Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Bram @ Freesound" <freesound AT iua.upf.edu>]

Hello Andea,


I hope to comment on your email more in depth, but let's start with the 
basics. I re-arranged a bit...


> [...] Such an analysis would, however, be quite lengthy, so I'd like
> to know if other people on this list would be interested in joining
> in.

Freesound is very rapidly becoming a (if not 'the') reference for sound 
effect up/downloads on the web, if it not already is. I would really 
immensely appreciate any effort from anyone on this matter.


> I would be interested in attempting such an analysis, but first I would
> need to know:
>
> (a) what do you mean exactly with "a sample being more than a sample"

Some freesound samples are long ( > 3 minutes ) of sounds "observed" by 
someone on the street. I don't know if there is any legal difference 
between the 100 millisecond sound of a bass drum and 3 minutes of the 
sound of children playing in the fairground.

I'm guessing there might be a legal difference between a sound recorded 
by someone and a sound generated-and-recorded by someone.

Some people consider their samples (or recordings) entire works of art 
as such.

Then again, all of these might be completely irrelevant. I do not think 
I am qualified of replying to that, hence my confusing remark.

> (b) if you are only interested in Spanish copyright law or not (I
>     understand the Freesound project is based at the UPF, hence in
>     Barcelona, hence in Catalonya, hence in Spain, at least as far as
>     copyright law is concerned)

No, I'm interesting in worldwide law. While the *server* of freesound 
might be in Spain, both *uploaders* (all 822 of them and rising) of 
sounds and *downloaders* (all 180000 of them and rising) are very much 
spread worldwide. I'm guessing -hoping!- that the particular location of 
our server has no legal repercussions on freesound as a whole.

If this issue is relevant -> If the location of the server is of essence 
then what happens when we start setting up mirrors elsewhere?

> Besides the fact that I am not someone from CC, I think it might be
> helpful to try and breakdown all the various issues which you think are
> most urgent.

0. is there a legal difference between "music" and "samples"/"sound 
effects"? Conceptually this is an impossible question to answer, but 
perhaps courts of law have a different opinion?

1. is the Sampling+ a "valid" or "good" or "correct" license to apply to 
sound effects? (I think the answer can be a powerful "no")

2. which -if any- of the CC licenses could or can be used for sound 
samples and what are the differences -in both legalese and idiot-proof 
wording- between using those particular licenses.



 - bram