Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Sunday 15 July 2007 06:32 am, Paul Keller wrote:
> 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.

In thinking about things, I think you could use a BY-SA license and be a 
member oc a collection society which permits it and still get paid by 
commercial broadcasters as no commercial broadcaster would be willing to 
abide by the BY-SA license terms to use the work on air.

While I might be OK with this outcome in monetary terms, I don't like the 
working of the license that produces this situation. It basically makes BY-SA 
works pretty much unusable by any decent sounding non-commercial radio 
station as well. We have begun a discussion on this here a while back but for 
some reason strange to me, it didn't go very far.

> 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. 

Wouldn't the solution be to join a US collection society and have them 
collect 
from your home country on your behalf? They do have cross agreements don't 
they? Or does an artist have to join the societies of every country where 
they which to collect? If not, is there some monetary benefit to joining the 
society in your home country as opposed to in the US? (For non-US based 
people naturally...)

> 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.

I don't follow the logic of that last sentence, can you please elaborate.
>
> > 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

all the best,

drew

-- 
(da idea man)
Working on a Movie Script or two in June 2007