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From my favorite artists, yeah, I'd be willing to pay a bit more than $10 for a tangible instance of their old work in order to support their future work; but from an unknown (like you), where there's no emotional connection between us and where there's already an abundance of other art to choose from, the price point would be a bit less.

Another major factor, for me, would be under what license your art released. If you RESERVED ALL RIGHTS(C)(R)(TM)(!!!), then, well, eh, I'm more likely to pass than if you allowed others to conditionally redistribute and incorporate it into their own works.

--

Show us what you have so that we know what sort of thing you're looking for, and so that we can avoid duplication of effort. Put your draft document on the web. Perhaps pick a license.

People of the sort who can provide the most useful information on this subject will tend to want to see you do that basic and minimal work first. I think they will also agree that a good place for a "multimedia project" is the web.

The music is Creative Commons licensed, which is the brainchild of the eminent Lawrence Lessig.

Oh, puh-leeze.

brainchild - n. An original idea or plan attributed to a person or group.

Note the word "original" -- let's see...

original - adj. Preceding all others in time; first. a) Not derived from something else... b) Showing a marked departure from previous practice...

(Both definitions courtesy of The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition) Some interesting quotes from the Creative Commons FAQ include:

Cyberlaw and intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael Carroll, and Lawrence Lessig, MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson, lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-cyberlaw expert Eric Saltzman, and public domain Web publisher Eric Eldred founded Creative Commons in 2001.
(note that it doesn't just refer to Lessig)

...and...

We take inspiration from other folks interested in promoting the sharing of creative works.... We want to complement, rather than compete with, these existing efforts to ease online sharing and collaboration.
(emphasis added)

There goes the idea of it being an "original" concept of one person, eh? In fact, that same FAQ would seem to give originality credit to Richard Stallman, if anyone, given the statement: "Foremost among these [folks interested in promoting the sharing of creative works] is Richard Stallman, founder of The Free Software Foundation and author of the General Public License, or the GNU GPL."

I don't mean to discredit what Lessig and Creative Commons are doing. Indeed, I see a lot of value in the CC approach. But does "hero worship" advance anything other than egos and, for followers, an emotional sense of belonging to a community? No. It's vastly more important to understand the issues at hand, support all who agree with your ideals, and work toward changes wherever you see fit and where you can have some influence. Finding one or two leaders to follow, rewriting history, etc., will do more harm in the long run, and it will certainly impede progress in the short run.

The music is Creative Commons licensed, which is the brainchild of the eminent Lawrence Lessig.

Oh, puh-leeze.

brainchild - n. An original idea or plan attributed to a person or group.

Note the word "original" -- let's see...

original - adj. Preceding all others in time; first. a) Not derived from something else... b) Showing a marked departure from previous practice...

(Both definitions courtesy of The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition) Some interesting quotes from the Creative Commons FAQ include:

Cyberlaw and intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael Carroll, and Lawrence Lessig, MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson, lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-cyberlaw expert Eric Saltzman, and public domain Web publisher Eric Eldred founded Creative Commons in 2001.
(note that it doesn't just refer to Lessig)

...and...

We take inspiration from other folks interested in promoting the sharing of creative works.... We want to complement, rather than compete with, these existing efforts to ease online sharing and collaboration.
(emphasis added)

There goes the idea of it being an "original" concept of one person, eh? In fact, that same FAQ would seem to give originality credit to Richard Stallman, if anyone, given the statement: "Foremost among these [folks interested in promoting the sharing of creative works] is Richard Stallman, founder of The Free Software Foundation and author of the General Public License, or the GNU GPL."

I don't mean to discredit what Lessig and Creative Commons are doing. Indeed, I see a lot of value in the CC approach. But does "hero worship" advance anything other than egos and, for followers, an emotional sense of belonging to a community? No. It's vastly more important to understand the issues at hand, support all who agree with your ideals, and work toward changes wherever you see fit and where you can have some influence. Finding one or two leaders to follow, rewriting history, etc., will do more harm in the long run, and it will certainly impede progress in the short run.

Well, here's a reason (excuse by your emotionally-loaded term): redistribution of the site's music files (stealing-- emotionally loaded again) is allowed under the licence they use? Your turn, troller.

Oblig mention of other option

I just read an article about Creative Commons and how their license is all about creating this sort of thing. Their stuff seems to be the like GPL.

Anyway - found this site with lots of Creative Commons Licensed effects - most of which are professional quality as they were used on the author's radio program.

http://www.leoville.com/sfx.shtml

Just a couple of trivial points: If every owner of a comuter paid 100 bucks or whatever at time of purchase (compulsory liscense, as in the television scenario that predates our current debacle)

There's two possible interpretations of "compulsory licensing". That's one of them, but there is another, as I described. Lawmakers might go down either road.

If 10 year old music was going into the public domain, all of these factions wouldn't be going insane
I agree there. A non-crippled public domain would be wonderful for the development of useful technology. Even if the expiration date was 28 years ("Founders' Copyright") or even 56, there would be actual movies and TV shows with a non-trivial level of popular appeal in the public domain. (Even megahits like "Star Wars" are about 28 years old)

Filesharing, p2p, and VOD networks would have a legitmate mass of content to work with. They could actually concentrate on what is technologically necessary to provide a good level of service, instead of designing softare to avoid ligitation.

And if there was an actual significant amount of PD material available, the case could be made that we need technologies to tell what's copyrighted and what isn't. Today, for example, when my company burns original presentation video onto DVD-RW, the software inserts a warning stating that it's only a private backup, and we have no right to redistribute. That's how ingrained the notion is that "Everything worth copying is copyrighted, and always will be"
ust the most obvious drawback.

• Foaf integration
  
• Trackbacks
• Books, Movies, Music, Games
  
• Blogshares shortcut for adding your blog into a fantasy stock market
  
• GeoURL for adding lat/long and adding your blog into world database
  
• Creative Commons licensing on content so you can retain rights while promoting the CC movement
  
• Yahoo Groups features: Msg Boards, Calendar, Chat, Address Books
  
• The ability to create contests:
  • Football Pools
    
  • Baby Pools
    
  • Square Pools
    
  • Dead Pools
    
  • Bracket Pools
    
  
  

Many of the comments here see this as the start of something big in
Brazil. In many ways, it is perhaps better to see it as the culmination of
a process that has being going on a long time. There have already been free
software initiatives at many levels in this the fifth largest country in the
world. Most notable of these is in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, which
hosts each year a major free software event. I also know that in Brasilia itself they have been
funding free software development to support, for example, information
exchange between all the different legislatures in Brazil.

Moreover, the support for free software would seem to extend across
political parties. A workshop I attended in Sao Paulo last year, to
encourage cooperation between Latin America and the EU in the IT was
explicitly asked to be about free software by the administration preceding
that of Lula da Silva. This means the Brazilians already have a wealth of
experience in using free software and for finding mechanisms to fund its
development. It also means that there are already a lot of firms and
administrations that have committed to this process. Some of the comments
here have suggested that Microsoft must merely flash out its cheque book to
block the push for free software. I think it would have to flash out many
cheque books at many levels and would step on the toes of many local
interests.

Two other aspects of free software in Brazil do not seem to have received
much attention. The first is the wealth of good free software programmers
already in Brazil. Several key Zope developers come from Brazil and the
first language into which the popular content management system Plone was
localised was Brazilian Portuguese. A lot of good work is also going on in
free software GIS systems such as SPRING.

The second aspect is represented by the presence in the congress of the
Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil. I note that the title of the congress
mentions "free software" and not "open source". The interest is not just in
economics or software engineering, it is also cultural and extends into
other areas, such as the support for creative commons
licenses.

Viva Brazil! Viva o software livre!

for-the-people.org

Or you could just win a g5 over at the creative commons movie contest announced a little while back. But you gotta make a movie to win. Chicken and egg? Doh!

But plagurism and p2p are two completely different issues. Would your average blogger be offended if a copy of an article they wrote on their website was passed around p2p with their name and website info attached to it? Doubtful. In fact, many bloggers publish their material under a Creative Commons license which typically encourages exactly that.

Which is part of the argument FOR p2p. By allowing content to be widely distributed, you can increase the exposure of your "art", thereby making your live performances (or your website) desirable.

Well, I've checked your posting history, and it doesn't appear you're a troll, so I'll just assume you're uninformed.

Creative Commons is like an open source art advocate. They do NOT promote copyright infringement. What they do is provide you with licenses you can attach to your art which give other artists select rights to use your art. For example, they have a license that allows others to use your work so long as they attribute it to you. Or they can use it for only non-commercial purposes. Or they can use it, but just can't edit it. Or they can't prevent other people from editing it after they do. Or any combination thereof. Essentially, it's the GPL for art.

Now, if you don't want somebody using your art without your permission, then don't use a Creative Commons license. Stick with plain old copyright, and charge for your art. If, however, you'd like people to be able to use it to create works of their own, and share those works with others, then, by all means, check out Creative Commons.

There is. How about the Creative Commons?

While I very much doubt you are Dean's campaign manager, I'll give you two ideas anyway.

1. You could sign your messages with a digital signature (try out PGP). The smart thing to do is to keep a separate machine with the secret key. Keep this machine off of all networks since it will be a major target for crackers. You would type the message on that machine, sign it with the secret key, and transfer it to a networked machine using a floppy or CD. From there, you post the message any place you want.
2. You could use your website to confirm your identity. Suppose you post message A at site WA. When you post the message, you include a link to a page, B, at your own website (page B doesn't actually exist at this point). Right after posting A, you put up page B at your site. Page B includes a link back to message A.

Note that neither approach proves that Howard Dean himself posted the message rather than delegating the task to one of his campaign members. However, it does prove that someone in the Dean campain posted the message. The digital signature approach lasts longer and is more resistant to attacks. The website approach is simpler and easier for the average Joe to understand.

Finally, you could combine the two approaches and simply sign page B.

While I'm posting, has the Governor considered placing his advertisements under a Creative Commons license?

I may not agree with all of Dean's views, but I also feel that one issue voters are devoting a lot of energy to treating symptoms and not the root cause of these problems.

How many of the issues we fight, such as copyright and intellectual property, result from the fact that big money is allowed to influence politics? Instead of fighting the individual issues, we need to be treating the underlying cause of these symptoms. The root cause is an electoral process that requires big money for a candidate to be elected.

We're taught in school that government has three branches, the executive, legislative, and judicial. I've grown to believe over the last year (especially after reading Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington) that there are four branches to government.

THAT FOURTH BRANCH IS WE THE PEOPLE.

The Dean campaign has given me hope. Not a hope that Dean will solve all of my probems, but a hope that the grassroots activists for Dean will take back our government and Restore the Fourth Branch. Providing the checks and balances on the executive, legislative, and judical branches that seem to have been bought by special interests.

That we'll be energized enough to push for publicly financed elections that, not only put all candidates on an equal footing, but also mean elected officials are not beholden to major financial contributors. Instead they'll have to be responsible to WE THE PEOPLE.

That we'll be able to make illegal a practice that allows big money to pay people to do their lobbying. How fair is this when the rest of us have to fit our education about the issues and lobbying efforts in with working full-time and caring for our families. To level the playing field it should not be legal for any lobbyist to receive financial renumeration.

The great thing about America is that it's up to each of us to make our own decision about where to concentrate our efforts. But first answer the question, "Is it easier or harder for you to achieve your single issue results with big money interests in the political equation?"

xoxoxox
Solaria

Disclaimer: I am in no way attached to the Official Howard Dean for President Campaign.

This work is dedicated to the Public Domain.

[Greymatter...] is open source as well.

Their website makes this claim, but I do not believe it is true. They apparently changed the license for the software from something else to a Creative Commons license. The Open Source Initiative does not list the CC licenses on their approved license list (hence, Greymatter is not "open source") and CC licenses are not intended for software.

Until Greymatter chooses a Free Software license, I recommend steering clear of Greymatter. The Free Software movement stresses treating all users as equals. The Open Source Initiative has approved some licenses, including the Apple Public Source License, which do not treat all users equally.

Movable Type is non-free software and I suggest you avoid it entirely. Both of Movable Type's licenses (their personal non-commercial license and their commercial license prohibit distributing the software without written consent. There is also language that tries to restrict what you can do with the software (even though U.S. copyright law doesn't allow placing terms on merely executing the software) and claims agreement to its terms under a click-through agreement (which are not valid everywhere) or by merely installing or using the software.

I suggest one use or make Free Software instead. The FSF and the GNU Project publish information on which licenses are free. I suggest staying away from software licensed under the Creative Commons licenses. They are doing great work but their licenses are not intended for use with software.

Movable Type is non-free software and I suggest you avoid it entirely. Both of Movable Type's licenses (their personal non-commercial license and their commercial license prohibit distributing the software without written consent. There is also language that tries to restrict what you can do with the software (even though U.S. copyright law doesn't allow placing terms on merely executing the software) and claims agreement to its terms under a click-through agreement (which are not valid everywhere) or by merely installing or using the software.

I suggest one use or make Free Software instead. The FSF and the GNU Project publish information on which licenses are free. I suggest staying away from software licensed under the Creative Commons licenses. They are doing great work but their licenses are not intended for use with software.

Really? Have you seen the board of director's list for Creative Commons? It reads like a who's-who list of Open Source-supporting IP lawyers, including Lawrence Lessig, James Boyle, and Eric Saltzman. And Creative Commons licenses aren't just BSD-licenses. They have licenses with features VERY much like GPL. They also have BSD-like licenses. It's your choice. You decide.

Really? Have you seen the board of director's list for Creative Commons? It reads like a who's-who list of Open Source-supporting IP lawyers, including Lawrence Lessig, James Boyle, and Eric Saltzman. And Creative Commons licenses aren't just BSD-licenses. They have licenses with features VERY much like GPL. They also have BSD-like licenses. It's your choice. You decide.

Agreed. As a greenie geek I spent a lot of time just getting up to speed. To save you some Googling (which is a great way to learn about OS/FS), let me post some links for you. These were articles that I've found particularly helpful.

• GNUWin II Articles Directory - A good collection of famous FS/OS articles.
• Philosophy section of the GNU Project - This is the extreme left wing of free software. I personally prefer a more moderate approach, but the ideas are engaging.
• Interview with Andreas Pour of the KDE Project - This interview did much to convert me to open source philosophies.
• Legal Concepts section of CreativeCommons.org - Masterminded by Lawrence Lessig, the legal champion of the public commons. One of the greatest minds working for the cause of FS/OS. He also has a couple of books that you might consider reading. I've read the first one and found it quite interesting.

Some of these weren't around when I was getting into things. Creative Commons came a bit later. Most of my earliest reading was from GNU. You've already found Slashdot, which is one of the best resources for learning about FS/OS, especially as it relates to current developments.

One word of caution: FS/OS is a religion. People can be very zealous about their views on it. Be careful as you formulate your own opinions, which will likely change over time. When in doubt, choose a more moderate approach. (If you're interested, my personal views can be found here.)

I hope this is helpful. Well, off to more reading myself...

The post you replied to was saying that the recording industry persons need to find a new business model, and it is true. Copyright was, at the time of its creation, something that applied only to publishers. It didn't require ridiculous shit like the DMCA to enforce. With modern technology, copyright has applied in ways not even considered by its original proponents, and as we're seeing, it's often impractical to enforce it without taking away everyone's free speech and privacy and all that stuff.

I don't know what the original poster's view was, but I don't believe copyright should be abolished completely. For works of entertainment and/or art, the context of this discussion, I think copyright should last much shorter than it does now (15-20 years seems fair) and should be more restricted, so that something like this would be the strictest license possible. Ultimately, that would benefit everyone. The business model of the *AA's might no longer work, but then, it really wouldn't work now if they weren't buying laws and all.

Do you think copyright law is so broken that it cannot be fixed?

I believe copyright reform is possible:

1. Take the strict liability out of copyright. Require at least a demonstration of negligence in the standard for misappropriation. This would handily defeat Bright Tunes.
2. Raise the bar for substantial similarity higher than it was in some of the cases I cite. Four notes are a "short phrase" (17 USC 102), not any substantial expression.
3. Why a copyright should have a term five times as long as a patent has baffled me for years and has sparked satire. Cut the basic copyright term back to 28 years, where the founding fathers put it in the first place. I'd even settle for the 1909 term (56 years).
4. Limit the duration of the Section 1201 circumvention ban to even shorter than that, but keep it in place at least temporarily so that the copyright industry doesn't feel screwed and is more likely to acquiesce to reform.

The artist has to invest in a huge amount of CD manufacturing to send off to CDBaby in the hopes that they'll sell.

At LuluMUSIC the artist uploads their work for free, sets the royalty and price they want to recieve, and are done. No upfront costs to them, and they have control over pricing and licensing. Want to use the Founder's Copyright instead of the traditional current copyright? Go right ahead.

So, Apple is going to get indie labels. Good for them. Matador and SubPop are relatively large anyway, and they don't do much to help the artist financially.

emusic is fine and well, presuming you can bet they have enough music you'll like to justify a subscription. Most folks can't.

Lulu.com started by Bob Young formerly of RedHat actually empowers the artist. The artist gets to decide what distribution format to sell in, set their own price, and set their own royalty. The artist also gets to decide if they want to use the Founder's Copyright or any other license instead of traditional copyright.

It's putting the artist back in control of their work, something Apple hasn't considered. Apple just does the same thing as Sam Goody's or Tower, only over the internet. Big deal. The only nice thing they've got with it is the iTunes integration.

Also check out Lawrence Lessig's weblog for up-to-the-minute happenings in the good fight. (and for the extremely lazy, here's his RDF feed.

And ( if that weren't links enough) you should go and sign the petition to Reclaim the Public Domain.

yrs trly, linky karma whore

Also check out Lawrence Lessig's weblog for up-to-the-minute happenings in the good fight. (and for the extremely lazy, here's his RDF feed.

And ( if that weren't links enough) you should go and sign the petition to Reclaim the Public Domain.

yrs trly, linky karma whore

Also remember that a work must be explicitly placed in the public domain. See the Creative Commons if you'd like to allow others to use your works.

Please read this for a little more information: 10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained

What "actions" would that be? Downloading music I cannot buy in stores? Recording SNL from public TV broadcasts?

If you stop there, I don't have a big problem with it. As far as your post goes, I had the definite impression that you wouldn't. You mentioned "Matrix Reloaded" in passing. Who could produce movies so expensive without copyright?

many people in this country

* Ahem *, I'm danish ;-)

Clue: Russian copyrights mean nothing in the US - just as US copyrights are meaningless in Russia.

You overlook that both countries are signatories to the Berne convention (Note article 3(1))

how does a new artist, who doesn't have the benefit of a "mainstream" 20 year back catalog, get known? [...] they could whore themselves to a publisher who will take every penny they make

You give excellent examples of artists doing good outside the established publishing system. I'm all for that, especially since it may very well be better for both artists and listeners. It's just that I think the artists should by and large get a chance to decide for themselves. If they really want their CD shared all over the net it's great, Creative Commons is there to help write a license. If not, I think we should be wary of making business decisions on their behalf. (Collective management makes good sense in many situations, though)

A side note: You mention your "direcTV tivo" and "no pay tv". DirecTV.com says they broadcast pay tv. What am I missing?

My apologies, to make up for my error here are some links about subjects pertinent to my previous post...

John Sundmans Yahoo group: *

Project Gutenburg: *
WetMachine

And some information about creative commons act: *


I hope this makes up for my transgression ;)

Nit

the idea that i should want to release my music under an open source license is insulting. my music is an expression of my aesthetic preferences. giving unknown others the freedom to recontextualize it without my input is worse to me than selling my music to an advertiser for cash -- not only does it reduce a song's value aesthetically without any chance of control on my part, but it furthers the notion that music is not something businesses looking for a sound for their tv spot should have to pay for.

There is a "noncommercial" version of the Share-alike license, which would make it impossible for anyone to use your work on TV without going to you for the rights.

already, it's common enough for companies and producers wanting cheap tunes to offer an underground artist a small amount of money for the use of a piece. the artist has no bargaining power because there are thousands of other smalltime underground producers. thus he must choose either to receive a little exposure and a few dollars from a rich company (pitiful compared to professional standards), or get nothing at all!

But it's also common for producers to be willing to pay good money for something that is already wildly popular. Publicity sometimes makes things more popular, and giving stuff away for free sometimes makes things more popular. It's a gamble, but what isn't these days?

putting music out there and encouraging others to use it for free just makes it that much harder for those who want to make a living off their art -- i'd go so far as to say it's irresponsible. it's fine for people to make their music available as free mp3 downloads... i mean, if nobody knows you, nobody is going to pay just to check out if you're any good or not. but for the love of god, keep your copyright.

None of the Creative Commons licenses require you to give up your copyright. They merely say, "Here are some things that you can do with this item, above and beyond the rights granted by copyright."

In their own ways, the licenses are pretty restrictive. Some deny you the right to use the material commercially, others deny the right to make "derivative works," and some require that derivative works be licensed under the same license as the original. [details]

So if you chose this license, the TV producer who wanted to "use your work for free" would be up a creek without a legal paddle, because you never granted him the right to do so. He still needs your permission.

i allow downloads of my music at a lowish bit rate. i'm not so precious about my tunes that i don't let anyone hear them, but i'm not about to give away what i spend so much time on for personal and commercial use. *cough* especially after an incident last summer where someone downloaded a high quality mp3 of a song i'd made available on my site and had it released on vinyl under their name ---> scroll down to the last item of the faq for the story

I read the story, and I feel for you. Plagarists are stupid pricks. But I have to point out that, if you'd released Autosome under the Attribution Share-alike license (Opsound's license of choice), it wouldn't have changed the way things went down. What the Russian dude did would still have been a violation of the terms of the license, and it would have still been enforceable in court.

Even if you'd released the song into the public domain, you could have gotten him in trouble with his label for plagarism (though I have no idea what your legal options would be).

The world needs copyrights. The CC licenses simply give users rights that you just cannot take for granted with normal copyright. If you want your listeners to have those rights (which vary between licenses) then release under those license

the idea that i should want to release my music under an open source license is insulting. my music is an expression of my aesthetic preferences. giving unknown others the freedom to recontextualize it without my input is worse to me than selling my music to an advertiser for cash -- not only does it reduce a song's value aesthetically without any chance of control on my part, but it furthers the notion that music is not something businesses looking for a sound for their tv spot should have to pay for.

There is a "noncommercial" version of the Share-alike license, which would make it impossible for anyone to use your work on TV without going to you for the rights.

already, it's common enough for companies and producers wanting cheap tunes to offer an underground artist a small amount of money for the use of a piece. the artist has no bargaining power because there are thousands of other smalltime underground producers. thus he must choose either to receive a little exposure and a few dollars from a rich company (pitiful compared to professional standards), or get nothing at all!

But it's also common for producers to be willing to pay good money for something that is already wildly popular. Publicity sometimes makes things more popular, and giving stuff away for free sometimes makes things more popular. It's a gamble, but what isn't these days?

putting music out there and encouraging others to use it for free just makes it that much harder for those who want to make a living off their art -- i'd go so far as to say it's irresponsible. it's fine for people to make their music available as free mp3 downloads... i mean, if nobody knows you, nobody is going to pay just to check out if you're any good or not. but for the love of god, keep your copyright.

None of the Creative Commons licenses require you to give up your copyright. They merely say, "Here are some things that you can do with this item, above and beyond the rights granted by copyright."

In their own ways, the licenses are pretty restrictive. Some deny you the right to use the material commercially, others deny the right to make "derivative works," and some require that derivative works be licensed under the same license as the original. [details]

So if you chose this license, the TV producer who wanted to "use your work for free" would be up a creek without a legal paddle, because you never granted him the right to do so. He still needs your permission.

i allow downloads of my music at a lowish bit rate. i'm not so precious about my tunes that i don't let anyone hear them, but i'm not about to give away what i spend so much time on for personal and commercial use. *cough* especially after an incident last summer where someone downloaded a high quality mp3 of a song i'd made available on my site and had it released on vinyl under their name ---> scroll down to the last item of the faq for the story

I read the story, and I feel for you. Plagarists are stupid pricks. But I have to point out that, if you'd released Autosome under the Attribution Share-alike license (Opsound's license of choice), it wouldn't have changed the way things went down. What the Russian dude did would still have been a violation of the terms of the license, and it would have still been enforceable in court.

Even if you'd released the song into the public domain, you could have gotten him in trouble with his label for plagarism (though I have no idea what your legal options would be).

The world needs copyrights. The CC licenses simply give users rights that you just cannot take for granted with normal copyright. If you want your listeners to have those rights (which vary between licenses) then release under those license

Is there some page which compares all the licenses in some table, or in english language terms?

Something like: the Creative Commons explains for their licenses would be very helpful for comparing: MIT X11, BSD, GPL, LGPL, BSD, OSL, Mozilla PL, Apple PL, etc...

If this does not exist, the community would benefit from it!

Lessig would probably be the first to tell you that he absolutely respects copyright. From what I've read from him, he believes in copyright, but also believes that it has become unbalanced. His solution is to create creativecommons.org which artists and publishers can use to voluntarily limit the length of their copyright or set the terms by which others can duplicate their work.

The website claims, "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License." Some clarification of whether that covers just the website or the book as well would be nice though.

In 14 or 28 years it'll fall into the public domain. WSM is one of the first books under the Creative Commons Founders' Copyrght.

Should samples be protected by copyright, or should artists/musicians have the right to manipulate the old into the new?"

Part of the priveledge of actually creating a completely original work, is you get to decide if others can use it, and if so, how it can be used.

There is no rule that says no music can be sampled without permission. And there should be no rule that says all music can be sampled without permission.

You can share your own work with the public by selecting the appropriate creative commons license and including it with your work or displaying it on your website.

Should samples be protected by copyright,

Yes, the exclusive rights to the entirety of any original work should belong to the creator. Fair use is a good idea, but rather vague. I guess the lenght of the sample, and the importance of it in the work which it is a part of (both the original, and the work is it being included in) dictate whether it is Fair Use or not.

or should artists/musicians have the right to manipulate the old into the new?

Yes, but it isn't a God-given right, it should be given by the artist (or whoever they sold the rights to). Artists shouldn't be so stingy with their creations. Maybe exclusive copyrights shouldn't be protected automatically in the US (or internationally), maybe public domain (or some lesser copyright) should be default, and copyright should have to be claimed. Either way it is fortunate that with the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License, and, even better for non-software use, the Creative Commons' Licenses (as well as all the other not-as-restrictive-as-copyright and copyleft licenses), more people are realizing that it is OK if other people use their creativity to make even cooler things.

Having said that, if an artist (or copyright owner) doesn't want you to use their creation, then don't. If your project depends on someone else's creativity, it should be scrapped anyway.

Same deal with peer-to-peer and copying copyrighted music against the will of the copyright holder... there is so much music in the world which is not copyrighted, or which the artist would happily give permission for you to use, why bother with the RIAA's offerings? You don't need the music. And if you want it so bad, respect the artists, respect the record label they have chosen to give the rights to their music to, respect the trade association that record label is a part of, and buy a CD.

Actually, because of the Verizon case, I have decided to boycott all commercially recorded music which forbid the rights to free distribution. By boycott, I don't merely mean "refusing to buy" CD's. I mean refusing even to listen or download such music (even illegally). Yes, that probably means that I will no longer listen to Philip Glass, Suzanne Vega, etc. Once they wise up and liberalize their licenses, I might consider listening to them again. And I might also consider checking their CD's out of the library (whenever I feel a pang of nostalgia, in the same way that a Russian might for a moment miss a gulag's watery soup).

The restrictive licenses of music companies essentially lock commercial music in the vault. I'm not interested in picking locks anymore just for a momentary glimpse at these so-called "precious" flowers. I'm interested in enjoying what is free out in the free air. Let all those "precious" flowers in the vault lose their color, rot away and turn into crap. Good riddance.

We as creative artists need to wean ourselves from this enslavement that we call "copyright enforcement." The people and companies who benefit by starving artists, drafting exploitative contracts and preventing works of art from being distributed freely deserve nothing less than our contempt.

You may say: how could I survive without vault music? Simple. If the music rots away in the vault, it was already dead to begin with. Who wants to keep dead flowers around? Instead of locking flowers in the vault, it is better to appreciate them in the open where it's easy to pick and admire. We are like bees admiring the flowers all around us, flitting about, taking what we need and moving on (and propagating the beauty of what we see at the same time). Flowers look pretty among other flowers, not inside some ugly dirty vault guarded by lawyers with vulture-like beaks. As the public areas become more covered with flowers, the desire to possess the rotting heaps in the vault will seem more bizzare, less relevant. The best way to increase the number of flowers in this world is to open the gardens up to bees. Anyway, it is folly to think that a group of lawyers (and that is essentially what a music company is ) owns a song or a human voice or an image. The copyright to Beauty is owned by one person, and that is God. His lawyers are ruthless and know the law of nature backwards and forwards. The license they enforce allows infinite creation and multiplication, but banishes those who say beauty belongs to one.

Freeing myself from the music of the vault provides an opportunity to learn about artists with more enlightened views toward distribution. I plan to patronize them in many ways, including donations. Also, I plan to attend more concerts and still pay for my commercial-free Internet radio ($5 a month) until decent creative commons radio stations emerge. It doesn't mean that I am opposed to paying money for music per se. But when I pay for music, I want either to have free distribution rights and/or the certainty that the artist is receiving at least 50% of the money I am paying. What do artists for major labels now receive? 1%?

Actually lawyers are not completely the culprit here. It would be a trivial matter for lawyers on either the artist's or industry's side to draft a limited duration copyright. All ownership rights could expire after about 5 or 10 years. Artists are partially to blame for not insis

Who about making a section invariant to preserve the original authorship? If you take the time to make a piece of good documentation, you'd probably want your name attachecd to it, maybe even your e-mail. Say you obscured it to keep it from spammers.

A year later, someone comes along and updates it for a version change. They don't believe in obfuscation, so they change it to a spam friendly format. Or perhaps they want to put their name on it, even removing yours!

Who wants that? I know I wouldn't. Mark the credits immutable and you retain your original credit, while allowing others to extend your work. Cerative Commons is possibly a better license for documentation anyway.

Well, if copyrights eventually do become effectively unenforcable (which they will be without a totalitarian world government), how would artists eat, and how would media execs be able to pay for their 4th vacation house? Would civilization as we know it collapse (heh), or would a new balance emerge on its own? Yeah, the latter.

It seems to me that two things would happen: 1) The original and valuable act of creation can't be copied (there's no A.I. Van Gogh, yet), so variations on the Street Performer Protocol would gain prominence as a way to fund new projects, and 2) unfunded/unknown artists would simply have to accept that society had rewritten the social contract to say "we abhor artificial-scarcity in the face of so much real-scarcity, but if you're nice we'll still support your creative efforts." So artists'll have to continue working to continue earning like everyone else. Just as architects, sysadmins, and plumbers can't live off royalties from long past work, neither would artists.

And 15 to 30 years from now this debate will get much hotter (if people aren't any wiser) when mature nanotechnology enables anyone to make exact copies of any desired object (given that the chemical elements are available), from diamond to clothes to BK Whoppers. But if BurgerKing goes out of business, how will they eat?! And how will they clothe their kids?! ... Oh... wait a sec...

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but their website appears to have died?

Creative Commmons is what you're looking for

We take inspiration from other folks interested in promoting the sharing of creative works. Foremost among these is Richard Stallman, founder of The Free Software Foundation and author of the General Public License, or the GNU GPL. We want to complement, rather than compete with, these existing efforts to ease online sharing and collaboration. Right now we don't plan to get involved in software licensing at all. Instead, we'll concentrate on scholarship, film, literature, music, photography, and other kinds of creative works.

How is it not open to everyone? You just go to their site, fill out a questionaire about what type of licence you want, and then link your work to the appropriate licence. Seems pretty accessible to me.

Both the GPL and the BSD licenses maintain copyright, "public domain" is intellectual property with no copyright and no rights reserved.

See the creative commons project for information on releasing code (and other material) to the public domain.

Take a look at Creative Commons.

-R

The Open Directory License, used by dmoz isn't a copyleft but was authored roughly for "DB data". At Bitzi we use the similar OpenBits License. One could also choose a Creative Commons license. Or maybe the GNU Free Documentation License. Also see the FSF's licenses page. I wouldn't get enthusiastic about any community contributed data project until license issues are clarified.

There's plenty of them on the web - look at the explosion of webcomics.

I said "share-and-share-alike license", not "no-derivatives license".