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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] sampling + 1.0 and remix competition, with prize for winner

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] sampling + 1.0 and remix competition, with prize for winner
  • Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2006 15:13:18 -0500

Ben McLean wrote:
Wait a second, I see no problem with offering proprietary software as
a prize, for these reasons:

Depending on what you mean by "problem".

My claim is not a moral or ethical one, but rather one of perceived
value. It's simply that it seems probable to me that musicians who
favor the use of free licenses for their own output are likely to
favor free licenses for the software they use too.

> 1. "Free Software" has yet to produce a
music program for the PC on par with FruityLoops, or at least I've
never heard of one.

To be fair, it's a second-hand argument, due to me not being a musician,
and therefore I'm a poor judge of such applications, but I have certainly
heard musicians advocate the apps I posted links to.

I'm not so sure about the "linux-only" claim -- they're free software,
so I'd expect them to be buildable on Windows or Mac (certainly OS X).

> 2. "Free Content", acording to Lawrence Lessig's
book by that name, is in no way opposed to the concept of a "Free
Market", thus, offering proprietary software as a prize in a contest
would not be opposed to free content ideals, since "Free Content" and
the "Free Market" are also supposed to compliment each other.

Free software isn't opposed to a free market either. ;-)

Indeed, it encourages it, which is why I think you should promote
it and use it with free culture. Free software is merely a
particular type of free content -- with a particular value that
it is content which further enables content. It's an amplifier.

I know that when I create free/copyleft art, I do it exclusively with free
software tools, because I consider that critical to the "development
leverage" aspect of the work: by keeping it in a standard format that
is easily manipulated with free tools, I increase the chance of seeing
the work reused.

This reflects my interest in copyleft and free-collaboration, and the
fact that when I create creative works, I'm using a By-SA or similar
license, and not an NC license. People using NC or ND probably
can afford to use proprietary tools, because they won't get any
significant amount of collaboration anyway, so what difference does
one more barrier make? So maybe they wouldn't care.

But to me, that's the less interesting part of 'free culture' -- the
not-so-free-after-all part. That's just puddling around in the
shallows. I set sail for the deep waters a long time ago. ;-)

At this point, I still don't know if I'll discover a trade route to the
East Indies, discover America, or fall over the edge -- but I've
left port for good. ;-)

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com





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