Development of Creative Commons licenses

[bmz <bmz AT mezurashii.net>]

Hi Everyone,

I am a DJ and music producer and I am looking at releasing some of my 
own original compositions under a Creative Commons license. The two 
licenses I am considering are Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike 
(by-nc-sa) and Attribution Share Alike (by-sa).

The reason I am looking at these is that I don't want to stop people 
either remixing my work or including my work in a DJ mixed set of music 
(which I consider to be a derivative work). I don't want to stop people 
being able to hear my music but at the same time I don't want anyone 
selling it without my permission. I'd like to keep the option of 
licensing my work for commercial release.

My interest in this from the DJ perspective is that I currently have a 
regular unpaid gig where I play a lot of Non-commercially licensed CC 
music released on various netlabels. If I were to get a paid gig, my 
understanding is, I would no longer be able to play Non-commercially 
licensed CC music, which I feel would be a great loss due to artists 
getting less exposure.

From my perspective Non-commercial is too restrictive and Commercial is 
too free.

The license deeds contain the words "Any of the above conditions can be 
waived if you get permission from the copyright holder." but there isn't 
any "standard" way to grant additional rights. Has anyone discussed the 
concept of standardised CC waivers, a kind of CC plus?

A standardised waiver that I think would be useful is a Commercial 
Public Performance and Royalty waiver (CC plus DJ). This would allow for 
the commercial performance of a by-nc-sa licensed work but not further 
distribution for profit (e.g. on a commercially released CD).

I have gone with the idea of a standardised waiver as not to cause a 
proliferation of CC licenses nor make the existing ones any more complex.

Although the licensing conundrum above is my own and I can get legal 
help to construct my own waivers, I feel that the issues of public 
performance and royalties will keep coming up.

There was a post to this list by Eric Garner on Saturday March 10 
([cc-licenses] CC music and webcasting) that raises the issues of 
mandatory royalties being paid to Soundexchange for all webcast music 
regardless of label affiliation

National Public Radio (NPR) in the US has also recently spoken out about 
 the new internet royalty structure in less than positive terms. The 
communication VP from NPR, Andi Sporkin, said the following;

"This is a stunning, damaging decision for public radio and its 
commitment to music discovery and education, which has been part of our 
tradition for more than half a century.  Public radio’s agreements on 
royalties with all such organizations, including the RIAA, have always 
taken into account our public service mission and non-profit status. 
These new rates, at least 20 times more than what stations have paid in 
the past, treat us as if we were commercial radio – although by its 
nature, public radio cannot increase revenue from more listeners or more 
content, the factors that set this new rate.  Also, we are being 
required to pay an internet royalty fee that is vastly more expensive 
than what we pay for over-the-air use of music, although for a fraction 
of the over-the-air audience."

The quote above is from the following article.

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/technology_internetcritic/2007/03/npr_may_lead_fi.html

Call me cynical but I'd hate to see non-mainstream music effectively 
priced out of the marketplace just to protect the business model of an 
established industry. This sort of action seems quite protectionist.

Sorry for such a long winded post and sorry if this sort of thing has 
been discussed a thousand times before but I want to do the right thing 
by artists and what good is a commons that cannot be accessed by everyone.

Cheers,
bmz