Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Eric Garner <ejgarner AT yahoo.com>]

"Kevin Phillips (home)" <tacet AT qmpublishing.com> wrote:
>  There are two conditions/scearios I've come across (personally and from
> other musicians)
>
> 1) musician releases music to a community to have stuff remixed/shared under
> no expectation usually under NC....because of the (possible false)
> assumption that no large commercial entity can then "use" it.  In the
> McDonalds example Eric gave, or in the real world example where a corporate
> viral marketing campaign on YouTube used a ccMixter audio track and only
> paid up after being outed by the YT community.
>
> 2) musician releases music generally to the net, blog space, or myspace - if
> it's cc licensed then quite often it's an SA license because of the
> (possible false) assumption that no large commercial entity can then "use"
> it (as above).
>
> In both
>  instances (NC & SA) the musician IS covered by the "catch all" Sound
> Exchange system for radio playback, if she/he's registered with SE at least.
> Most folks aren't, so the way I understand it is that the payments go in
> their general pot marked "misc royalty payments".
>
> Initially some webcaster/podcasters assume because cc music is "free" it'll
> help remove some of the burdon of payments under the new system.  However
> when they look into it further they discover the SE catch all and dutifully
> pay their fees or switch back to their (c) source material.
>
> NC licensed music is a no-go area for most podcasters/webcasters because
> they ultimately have to pay for their stream fees, the money usually comes
> from click-thrus or banners, and NC licenses don't have any degrees of
> tolerance for these things.
>
> There are no license options for "I grant a no-compesation allowance for
> podcasters or webcasters" in order to help them reduce
>  their insane royalty
> payments (and gain me some exposure).  I would tick that box, as long as it
> wasn't a loop hole for ClearChannel.
>
> Kev

I agree 100%! But I'd go one step further and propose that the check-box idea should be automatic - who can imagine a musician saying they don't want the exposure from pod/webcasters if their websites contain banner-ads for bandwidth-support? I know I have a few original tracks of my own floating around with NC licenses attached, and this certainly wasn't my intention! The real catch is wording the NC license so that it kick in once a certain threshold is crossed, and deciding what that threshold should be. Perhaps a terrestrial broadcast that's simulcast on the Web?

I'm very curious about the SA provision. Does this only flag SE if there's a method for money to change hands such as a banner ad or tip jar, or does it cover all *-casting regardless? Speaking only for myself once again, nearly all of my music online has SA attached, with the intention that no one else be able to lock it down with a traditional copyright upon its re-use. I'd be forlorn to learn that these songs have been passed-over by someone's show for fear of a knock at the door from SE!