Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Bjorn Wijers <mailings AT bdisfunctional.net>]

Lucas,

As far as I know, the cc license applies to the work itself and not a 
specific technical detail such as the encoding. As for the statement 
made by Dying-Giraffe: sadly, it is not flat out wrong.

It is however a more complicated and certainly not correct for all 
jurisdictions. The guys from Dying-Giraffe are like me based in the 
Netherlands, so I presume they are actually mentioning the Dutch 
situation instead of taking into account the difference between 
countries and jurisdictions. Also I presume they are taking about CC 
licenses that use the non-commercial clause and which will be used by 
commercial entities.

In the Netherlands, you have to deal with at least three rights 
organizations for music:

1) BUMA: performance rights, such as live music or background music in bars
http://www.bumastemra.nl (dutch)

2) STEMRA: rights concerning mechanical reproduction.
http://www.bumastemra.nl (dutch)

Usually they are called BUMA/STEMRA and mostly not seen as seperate 
entities. BUMA/STEMRA is an organization which has a monopoly granted by 
the Dutch government for collecting royalties. Effectively they are a 
government organization, but legally they claim not to be a government 
organization.
See their FAQ (dutch)
http://www.bumastemra.nl/nl-NL/Service/FAQ.htm?Guid=ead54a88-742e-4cba-93a2-1c6239800ea9#Anchoread54a88-742e-4cba-93a2-1c6239800ea9

3) SENA: Neighbouring rights
http://www.sena.nl/pages/en/creators/Sena/Wetnaburigerechten.html

This organization has also been granted a monopoly by the Dutch 
government for collection neighbouring rights.

So when you're making music in the Netherlands you have to deal with 
three organizations. Before they will collect royalties you've to become 
a member*  of BUMA/STEMRA (BUMA/STEMRA/SENA claim working together). 
When you are a member of BUMA/STEMRA you cannot use CC licenses anymore, 
because as a member you've transfered your rights exclusively to 
BUMA/STEMRA. (NOTE: not taking moral rights into account)

As far as this info is available (you can't imagine how closed these 
organizations are..) it seems that broadcasters all pay a yearly 
'catch-all' sum to these rights organizations. Therefor any broadcaster 
playing CC music next to all rights reserved music has already paid (at 
least in the broadcaster's eyes) for the right to play the CC music as 
well as the all rights reserved music. In practice this means that 
musicians and artists will not receive any royalties for airplay, 
although money has been paid to the rights collection society.

In theory a CC musican or artists could take actions against a 
broadcaster, but in reallity most of the CC artists and musicians lack 
the resources to do so and are afraid not to be played at all.

So in practice Dying-Giraffe is not so far out as it might seem.

ps: Also see a previous thread about this:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/cc-community/2006-December/001444.html


* Becoming a member costs:
Authors € 45,00 (one-time subscribtion fee) + € 62,50 (yearly)
Publishers € 90,00 (one-time subscribtion fee) + € 125,00 (yearly)

NOTE: I'm not a lawyer

All the best,

grtz
BjornW



Lucas Gonze wrote:
> Over at http://www.dyinggiraffe-recordings.com/faq.php I came across this bit:
>
> "What should I know about Creative Commons?
> There are some things you should be aware of. Creative Commons
> licences are of unlimited duration, so once a work that is licensed
> here it can no longer be changed. Registering this work with a
> copyright organisation is not possible either, as a result of which,
> as is currently the case, no royalties can be received for airplay. "
>
> I think that that statement about airplay royalties is flat wrong, but
> this depends on the scope of a CC license.  My understanding is that
> CC applies only a specific encoding of a file and not to the
> underlying composition or sound recording.  Yes?
> _______________________________________________
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> cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses