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cc-sampling - Re: [cc-sampling] Making the SL fit in with it all

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Subject: Development of the Creative Commons Sampling license (or license option)

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  • From: Joshua Csehak <jcsehak AT rootrecords.org>
  • To: Glenn Otis Brown <glenn AT creativecommons.org>
  • Cc: creative list <cc-sampling AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-sampling] Making the SL fit in with it all
  • Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 20:46:37 -0400

Well those reasons sure beat anything I can come up with ;)

Consider the point settled. I'll talk about the sampling license specifically
from here forward.

How open are you guys to making an open-source option to the SL, making it
not just for sampling, but also remixing?

J


Glenn Otis Brown wrote:

> I understand your point here, but a few things:
>
> (1) I can't let the sampling license change our overall architecture and
> licensing strategy. We settled on that architecture and licensing strategy
> a long time ago, through a months-long public review process. Letting this
> three-month discussion on a special purpose license now change
> fundamentally how that architecture works would wreak havoc and reinventing
> the wheel as its rolling full speed already. (800,000 pages now link back
> to our licenses.) Some things that come out of this licensing process might
> be useful to include in other licenses, but I had never contemplated that
> the anti-advertising clause would become a universal option. To me, it's
> part of the definition of what bona fide sampling means. This isn't the
> advertising discussion list, but the sampling one. To the extent that "what
> is advertising" feeds into the question "what is true sampling?" i'm happy
> to entertain it. But I can't let it change the structure we worked so hard
> to put in place these last 12 months.
>
> (2) Our Technical Advisory Board, metadata advisors, and main coders prefer
> to have this be a one-off license. They're the ones who have to build this
> thing, and I happen to agree with them.
>
> You're not crazy at all, and everything you've said makes sense. I have to
> take into account many factors here, and the two biggest are 1) what would
> add the greatest benefit while -- crucially -- 2) causing the least amount
> of disruption to our staff time, web site, current user base, current user
> experience? I can't let this one innovation change everything that came
> before it.
>
> G.
>
> On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 05:17 PM, Joshua Csehak wrote:
>
> I understand your need for simplicity, and completely agree with it,
> but having worked as a coder, the phrase "just one extra scenario" is a
> huge red flag for me.
>
> First, I imagine a prospective user wondering "How does the Sampling
> License differ from just clicking "allow modifications of your work?" I'd
> figure they'd assume that the sampling license only let people take small
> bits of the work, while the latter let them change it as a whole. But it's
> mostly just about making the derivatives commercially available, and it
> theoretically has that whole "no ad" business. How do you convey that?
>
> But more importantly, the current situation doesn't allow for some
> very valid possibilities:
>
> -what if I want to let people distribute my work, but not make
> derivative works, and I also don't want people using it in ads? I mean,
> right now, the Attribution NoDerivs (I'm guessing the most popular license)
> doesn't prevent Bell Atlantic from using it as the soundtrack for their
> next cell phone commercial (correct me if I'm wrong). This is a major
> reason why I personally am not licensing my work under a CC license.
>
> "So?" You say. Big deal. Some no-name doesn't want to use our licenses.
>
> But what happens when someone like Bono has the same problem? I can't
> imagine why any big-name artist would let advertisers use their song for
> free, for any reason. Now you have to write another extra license, the
> Attribution Derivs NoAd license.
>
> Now let's say Bowie gets hip to the open-source movement and wants to
> release his next single as open-source. Let's say he convinces the label to
> let people use the source to make remixes (but not for profit), but they
> won't let him make it legal for people to share his original song on p2p.
> Now things start to get really complicated. Maybe you're much further along
> into the project, and it's cost and/or time-prohibitive to restructure it,
> so you add another specific license. And now you've got three extra
> licenses out there.
>
> Thing is, any time you address an exceptional scenario by making an
> exception-specific rule, rather than making the original rules fit it,
> you're asking for trouble later on. My solution may not be the most
> elegant, or even the most logical, but I really think there must be some
> way keep it consistent and scalable without having any extemporaneous
> licenses floating around.
>
> does that make sense, or am I crazy?
> Josh
>
> On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 07:29 PM, Glenn Otis Brown wrote:
>
> my response all the way at the bottom. . . .
>
> Hi Glenn,
>
> The page would have to be a little more complicated. But one
> of the reasons
> I personally haven't released any of my work under a CC
> license is the
> advertising issue. I think more options might be a good
> thing.
>
> It would have to look something like this ("o" is a radio
> button, "[]" is a
> checkbox):
>
> Do you want to let people distribute and/or broadcast your
> work?
> o no
> o yes, however they wish
> o yes, but
> [] only if they credit me
> [] not for profit
> [] not in advertisments
>
> Do you want to let people make and distribute and/or
> broadcast modified
> copies of your work?
> o no
> o yes, however they wish
> o yes, but
> [] only if they credit me
> [] not for profit
> [] not in advertisments
>
> And then if we decided to make all the options available,
> it'd look
> something like this:
>
> Do you want to let people distribute and/or broadcast your
> work?
> o no
> o yes, however they wish
> o yes, but
> [] only if they credit me
> [] not for profit
> [] not in advertisments
> [] not alongside any other media
> [] only for educational purposes
> [] only in underdeveloped countries
>
> Do you want to let people make and distribute and/or
> broadcast modified
> copies of your work?
> o no
> o yes, however they wish
> o yes, but
> [] only if they credit me
> [] not for profit
> [] not in advertisments
> [] not alongside any other media
> [] only for educational purposes
> [] only in underdeveloped countries
> [] only if they provide the source material (like I do)
>
> Do you think that's too complicatied?
>
> (again, I'm skirting the share-alike issue, but mostly
> because there may be
> good reason to make it mandatory in all licenses. But at
> worst it could
> simply be another check box in the derivative category)
>
> Josh
>
> Do you think that's too complicatied?
>
> With all due respect, I think it is.
>
> Here's what mine version would look like:
>
> The choose license page would be the same:
>
> Do you want to:
>
> Require attribution? (more info )
> Yes
> No
>
> Allow commercial uses of your work? (more info )
> Yes
> No
>
> Allow modifications of your work? (more info )
> Yes
> Yes, as long as others share alike ( more info )
> No
>
> But along the right margin, or somewhere prominent, there would
> be a big button that said SAMPLING LICENSE.
>
> When you click on that, you get a little information about
> the sampling license, plus a single question:
>
> Require attribution? (more info )
> Yes
> No
>
> On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 03:58 PM, Joshua Csehak wrote:
>
> Glenn Otis Brown wrote:
>
> Joshua,
>
> Some great points here.
>
> In response, I'll say that one of top priorities is to
> keep our
> licensor interface, found here
> <http://creativecommons.org/license/> as
> simple and easy to use as possible.
>
> Under the vision you describe below, what would that
> page look like?
>
> My idea is to leave that great page exactly as is, and
> to offer the
> Sampling license (with an attribution option) as a
> one-off specialty
> license.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Glenn
>
> On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 03:26 PM, Joshua Csehak
> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I just read all the archives on the sampling list.
> Let me first say
> that I'm very excited about being part of this
> discussion. I think
> creating a standard licensing scheme is a huge
> step toward
> consolidating artists in the open-* (star being
> techno-speak for
> "whatever") movements and eventually bringing to
> light problems with
> current copyright law and maybe someday getting it
> changed. Who knows,
> if we create a widely-used standard, and enough
> big-name artists adopt
> it, maybe one day sampling will be considered
> "fair use."
>
> I hope I'm not jumping in too late here, but I had
> an overriding
> concern since just about page one. Chris brought
> it up eariler:
>
> [CG] I see. Hm, do you think you might need,
> or it might be better
> to have, separate licenses instead of
> alternate versions of this
> language? It could get really confusing to
> conditionalize the same
> language to handle both kinds of attribution
> requirements, especially
> if there are various options for the SL.
>
> Yes yes yes, a thousand times yes.
>
> You guys have started a really great thing,
> covering all (or most of)
> the bases not by having a bazillion licenses, but
> by offering license
> terms a la carte. Why mess with a good thing?
> Creating a whole new
> license is confusing to me, and I've spent a lot
> of time thinking
> about all this stuff. We absolutely have to make
> the licensing scheme
> as easy as possible to understand by someone with
> all the mental
> capacity of say, Ozzy Osborne.
>
> What confuses me (or what will confuse me, if the
> SL is added to the
> list): why is there a "no-derivatives" option, and
> a "derivatives"
> (SL) option? Does that mean that the
> attribution-only license allows
> for making of derivative works? No, of course not.
> So why the overlap?
> Is there a way to work everything so there's no
> overlap, but a
> consistent and easy-to-understand licensing scheme
> that not only
> allows for every situation we can think of now,
> but also is modular,
> to allow for future situations? I think there is.
>
> Someone (I think Glenn) said:
>
> Right now, if you
> wanted to allow any commercial use of your
> work, including derivatives
> and verbatim copies, you could simply use any
> of our current licenses
> that 1) don't specify "noncommercial" and 2)
> allow derivative works.
>
> The
>
> whole point of this license is refining that
> noncommerical provision
>
> to
>
> allow commercial transformations but not
> commercial verbatim copying.
>
> Aha. So why not, instead of creating a whole new
> SL, just say that?
> Doesn't sampling fall under the category of a
> derivative work? Is
> there any reason why you'd want to allow sampling
> but not another type
> of derivative work?
>
> My suggestion:
>
> The way I see it, there are two types of freedoms
> you might want to
> grant:
>
> Distribution- anyone can distribute/broadcast
> verbatim copies.
> Derivative- anyone can make/distribute/broadcast
> derivative works.
>
> and there are certain types of restrictions you
> might want to impose
> on those freedoms (perhaps called modifiers or
> options):
>
> Attribution- any copies of the work must include
> credit to the
> original author.*
> Non-commercial- you can't profit off of it.
> No Ad- the work cannot be used in an advertisment.
> No Sync- the work cannot be synchronised with
> another media (just a
> thought).**
> Education- these rights are allowed only for
> educational purposes***
> Under-developed Countries- these rights are
> allowed only in
> under-developed countries
> Open-Source- you must make the source material
> available (only an
> option for derivative works)**
>
> * This includes credit to the parent author(s), if
> the work in
> question is itself a derivative work.
> ** Doesn't educational use fall under "fair use"
> anyway? I'm pretty
> sure it does, but only for snippets, not entire
> works.
> *** More on this later
>
> So for instance, Alice might release her song
> "Yeah Baby," under a
> "Distribution (attribution, non-commercial, no-ad)
> & Derivative
> (attribution, no-ad)" license. This would mean
> that people could share
> her song for free over KaZaa but not sell copies
> of it, other people
> could sample the song and sell their new song, and
> an ad company would
> have to get her permission if they wanted to use
> her song or any song
> that samples her song in a commercial.
> Alternatively, if she doesn't
> care if people use a derivative song in an ad
> (just not her original
> song), she could remove the "no-ad" modifier from
> the Derivative
> freedom.
>
> I really think these options cover every concern
> that's been brought
> up so far. I'd be very interested though, to hear
> if I'm missing
> something, or my logic simply isn't sound. One
> thing it doesn't cover
> is if you want to make it so people could say, use
> the work in an ad
> in an under-developed country, but not in the US.
> Or if you want to
> make it so people only have to attribute you if
> they're profiting off
> of your work, but not if they're just giving it
> away. But I think if
> you want to get that picky, you can write your own
> damn license.
>
> One thing to think about - I can't think of any
> reason why you'd want
> to have more restrictions for the derivative works
> than for verbatim
> copies. But I think it's best to keep the options
> open.
>
> Yes, the list is incomplete and poorly defined,
> and it's a bit of a
> radical change, but I think restructuring it like
> this is the only way
> to make everyone's concerns fit into a consistent
> and
> easy-to-understand licensing scheme. I also don't
> think any work would
> be lost by adopting this structure (or something
> like it), since most
> concerns that have been brought up would fall
> under the Derivative
> freedom or the No Ad modifier.
>
> You might notice I left out the "share and share
> alike" option.
> Defining what rights 3rd parties are allowed to
> license their
> derivative works under is a tricky mess, as is
> evident in the archive.
> My thoughts on that whole mess, and on how to best
> define the
> advertising option (for instance, does propaganda
> count as
> advertising?), and even how to define a derivative
> work (for instance,
> does a music video qualify as a derivative of the
> original song?),
> will follow in another email.
>
> best,
> Joshua Csehak
>
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> cc-sampling AT lists.ibiblio.org
>
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-sampling
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------------
> Glenn Otis Brown
> glenn AT creativecommons.org
> Executive Director
> t +1.650.723.7572
> (cc) creativecommons f
> +1.650.723.8440
>
> --
> root# records
> Open Source Music
> www.rootrecords.org
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Glenn Otis Brown glenn AT creativecommons.org
> Executive Director t +1.650.723.7572
> (cc) creativecommons f +1.650.723.8440
>
> _______________________________________________
> cc-sampling mailing list
> cc-sampling AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-sampling
>
> ----------------------------
> Root# Records
> Open Source Music
> www.rootrecords.org
> _______________________________________________
> cc-sampling mailing list
> cc-sampling AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-sampling
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Glenn Otis Brown glenn AT creativecommons.org
> Executive Director t +1.650.723.7572
> (cc) creativecommons f +1.650.723.8440

--
root# records
Open Source Music
www.rootrecords.org






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