Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Paul Keller <pk AT kl.nl>]

On Jul 15, 2007, at 5:32 AM, Javier Candeira wrote:

> Kevin Phillips (home) wrote:
> > There are differences in the licenses, some waiver collection  
> > society fees
> > and some (ironically imho "NC") do not.
> > Far from making the whole collection society thing obsolete, the  
> > NC licenses
> > fully support it.  As long as CC supports collection societies  
> > it's never
> > going to render them useless or defunct.

eh, i do not think it is the intention of CC nor in the intrest of  
artists using CC that Collecting Societies become 'useless' or  
'defunct'. Collecting Societies are doing a fairly good job at  
generating income for artists who chose to become members. As far as  
i understand this is alos CC's 'official' position.

regarding the NC licenses i think you do not really understad what NC  
does mean. it does not stand for no commercial uses whatsoever but  
rather states that only non-commercial uses are covered by the  
license. most artists using NC licenses do this because they do what  
to get paid when commercial uses of the licensed works occur. In the  
field of music significant parts of commercial use are covered by  
(blanket) licenses that are administered by collecting societies on  
behalf of their members (and in most countries these are the only  
ways to get paid for use of works by broadcasters). so the logical  
consequence for someone who wants to be reimbursed for commercial use  
of her works is to use a NC licenses and be a member of a CS.  
unfortunately this is not possible outside of the US (speaking about  
musical works here) as the Collecting Societies insist on an  
exclusive transfer of rights to them and do not allow their members  
to use any of the CC licenses. We are working on resolving this issue  
on a number of levels. the references to Collecting societies in the  
CC licenses (which have been standardized in 3.0 see: http:// 
wiki.creativecommons.org/ 
Version_3#International_Harmonization_.E2.80.94_Collecting_Societies)  
try to take the above scenario into account. If you do not care about  
Collecting Societies you are better advised using a non-NC license.

> IANAL, but as I understand it, in Spain law some economic rights are
> a) not waivable
> b) collectable only in a "collective" fashion; ie through a  
> Collection Society.
>
> There is still discussion over whether you can have more than one  
> collective
> rights society managing rightholder's monies. So the Spanish port  
> of the
> license could not waive those rights, nor declare  that they should  
> be used
> in any other fashion than collected through a society.
>
> I am copying Javier de la Cueva, who is a Spanish lawyer who  
> collaborated in
> the porting of the version 1 and 2 licenses and is an expert on  
> Collection
> Societies in Spain.
>
> > serves me well, there are even some countries where their  
> > collection society
> > isn't cool with Creative Commons at all.

actually it seems that almost all collecting societies are fairly  
critical of CC. in fact they have been among our most vocal and  
persistent critics. Lately there have been some less critical noises  
in some countries and by some representatives, but in general they  
would probably be very happy if we did not exist at all.

all the best,
paul (cc-nl)

> SGAE (Spanish music rights agency) is rather opposed to it. Members  
> sign a
> contract whereby SGAE manages their rights exclusively. SGAE has  
> been known
> to ask an artist to take down their own music and lyrics from their  
> website,
> or pay rights for the distribution.
--
paul keller | knowledgeland
t: +31205756720 | e: pk AT kl.nl | www.knowledgeland.org