Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Kevin Phillips (home)" <tacet AT qmpublishing.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Keller" <pk AT kl.nl>
To: "Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts"
<cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Creative Commons and Collection Society


> 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.

Some are waiver license and some are not, where CC supports the collecting
societies it re-enforces their reason for being.  I'm not saying that's
wrong or right, that's just how it is.  My comment was in response to
Jamison asking if the "system" would fall apart.  Under these circumstances
no, because CC isn't an alternative or replacement for the old system of
payment, it in fact supports it (sometimes).

> 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.

Oh, I know only too well what NC really means.  I see NC being used every
day by artists who have no affilliation with a collection society, release
only into the CC music environment, yet they choose NC on the
misunderstanding that it's a snap-in free license alternative to a copyright
license.  They figure it will provide adequate protection for their work,
combined with ND it will stop people making derivs, perish the thought.

I see signed commercial artists using NC a mechanism to release things into
CC, still get paid and not worry about having their cc-releases surface in
the commercial sphere.  If that wasn't the intention of this license
initially then too bad, that's where it is right now.  Sites like ccMixter
feed commercial artists into the CC stream via competitions, the commercial
artists get promotion and kudos, the community get to remix commercial work.
These works are always NC licensed to ring-fence any resulting offspring,
wouldn't want them breaking free into the wild now would we?

NC is a paradox.  Read your own paragraph Paul and take three guesses as to
why the people at the coal face often make the wrong license choice.  At
what point did or does it make sense to have a license which is useful to a
commercial artist and label that license "non-commercial", the same license
which goes on to be quite specific about not earning money from advertising
or contributions/tips.

I'm not criticising the NC license, I'd just like CC to be clear about it's
purpose and objectives.  After some time studying it I now understand what
it does, but I've yet to fathom its creator's true intentions.

> 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.

I know.  They're saying "work with us or not at all".

> 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.

...and that's why BY-SA has to be the best choice for most CC artists, still
they go on releasing NC or NC-ND because they are not advised otherwise and
are guided or defaulted in that direction.

> > 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.

You hit the nail on the head Paul.

Thanks for the response.

Kevin