Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Monday 21 January 2008 09:19:19 Gisle Hannemyr wrote:
> On 18.01.2008 21:40, drew Roberts wrote:
> > OK, now I am not sure I have this right, but to the best I have been able
> > to determine with some initial digging here, even if I wave my rights, it
> > will not change the amount due by a radio station that has an agreement
> > with PRS.
> >
> > So what I was thinking was to include wording along the lines that I
> > waive my rights where I can except in cases where waiving them will not
> > result in a savings for the person making first / direct use of the work.
> >
> > Let's say a business has an agreement with a collecting society where
> > they pay X% of their gross to use any works they represent.
> >
> > Let's say I have some BY-SA songs thet the collection society either
> > directly or indirectly collects royalties for.
> >
> > Let's say this is in a country where I can waive my rights.
> >
> > Given these circumstances, (Do they exist anywhere in the world?
>
> Yes. This is the case in Norway (and I think it also applies to
> Sweden and Denmark as well - and maybe even Finland and Iceland.
> This type of regulation is sometimes known as a "nordic style"
> extended collective license.
>
> Some examples:
>
> For music, TONO (composers) and GRAMO (performers) here in Norway has
> a blanket license scheme where a company pays a fixed sum for the
> right to use ambient music depending on their number of employees.
> The income this generates is distributed composers and musicians.
> If you use a CC license, you can not be a member (since the societies
> require an exclusive license), but the law still say that non-members
> can claim remuneration from the society (i.e. the law require the
> society to give non-members equal treatment).  However, since the
> CC-license says that you waive the right to collct royalties,
> the societies will tell that by using CC you've waived your right,
> and they instead redistribute this revenue (called "orphan revenue")
> to those that have not waived this right (i.e. composers and
> musicians that do not use CC-licensing).
>
> Basically, the Norwegian copyright law says that if a collion society
> represents a "substantial part" of the creators of the category of works
> in question, they are allowed to collect on behalf on /all/ creators
> (i.e. members as well as non-members of this category of work). One
> of the societies (Kopinor) explains how it works here:
>    http://www.kopinor.org/opphavsrett/extended_collective_license
>
> > I think they
> > might here, but I am still checking.) my waiving my rights will not
> > result in any savings to the company playing my songs, say a radio
> > station or a store, and do I would not want them waived, even though I
> > can.
> >
> > Then it would be up to the companies in my country to negotiate deals
> > with the collection society where they can take advantage of such waivers
> > by me before I would actually waive my rights for them.
> >
> > Right now, I would be waiving them but they would still be being
> > collected. Not what I would want.
>
> I agree that this is unfortunate.  I do not like the collection
> society part of the license at all.  The way it is currently
> phrased, of you live in a country were copyright law allow
> colletion societies to use extended collective liceses, the
> CC license let someone else to make a profit on your work, and you
> waive the right to receive it.
>
> For some reason collection societies do not like Creative Commons.
> In Norway they use this in their anti-CC propganda.  They tell
> artists and writers that if they use CC, they will not be eligable
> for  payment out of of the large revenue streams (in 2005, Kopinor
> received NOK 195 million = EURO 24 million) under extended collective
> licenses.

So then, do you think some sort of language like I put forth would make sense 
as a change to the licenses in question? Can you see of a better way to word 
things if so?

Thanks so much for the response by the way.

all the best,

drew