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A quick browse of the Wikipedia webpage on sampling shows a number of cases where artists have been sued for sampling, so the best thing is to get yourself a lawyer who will direct you towards a good license that allows you to share your work non-commercially.

That way it's a lot less likely that someone can claim that they thought that you intended to allow them to do what they're doing.

Don't get me wrong: Having the material available for free is great, even though a large part of the courses are incomplete in that they refer you to the standard literature for reference like most regular university courses will. But this is basically a logistic solution, a lot of knowledge is available today to anybody who can get hold of a library card at the local university and a lot of basic knowledge is no further away than the wikipedia.

But you will find that the number of people studying advanced calculus or Sino-Tibetian languages outside of university courses is small, even though a lot of material is available for free. Learning complex subjects is a process, not just a question of getting the information, and the process (with tutorials and working with other students and asking questions and assignments and so on) is what MIT is still selling, the content of OCW is only a small part of that.

Fortunately OCW is not simply free, but (at least partly) licensed under a Creative Commons license allowing non commercial sharing and remixing (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5). While you may not be able to replicate the experience of studying at MIT, someone may take the content and add e.g. a technical communications layer.

You are into advanced web 3.0 elearning platform development, but have no way to create the content? Take OCW, reuse what they have and give the world a new learning experience? You always wanted to write a shoot-'em up game based on and explaining the principles on quantum physics? You solve the DirectX/OpenGL/game engine magic and compensate your lack of talent as a physics tutor by using parts of 8.04 Quantum Physics I, Spring 2006.

These are primitive ideas, but I think about OCW more as a basis on which people can experiment than a library. Libraries have been around for a long time, unfortunately the majority of people don't use them. To reach the masses, you have to somehow turn the content of OCW into something compatible to a game console. Give it a shot!

Two words: Creative Commons.

Looks like the last line of Steve Savitsky's song will soon come true:

(Posting rather than linking so Steve's web site doesn't get slashdotted, and the "Creative Commons License" permits it.)

High Barratry
Lyrics © 2004 Stephen Savitzky.
Creative Commons License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ Some rights reserved.
To the tune of: High Barbary (trad)

Of a company called S-C-O, the tale I'll briefly tell
With G-P-L, our software all is free
Who turned their hands to barratry when software wouldn't sell
Sailing through the legal straits of High Barratry

``And are you selling Linux or old Unixware?'' said we
With GPL, our software all is free
We're the owners of all Unix come demanding of our fee!
Sailing through the legal straits of High Barratry

You've stolen code from System V and given it away
With GPL, our software all is free
So buy licences for Linux, or we'll sue and make you pay
Sailing through the legal straits of High Barratry

They first sued IBM over a million lines of code
With GPL, our software all is free
Though a subroutine or two from BSD was all they showed
Sailing through the legal straits of High Barratry

Well, RedHat sued them next so they went gunning for Novell
With GPL, our software all is free
Autozone and Daimler-Chrysler soon were on their list as well
Sailing through the legal straits of High Barratry

Then lawsuit and lawsuit we fought for many a day
With GPL, our software all is free
'Till the research done at Groklaw blew their cases clean away
Sailing through the legal straits of High Barratry

Oh, please buy us out, the SCOundrels made their plea
With GPL, our software all is free
But the buyout that they got was in a court of bankruptcy
Sailing through the legal straits of High Barratry

And oh, it was a sorry thing to hear them rant and roar
With GPL, our software all is free
With their options underwater as their stock sank through the floor
Sailing through the legal straits of High Barratry

Though they started as Caldera selling Linux long ago
With GPL, our software all is free
Soon a huge volcanic crater will be all that's left of SCO
Sailing through the legal straits of High Barratry

I stopped buying music years ago when I had a really busy time studying. After that period of withdrawal I heard about some free music labels, got curious and never looked back again.
In the beginning I was impressed by programs that automatically download free music, based on ratings you give.
Today I have a quite large collection of free tracks and albums. From time to time I visit, some, of those. All that is 100% annoyance-, tool-, ad-, DRM- and RIAA-free.

i am basically for stronger enforcement of copyright laws.. does this make me 'anti-tech' or 'pro-tech' in this survey view?

anti-tech, you douche.

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1763
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=01 97

http://jorge.cortell.net/
http://www.benkler.org/
http://www.dklevine.com/
http://www.stephankinsella.com/ip/
http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

http://swpat.ffii.org/
http://creativecommons.org/
http://www.piratbyran.org/
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/
http://www.cambia.org/
http://www.plos.org/
http://www.fsf.org/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
What happened to freedom 0? No commercial usage. That's more restrictive than disney. These guys are *afraid* of putting their work in the public domain. What do they think will be done with it, if it's not going to be employed commercially? They've restricted their success, the film won't go anywhere beyond this internet without it. To succeed they must let their work pass from amateur to professional, which means allowing commercial use.

The scouts can drop by my microcinema studio and see how I release all my movies for FREE under a Creative Commons licence.

Will they still get their badge?

Did you know that Jim's Big Ego did that ages ago with their song Mix Tape?

There's no difference between hardware and a VM as far as the OS is concerned, what fucking business is it of Microsofts how their paying customers use the commodity product?

Yeah, exactly! Just like if someone releases something under a creative commons license - who cares if it's commercial or not? It's all the same to the maker!

Seriously though, it's Microsoft's product - they have right to decide what's done with it.

By the way - the artist gets paid royalties to have their song paid on the radio.

Actually the label gets paid, the artist gets next to nothing. And you're right, with copyright Johnny legally has to ask permission to use the work. However, if he doesn't and the artist (or label in reality) does not approve of the use of his/her work, then they can demand Johnny take it out/down. If Johnny complies, that's the end of it because Johnny has not profited from this work in any measurable way - if not then Johnny's open to a lawsuit.

As for compiling a list, Johnny needs no such compilation, he just needs to create a Creative Commons license which states who and how his work may be used. Some artists release their music that way, but let's assume in this case they didn't.

Finally, YouTube is not making money off the video itself, but off of advertising revenue from the ads around the video - there's a difference. Johnny is not making that money either, so the artist/label can either go after Johnny for posting the infringing material, or YouTube for profiting from it (or technically both, but that pursuit seems pointless -- Johnny probably has no money and YouTube isn't liable if they take the material down upon request).

That is an odd passage (from the license)--

(From part 4a) If You create a Collective Work, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collective Work any credit as required by clause 4(b), as requested. If You create a Derivative Work, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Derivative Work any credit as required by clause 4(b), as requested.

I don't think it prohibits distribution. It's "to the extent practicable", which, although I don't know the legal jargon, I assume means that you wouldn't have to attack 10,000 copies of an already-printed work with an eraser, or do other such contortions at the whim of the author. And, if someone invokes 4a, that pretty much carves out an exception in 4b.

Still, though, I don't get the reasoning behind that. If you don't want some piece of information included in your attribution... except that piece of information in your requirements. Why allow authors to come back asking for licensing changes after the fact, causing undue inefficiency and possible problems?

Or, perhaps I'm just reading it wrong.

The band Syrius Jones went with a Creative Commons Sharing License in May and has since had the busiest summer of bookings in 3 years. True, we have definitely sold fewer CDs, but have more than made up the difference in revenue from the shows.

At best, a die-hard fan buys one CD every year for $10, yet a casual fan will go to show after show dropping $10 bucks for tickets every time. File-sharing == more fans == more revenue.

Just food for thought from the trenches.

I agree with you. I've been collecting a list of links to sources of non-RIAA music which I call Liberated Music. I've added garageband.com to it (I already had Creative Commons in there). Incredible the wealth of music that's out there once you liberate yourself from the monotony of the 4 big record companies.

not even videos are allowed as evidence in courts, how do they think "I saw a screenshot" could be allowed as evidence? allowing this as evidence in court would be dictatorship!

do it like the german chaos computer club and pirate party, BOYCOTT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY! LISTEN TO CREATIVE COMMONS MUSIC! it's great music and it's free and the damn music industry can't prosecute you for listening to it for free!

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Content_Curators
http://www.garageband.com/htdb/index.html

I meant legally too.

Let's say you had one of my audio files from this page:

http://www.archive.org/details/dragirl

on your device. It has this CC BY-SA license:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

So you could certainly share it legally.

Now, I don't remember if I put the license in the file metadata, but I could have. You are certainly legally allowed to share that file with others without any DRM. In fact, I am not sure about that version of the license, but some have or are discussion haveing terms where putting the DRM on would make it illegal to share it while leaving it off make it legal to share it. Oops. (I think I have that broadly correct.)

So, the sharing app could look for a "shareable license" and share those files with no DRM, right?

all the best,

drew
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A %22drew%20Roberts%22

The parent (above you) was talking about Creative Commons content.

That's like adding DRM to a Linux distro so you can't make legal copies for your friends. In that case, DRM is not only useless, but unwanted.

links to great contents, free for personal use... screw the whole stupid industry!

Creative Commons

Defective by Design's List of DRM-Free Music Sites

dmusic

Electronic Frontier Foundation List of "Artists Online"

emusic.com

Fading Ways Records

FreeCulture.org

harveydanger.com

Janis Ian.com

last.fm

Lime Light Radio

live365.com free downloads

MagnaTune

myspace.com

Nettwerk Download Store

R.evolution I.n P.rogress

RIAARadar.com

uncoolcentral.com

Vision Metal Records

I keep a list on my blog and welcome more suggestions.

If I understand this correctly, the people who came up with some embroided designs are concerned their images are being coppied? OK, thanks, just clarifying it for myself.

There has to be PLENTY of people into embroidery that have the skills to design their own patterns right? Now someone just needs to introduce these people to Creative Commons. Get all the oldies (and a few young'ins) with artistic talent to draw up a few designs and start sharing. The 'Emproidery Protection Racket' will just plain be left out in the cold.

All us grandkids have to do is remind the oldies that they should only use the patterns with the "CC" label that come with them.

This thread has inspired me to register the domain "publicpriorart.org" -- the intention is to build a database of ideas, thoughts, algorithms,etc in a public place, strictly for the purpose of preventing patents from being filed for them in the future. Anyone interested in helping? Or can point me to an existing effort, so I don't waste my time?

Though there's no one public place, other than the internet, there are a number of websites who share not just programs but other things like music. There are all of the open source website collections like Sourceforge and Freshmear. Here's Creative Commons, for legal music downloads there's Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads and MagnaTunes. More can be found on Wiki's Creative Commons License page.

How much money would this culture cost the entertainment producers? If fair use is really fair then it should still allow

I do not think that media should be allowed to be replayed for free. Significant amounts of money went into making TV shows and movies and the like and any system must ensure that the producer gets his cut. Contrary to the demands of my sig, not all information should be completely free. Using the CC license is a happy medium. The I really think that this speaker has the right approach, so to speak. From TFA:

He also noted that there are two ways of approaching the argument for free culture. The first is the "lefty" way of talking about ideals, which doesn't seem to get very far with many people. The "right" approach discusses why expanded rights for users under copyright law would be good for business, good for growth, and good for the economy and society.

Lucas has for years said fan movies of Star Wars are OK as long as they don't turn a profit. This doesn't imply any other autors/screenwriters/directors think it's ok to make rip-offs of their movies. It's something Lucas has specifically said he's OK with. That's why it's ok with Lucas' laywers.

This isn't saying it's OK to make any ripoffs of any Spielberg, Woody Allen, etc, etc, movies. Just Lucas, and Star Wars specifically. Get it?

instead of you tube. suggest to friends to check out http://creativecommons.org/ or if you're completely clueless watch "Alternative Freedom" http://alternativefreedom.org/?page_id=5

JS/UIX is just a similated unix shell with no real utility...

Agreed, and it's not free software.

and TiddlyWiki looks like a regular Wiki with inplace editting and some interesting but superfluous effect when you click on new sections. Actually, the effect is somewhat annoying because it is delayed. The new section appears first and the "window" slowly expands afterwards to match it. That effect really needs to go away. What am I missing here?

You can disable animations in options on the menu to the right. They should be off by default IMO, but it's easy to work around.

It took me a couple weeks to really get my head wrapped around TiddlyWiki and it's capabilites. I didn't know JavaScript then.

By mixing the two ideas together though, shell from JS/UIX and self-containment from TiddlyWiki, it became possible to:

• Create data stores (files), containers (directories), and all manner of GUI widgets using pre-existing HTML tags and JavaScript objects. These I called Atomic Objects and were the basis for the projects final name
• Build a command interpreter and shell, so that developers could interact with Atomic Objects in real-time
• Build responsive web-based applications
• Give those applications async access to remote data stores
• And do it all within a single HTML document

There's more to the story though. After I discovered TiddlyWiki, but before JS/UIX, I wrote another (very simple) prototype application called raDHTML. It's a web-based RAD tool for webpage design that worked rather well, but was written very poorly. When I discovered JS/UIX I decided to actually learn JavaScript.

The YouOS demo is much more attractive than the one for the predecessor to Atomic OS, WAJAX. Atomic OS has more to offer in the way of applications though I think. Particularly for those still holding out against FOSS, or have a need/want to mix it with proprietary code.

"Could you go without purchasing or even downloading music for 3 months? 6 months? a year? to prove a point?"

Geez, I hope so.

Excellent comment -- if I hadn't posted already I'd mod up for sure.

My only problem is with your phrase that copyright is "horribly broken." If it is broken, how do you fix it?

I know a lot of slashdot/FOSS advocates love Lessig's Creative Commons, but to me CC is just another shill for state-destruction of individual rights. In EVERY situation where the law is supposed to protect you (and the "crime" is so easy to accomplish), you will have zero power to protect those rights that the law seems to create. Even under CC, how can you enforce the law that backs it up? With what money, with what attorney, and in what court?

Copyright is dead -- not broken. Copyright is useless and enables nothing; no one creates because of copyright. I repudiate copyright on every single thing I publish in the public eye (blogs, music, video productions, etc). I use the free distribution of information to increase my billable rate for people who want to know more about my trade secrets: I'll write about things I can do, and then charge customers more for the secrets I hold back. That is where the power of creation is: in creating a bigger market for your private knowledge or unique talents (such as a band performing live for a fee but giving their digital music aware freely).

I dont have Microsoft Office, and I dont plan to get it either.
I have OpenOffice which I like just fine.

I was wondering if there was a Creative Common thing to OpenOffice?

* http://www.openoffice.org/
* http://creativecommons.org/

I can't see how anyone could construe this as an endorsement by Microsoft of unconventional copyright terms.

Hrm... Well, then how about these:

"Microsoft today announced the release of its Simple List Extensions specification to RSS under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license." (source)

"The Microsoft-hosted PatternShare community brings together information on software patterns organized by wiki inventor and now Microsoft employee Ward Cunningham." (source)

From Lawrence Lessig's blog: "So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support..." (source) And then a few days later... "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." (source)

And so forth

I can't see how anyone could construe this as an endorsement by Microsoft of unconventional copyright terms.

Hrm... Well, then how about these:

"Microsoft today announced the release of its Simple List Extensions specification to RSS under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license." (source)

"The Microsoft-hosted PatternShare community brings together information on software patterns organized by wiki inventor and now Microsoft employee Ward Cunningham." (source)

From Lawrence Lessig's blog: "So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support..." (source) And then a few days later... "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." (source)

And so forth

I had friend who used this. He tried to save it as HTML and it blocked it. The he tried saving it as plain-text and his compute locked up. He finally tried to save as a PDF, and clippy jumped out and stabbed him in the face. Wait, no, none of that happened. (I even made up the "I had a friend who used this" part.) Why license your stuff anyway? Who is going to have such a large volume of people trying to reproduce their material that getting emailed requests would be too burdensome? And in cases where it is, you might as well just do it manually, as it's obviously worth it to you. I only see this bloating documents unnecessarily with license text from the F/OSS crowd. I'm all for Open Source, and I think it's noble. I've used Linux, and I use it (Knoppix/DSL) often for fixing simple issues easily (fdisk, cfdisk, etc.) when the Windows way to do it would be a pain. I use OSX, and I love it. The truth is though, if you use Linux/OSX, I probably won't like you. Most of the F/OSS crowd is an angry, belligerent, and or annoying bunch, and I think that's holding them back. Imagine how many people would just be annoyed by the license text at the bottom of every document from that hairy guy from IT. "I reset your password. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Slovenia License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/si/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA." (Btw, the license is not copy/paste friendly at that link. They should link to legalese, and have a link at the top of that to "English")

Bollocks.

Please stop labelling all of us as Stallmen. It's incredibly annoying, and the simple truth is that except where it is reasonable to expect you to know the subject, Linux people mainly aren't like that any more.

I had friend who used this. He tried to save it as HTML and it blocked it. The he tried saving it as plain-text and his compute locked up. He finally tried to save as a PDF, and clippy jumped out and stabbed him in the face. Wait, no, none of that happened. (I even made up the "I had a friend who used this" part.) Why license your stuff anyway? Who is going to have such a large volume of people trying to reproduce their material that getting emailed requests would be too burdensome? And in cases where it is, you might as well just do it manually, as it's obviously worth it to you. I only see this bloating documents unnecessarily with license text from the F/OSS crowd. I'm all for Open Source, and I think it's noble. I've used Linux, and I use it (Knoppix/DSL) often for fixing simple issues easily (fdisk, cfdisk, etc.) when the Windows way to do it would be a pain. I use OSX, and I love it. The truth is though, if you use Linux/OSX, I probably won't like you. Most of the F/OSS crowd is an angry, belligerent, and or annoying bunch, and I think that's holding them back. Imagine how many people would just be annoyed by the license text at the bottom of every document from that hairy guy from IT. "I reset your password. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Slovenia License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/si/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA." (Btw, the license is not copy/paste friendly at that link. They should link to legalese, and have a link at the top of that to "English")

I think most of the Creative Commons Licenses aren't evil.
So this can't be hold against Microsoft. Or am I wrong about that, I guess we'll see.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/

"to make commercial use of the work"

Umm, dose'nt that mean you CAN profit from the work w/o the authors permission (besides them releasing it under this licesnse)?

There are many sources for properly-licensed tracks that can be used on podcasts, I recommend the recently released CCHits, where the top tracks are promoted to the homepage on a Digg-like style and uses tags for categorization. More references to other sources can be found at this Content Curators CC Wiki Page.

How about creative commons liscensed music like that found at podshow.com.

need for worrying about copyright stuff

www.creativecommons.org

Not all music is licensed the way the RIAA licenses their music.
And yes, some it is quite good - easily better than mainstream pop.

The free software and free culture movements are full of great people including Lawrence Lessig. I got a chance to interview him. During the interview he expressed his over commitment to the movement. Lets acknowledge the larger organizations in order to reduce strain on any one figure. All of the people at Creative Commons, Electronic Freedom Foundation, Free Software Foundation, etc. deserve credit for their dedication to the cause (if you will).

That said, one critical aspect to promoting a digital culture is supporting revolutionary projects and artists. Some examples are Project Orange, Cactuses and Chance. Each has a different unique aspect but each hopes for a future which is better for artists. They aim for equal opportunity for artists to sustain themselves. Free software tools along with flexible creative licenses will allow this.

The most important aspect of Creative Commons licenses is that it allows for a new art form, remix art.

Alteration can create something unique.

You can create a unique Alteration.

For more interviews with revolutionary people/projects see my own project, Open Road Trip.

Creative Commons can become what GPL is to software, something which liberates the content from the misuse and apprehension of huge corporations. Free Software Foundation and the GPL-licenses was invented as a reaction to ever increasing prices, EULAs, NDAs, copyright lengths, and every other toll-booth the corporations will impose just to squeeze the last drop of money out of our souls, for software.

With Creative Commons, we have a chance to reclaim our culture as a whole. A real, culture, indie artists, not sponsored and RIAA-breastfed brats copying the latest fad.

The irony being, that the stronger copyright becomes by lobbying from the corporations, the stronger Creative Commons and GPL also become.

In the long-term future, I believe in a reclamation of our culture on the local level too. More people will be fed up with way too many hours spent in front of a screen, and desensitized by an everlasting surge of noise in their ears. People will start to appreciate silence more and more, not in hordes, because that is a paradox in its own right. However, slowly more and more will look for alternative ways, something local. Playing in a local band, or just with friends. Meditation. Yoga. Tai-Chi. Quigong. Whatever to breathe life back into the soul.

It's not that hard. In afternoon you can obtain 20-30 CDs' worth of music. Give it a listen. Any of it that floats your boat, let someone know.

Nothing would please the free culture movement more than to see "piracy" and RIAA record sales both plummet to zero. Now.

an important adjective I left out.. legal..!!!

Free, High Quality, and Legal..

I fought fairly hard to try to get a true open content license (I wanted the CC Attribution ShareAlike but the rest of the team, and more so the artists wouldn't fold entirely

I ended up penning my own varaition of the CC by-nc-nd with several loopholes.. most importantly to allow commercial performance (so that it could be used in arcade machines), this license is located here

Once again, please check it out if you have an interest in DDR or SM (remeber the site is http://www.smmix.com/ )

Captain Copyright will say 'Creative Commons? Wow! I have the same initials as those guys. Have fun downloading, listening to, burning, sharing, and basically doing whatever you want with that music.'

Also also, there are ways to get free music, legally. Places like etree.org host tons of recordings from trade-friendly artists. The Creative Commons site has a page that links to some places to get music, including SoundClick, a site very reminiscent of the old, good mp3.com.

"Music video for "Life Wasted" by Pearl Jam. New release of latest Pearl Jam video. Free until 5/24/2006. Musical Category: Pop
The license for this video is http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/"

Free until? Is this DRMd? What good is creativecommons if there is DRM?

And how do I import this into video editing software? WTF is "GVI" format?

It's this license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ the 'selfish unfree license with no permissions'.

You cannot derive the work, nor can you use it commercially. Bang go freedoms 0 1 and 2. The work is still copyrighted, like a photograph licensed online, our only freedom is to look at it.

'Redistribution' doesn't mean anything online. Redistribution of a mars bar or a patented camera would mean building the product yourself using the original design. With anything digital rather than physical redistribution can't exist. Everything is a copy, there is no 'master', copies are made whenever you view content on the web, as the same data is send over the internet protocol. There's no difference between 'view' and 'download', whether the data is saved to your home, your cache, or even not stored except in RAM. You are being 'given' the identical digital data. It's ridiculous to suppose that once you posess this data you cannot share it, and that the first server still controls the data because it perceives itself different. This is like writing a book, but not selling it and insisting everyone but come round your house to read the typeset.

Videos are of course avaliable to view for free a million places on the webs so certainly redistribution == distribution. Take a 30 meg quicktime video you can download. http://www.chrismilk.com/audioslave/ Now if you send that file to your friend or if they download it from that same site, how can you distinguish?

The internet was creating to freely and openly share data, why are we trying to close it back up? If you want to hold your work forever, DO NOT UPLOAD IT. So Pearl Jam, this is nothing but an empty publicity stunt. And Creative Commons, if someone unticks all the boxes 'allow commerical use', 'allow deriatives', if you really have principles, then display a message, 'the license you have chosen is "enforced copyright" you IP-fascist'.

This article goes to some length discussing the historical basis for copyrights and how those may or not still be valid for creative works in the 21st century as the cost of making and distributing copies has effectively gone to zero. The author comes to the conclusion that no matter what laws are made or desires are had by publishers (or authors) technologically, the "copy" has ceased to be acontrollable thing that revenues can be squeezed from.
  An interesting thing will be how authors and artists of the late 21st century will make their livings. Already many performing artists [musicians] are moving towarddistributing their recordings under CreativeCommons licenses that allow them to begenerally free to the public.* They then can increase their following and make a better living selling tickets to performances as well as taking donations and selling easy accessto their music.
  The 'donation' aspect of this new model is one that I find particularly interesting. It remains to be seen how it would work out, but I can imagine a day when a music group or author puts up a 'new album/book fundraiser' on their website. Fan donations could build until the cost of the production is met, at which point the group/author makes their work and provides it for download free of additional charges (as it has already been paid for). This "donations/payment upfront" model would strongly encourage increased production by artists (the purpose of copyright), while also providing a mechanism to support smaller/niche artists. I imagine that this model would not produce the huge incomes of current (<2%) superstars, but it should provide reasonable incomes for the vast majority of artists.
  As a example of this model in use is the musician "Cargo Cult". I downloaded his albums (for free in 128kbps mp3 format) and listened to them on my MP3 player for several weeks. After a while I found that I really liked his music and went back to Magnatune and gave him $8 for the CD-Quality version of the tracks. Also, I sent him an email asking about his experience giving away his music under CreativeCommons. He replied back with a short message that basically said "Before I didn't make any money with my music, now I do." Where might we (and our culture) be if this was the dominant model.
  - Adam
 
  *Some, such as theAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlikelicense that I use for mywebsiteallow free use only for non-commercial uses.
 

This article goes to some length discussing the historical basis for copyrights and how those may or not still be valid for creative works in the 21st century as the cost of making and distributing copies has effectively gone to zero. The author comes to the conclusion that no matter what laws are made or desires are had by publishers (or authors) technologically, the "copy" has ceased to be acontrollable thing that revenues can be squeezed from.
  An interesting thing will be how authors and artists of the late 21st century will make their livings. Already many performing artists [musicians] are moving towarddistributing their recordings under CreativeCommons licenses that allow them to begenerally free to the public.* They then can increase their following and make a better living selling tickets to performances as well as taking donations and selling easy accessto their music.
  The 'donation' aspect of this new model is one that I find particularly interesting. It remains to be seen how it would work out, but I can imagine a day when a music group or author puts up a 'new album/book fundraiser' on their website. Fan donations could build until the cost of the production is met, at which point the group/author makes their work and provides it for download free of additional charges (as it has already been paid for). This "donations/payment upfront" model would strongly encourage increased production by artists (the purpose of copyright), while also providing a mechanism to support smaller/niche artists. I imagine that this model would not produce the huge incomes of current (<2%) superstars, but it should provide reasonable incomes for the vast majority of artists.
  As a example of this model in use is the musician "Cargo Cult". I downloaded his albums (for free in 128kbps mp3 format) and listened to them on my MP3 player for several weeks. After a while I found that I really liked his music and went back to Magnatune and gave him $8 for the CD-Quality version of the tracks. Also, I sent him an email asking about his experience giving away his music under CreativeCommons. He replied back with a short message that basically said "Before I didn't make any money with my music, now I do." Where might we (and our culture) be if this was the dominant model.
  - Adam
 
  *Some, such as theAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlikelicense that I use for mywebsiteallow free use only for non-commercial uses.
 

No it's not and it's only part of the problem. The current system does not pay artists. Exclusive franchises never pay anyone but themselves and they are entirely clueless. People have been making, sharing and profiting from music long before mass production and insane copyright laws. They will continue to do so. These guys figured out how to make plenty of money and let people share their music a long time ago. You make money doing things for people. The music industry does very little of that but keeps the rewards for itself. Copyright is only one of their tools. Creative Commons is trying to pull something useful from copyright laws. You can be sure they are on the RIAA hit list.