Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

Hello Terry,


[ trying to keep up with all these very interesting answers is going to 
be a nightmare :-D ]

> "NC" is reviled by a lot of "free culture" / "free software" people. 
[long snip]

True, however, Freesound wasn't made in the light of "free culture" 
only. We have plenty of commercial users and prosumer authors posting 
sounds. Although I'm very much in favor of open licenses, I think we 
should try to not scare away the "pro" people in any way (pro perhaps 
meaning "scared of anything truely free").

This might sound like one of those typical remarks people who don't 
understand "free" always give, but if you have a look at the polls, 
attribution-nc is 'winning' right now!
Licensing under attribution-nc doesn't stop people from asking the 
original author for the rights to use the sample. Many -prosumer/pro- 
users in freesound HAVE sold some of their amazing samples because of this.

Yes, it does stop people from using "by-nc" samples in GPL'ed software 
but "by-nc" will NEVER be the ONLY option on freesound (no matter what 
the poll results say)...

> ShareAlike is a far better option if you want to preserve the "freeness" 
> of the work.

But, this means no commercial artist could ever use (those) freesound 
samples for a commercial album (without giving the songs away for free 
as well). Isn't this exactly one of the things CC is trying to avoid ( 
i.e. the wrath of the "commercial" world ;-) )?

> "Sampling" or "Sampling Plus" is a problem primarily because these 
> aren't licenses *for samples* but for *work from which samples can be 
> taken*.  (The "Sampling" licenses are quite restrictive as regards the 
> original work used as a whole, and probably rule out any use you'd 
> likely be interested in).

Yes, exactly...

> My (not a lawyer) opinion is that a remix of the 'bass drum hit' sample, 
> to alter its sound (say move it up an octave, stretch it out, add echo, 
> or etc) is a "derivative".
>
> A musical performance made up of these samples (and probably others) is 
> a "collective work" in the terms used in the CC licenses.

An interesting point... I would greatly appreciate anyone who Is A 
Lawyer [IAS!] to comment on this.

> I had a look at the thread.  One thing I find disturbing is the number 
> of people who appear to want to use their copyright as a means to 
> *suppress expression* with which they disagree.  IMHO, this is an 
[snip]

Well, many people are really really confused about copyright law and you 
can't really blame them for it. The *interpretation* of copyright law 
is... well, I won't even get started on that ;-)

> make sure the search and contribution interfaces
> make it easy to select by license.

That goes without saying!


thanks for the valuable comments!

 - bram