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

[Christopher Randall <chris AT positronrecords.com>]

Okay, I'll take a stab at some of these, but I should mention that in this context some of these questions don't make a lot of sense. I'll point out where some illumination would be helpful. Let me also add that my answers may elicit some unpopularity, but now that I've been using this license for a while, I have a better handle on things than when it was a Brave New World. 

For the record (pun intended), I'm a professional musician for just shy of 20 years, an independent label owner, and a publisher. We switched our label to CC Sampling+ licenses with our 20th release. We've just (last week) put out our third under this license, and our 22nd overall, the Atomica album "Metropolitan." 


> 1. Who are CC licenses (Sampling, Sampling plus, Non-commercial Sampling plus &
> Music sharing license) aimed at:
>
> (a)	Musicians: Amateur or professional, composer or performer?
> (b)	Publishers: dedicated publishers, small or major record labels?

The CC Sampling twins, in my opinion, are aimed at amateurs and indie musicians for the most part, people that self-release albums. To a lesser extent, they are for independent record labels, and specifically "net labels." They have nothing to do with live performance or publishing, of course. Non-commercial Sampling+ doesn't really have a bearing in this conversation, as it isn't, in my opinion, a license with much of a purpose. It's there, you know, just in case.

> 2. What was wrong about music publishing before copyleft style & CC licenses?

I think, judging from this question, that you are confusing publishing (mechanical rights) with master use rights. The main problems with the System involve master use rights, and these particular CC licenses directly relate to that. Part of the issue at hand is that a song itself is a different entity than a recording of that song. 

As long as the songwriter and the artist that records the song are the same person, a CC Sampling license is in good shape, but when you get in to the big leagues, where a songwriter and performer are usually not the same person (as in almost all R&B and most pop music, and 99.999999% of major-label country music) CC Sampling licenses are singularly unworkable. We won't put out albums in which our artists have performed covers any more, because there's simply no mechanism by which we can release an album where 9 songs are Sampling+ but one has the master use under Sampling+ and the music/lyrics under normal copyright. I can't, of course, give away something I don't own so my solution was to not let our artists do it. This has saved me several checks to Harry Fox in the process, and that makes me happy, so the point goes to Sampling+ in that regard. By cutting down on gratuitous covers, it also saves me a lot of time explaining to an artist why it isn't a good idea to open their album of originals with a Pink Floyd track, then ultimately losing the argument. 

(See http://www.positronrecords.com/releases/release.php?id=posi015 for reference, one of our non-CC releases. Two covers on an 8-track album? It's a wonder I don't have bleeding ulcers.)

> 3. How do CC licenses offer a solution to publishing?

Your question here is not clear. Publishing is one thing. Releasing an album under a CC Sampling+ license means that the master use rights-holder has relaxed some of his/her rights. It doesn't affect the mechanical rights which are the songwriter's to administer as he sees fit. ("Publish" is the term for that.) Picture this: a band records a song and releases it under a Sampling+ license. The person that wrote the song leaves the band. Another band samples that track in their Big Hit Single. The person that wrote the original song sues the second band for copyright violation because they're using his melody and lyrics. 

It's a confusing thing, and requires a certain amount of faith on everyone's part. 

> 4. How will people know about alternative licenses such as CC?

Any musician that doesn't take the time to educate themselves about mechanical, master use, and performance rights before they even call themselves such deserves what they get in my book. It's like someone calling themselves a lawyer before they go to law school. The information is readily available for normal copyright and CC from any number of sources. I will say that in order to understand and utilize the Sampling and Sampling+ licenses, you have to understand "real" copyright in the first place. You can't do it wrong until you know how to do it right, if you get my drift.

> 5. What about the transition from copyright to copyleft licensing:
>
> (a)	At what rate is this happening; estimated timeline?

Now, as Mike noted, the Sampling+ license we use is not a "copyleft" license. It's just a legal way of saying "hey, I own this shit, but it's okay if you use a chunk in your own music, because I'm cool like that, as long as you give me my props." I'll address the spirit of your question, though.

For our label, the transition took about 3 days. We decided we were going to do it, I talked to all our artists and my attorney, and the next album coming out we changed the legal lines in the cover art to reflect it. Not much more to it than that. Assuming you actually mean the industry at large, the answer is "never." There will be a certain percentage of indies that make the Switch. No majors will, ever. Don't forget that all 5 (is it 4 this week?) major labels also own movie and television production companies. A large part of the US copyright code is dedicated to the interaction between music and motion picture. They won't be shitting in the trough they eat from. 

(b)	How is (can) this transition influenced? (licenses themselves & license
> developers, musicians & consumers)

That I can't help you with. Logic doesn't play a part in this. It's a matter of a musician and a label agreeing (with each other, and that's the important thing to note) that it's okay for other people that are outside their sphere of control taking a hand in the creative process. But it's more than that: it's really that musician and his/her label saying "you know what? It's okay if someone else tries to make a bit of money off this without me getting a cut." And I hate to come off like a cynical motherfucker, but I've been in this business long enough to know that simply will not happen for the vast majority of the industry.

Now that I've got that out of the way, don't take this wrong, but your research project is going to suffer a bit from the fact that, judging from your questions, you don't understand the difference between mechanical rights and master use rights. Publishing a song and releasing a recording are two very different things. If I were you, I'd do a bit of reading on this subject. Don't feel bad, though. Most people have no idea that ASCAP and the RIAA aren't the same thing.

Chris Randall
Positron! Records, Inc.
http://www.positronrecords.com