitting hairs.
You are proposing to allow indirect commercial sales, but
that is based off the current way the music industry works
by making most of its money off of selling teh work directly.

If indirect sales are allowed, then direct sales doesn't
give the customer any benefit, other than, perhaps, location,
and in the web, location is just a URL away. It is a license,
that if it succeeded in getting adopted industry-wide, would
render itself moot.

Since you seem to be focusing on what is essentially a
buzz-generating license, and since the means for music
distribution may be completely different in another
couple years, I'd suggest going with a CC-BY-NC license,
include a URL for attribution which contains the license
information and your contact infomation such as email,
and then add in your additional license to allow whatever
specific mode of distribution you want to allow for that
particular song.

"This work is licensed CC-BY-NC. It is also licensed to
be podcast blah, blah,"

Really, if a song is CC-BY, has contact info, and a radio
station wants to play it, I don't think the license is a
gating factor.

> Terry: I agree!
>
> This would be a license for "small businesses" - hey you could even put
> this
> into the clause somehow. This is putting power back to the cottage
> industries.
>
> In a year or so time, we will have so many people making mediocre podcasts
> from shoestring budgets that the public will get bored. The commercial
> corporations will watch what is successful and steal the best ideas - but
> steamroller the original guys with advertising and hype. Like they always
> do.
> (There are some excellent podcasts out there, but how long will they last
> before they want to become commercial in some way. And why not, if it
> keeps
> the podcast running).
>
> Greg: If the license became so common place that most record labels were
> using it on their music, I think that secondary sites, which could allow
> downloads of the music for no direct costs and make their money on
> advertising, and direct sales would drop
>
> I would like to see the license common place, but NOT all tracks would be
> on
> the license. This would stimulate sales of CDs/downloads. Hey it's like
> having a trial version of software, "try before you buy".
> Plus - musicians make money from loads of other sources, merchandise and
> tours.
>
> Greg: It'd be nice if everyone was on the same page as to what, exactly,
> CC-NonCommercial meant before we went off and tried to create
> Yet-Another-Incompatible-License-Option.
>
> Couldn't agree more. It's too fuzzy.
> Websites like podsafeaudio.com are great, but as podcasts become more
> commercial it makes a complete folly of the CC-NC license.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cc-licenses-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:cc-licenses-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Greg London
> Sent: 04 April 2006 03:50
> To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts
> Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Creative commons for music
>
>
>> On the contrary, I'd say it's very different: There's a lot of
>> difference between "indirect" profit from the free sharing
>> of a work and "direct" profit by controlling the distribution
>> of the work.
>
> It'd be nice if everyone was on the same page as to what,
> exactly, CC-NonCommercial meant before we went off and
> tried to create Yet-Another-Incompatible-License-Option.
> I can just imagine the CC-IN debate over the license
> that would allow INdirect commercial use, but not direct
> commercial use, and it makes my head hurt. Just thinking
> about the NC definition makes my head hurt enough that
> I've avoided further reading of CC's NC questionaire.
>
>> In fact, I think there's probably a lot of people who wouldn't
>> care about the indirect profit issue as long as they could
>> retain a monopoly on selling CDs or whatever medium they
>> chose (or on per-track download fees).
>
> Except the person who originally brought up this idea
> was talking about a "license for the record companies".
> And when you look at it that way, the license doesn't scale.
> If the license became so common place that most record
> labels were using it on their music, I think that
> secondary sites, which could allow downloads of the music for
> no direct costs and make their money on advertising,
> and direct sales would drop.
>
> (1) Go to www.majorrecordlabel.com and pay 80 cents
> for a download or
> (2) Go to www.musicondemand.com and get the song at no cost.
>
> as it is, I subscribed to Rhapsody almost a year ago,
> for a flat fee of $8 a month, and I can listen to all
> the music I want to hear there. I'm assuming that some
> of my money is going back to the record company, and then
> a small sliver of that is making its way to the artist.
>
> But if Rhapsody could give the music away for free
> while making money on various advertising angles,
> I'm sure they'd figure a way to make the numbers add up,
> maybe use Peer-To-Peer networking to share the bandwidth
> and storage among the various users or some such thing.
>
> The short of it being that if everyone licensed their
> work to allow anyone to make indirect profit, then
> I don't see direct profit having much of an income
> potential.
>
> If nothing else, fans could host their favorite music,
> and then a decent search engine could find the music
> for free rather than go to the Record Label page and
> pay for it. Yes, people could buy the work as a way
> of giving alms, but if that argument were to scale,
> then you could simply license the work CC-BY, let folks
> sell it, and then wait for your true fans to come to
> your site and give you money to keep playing.
>
> Greg
>
> btw: everything I say here is wrong
>
>
>
>
>> But clearly this is not the meaning of the current NC clause.
>>
>> Terry
>>
>> --
>> Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
>> Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
>>
>>
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>
>
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