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A Critique of the EFF's Open Audio License
In fact, let me make a brief response to Glass' points as he makes them in the critique -
OAL gives away too much: No response to this. It's for the artist to decide.
No credit to performer: Silly criticism. An intended aim of the license. The performer is free to seek an alternate license from the author if he/she wants to profit off of the song.
Potential damage to reputation: Silly criticism. An intended aim of the license. Like the GPL, this license assumes that free and open should be free and open to everyone for every purpose, even those you find distasteful. "Oh my god, someone is using my GPL'ed program called grep to search for abortion providers in the phone book!"
Viral nature: Silly criticism. An intended aim of the license. Again, if you want to incorporate chunks of someone else's work in your own, you are free to a) be infected by the OAL, or b) seek a different license from the author. Free with restrictions, or, presumably, pay the author for a different deal. Without this license, only b) is available. The OAL only ever provides a possible alternative for people wanting to use a work.
ASCAP and BMI don't enforce the OAL: This is an issue to take up with ASCAP or BMI.
Irrevocable: Silly criticism. Even without this clause, you couldn't "take back" the license, at least for people who've already made use of your work - they took advantage of the license at the time.
Most of the rest of Glass' criticisms are general criticisms of any Free license - it gives away the rights of the author. Well, duh, that's what it's supposed to do. These are criticisms of the aim of the license rather than flaws in the license. What Glass is lacking here is a general BSD-type license for music to compare this against...
The guy who wrote Free for All had a long explanation about why the book wasn't free. He points out that text and opinions are best copyrighted because copyright doesn't affect the facts themselves. If you want to reuse the facts, you're free to do so. You just can't reuse the exact form.
But music is kind of different. Songs do grow as other people add stanzas, verses and what not. So I can see the advantages of the OAL. This guy is complaining too much. Sure, you give up some rights when you use it, but you gain others. What's the big deal? Everything in life has tradeoffs.
Brett would prefer if we'd all put out free media that he can take private, commercialize, and not return anything to the creator. I just don't see what's in it for anyone but Brett. Most people don't take him seriously.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I wonder how they even begin to get away with comparing this to GPL.
Music is so simple to reverse engineer that it is fundamentally open source. You listen, write down the lyrics, and pick out some chords. You can't really totally copy someone else, but you can get away with stealing a lot. Everybody does. So much for some sort of viral license.
OAL is all about musicians living in the "free as in beer" world ushered in by Napster. But it is also stupid. It's all about giving away rights without getting anything at all in return. With computer code, at least there are a some people out there who might modify your code and make it better. There is nothing similar in the music world.
The music industry is going to continue on pretty much as it has in the past. It'll sue where it thinks it can, but it's never going back to the pre-napster days. And it's not about to shift paradigms either. The only way things are going to change will be some revolutionary security technology (unlikely) or a complete revision of copyright law into some entirely new beast (who knows?).
An advocate of the BSD license? Reading his critique definitely could have persuaded me otherwise.
One of his primary arguments is that the artists (musicians) are giving something away (music) without any hope of compensation (money).
Isn't this kind of like the BSD license, which forces the artists (programmers) to give something away (source code) without any hope of compensation (contribution back to the community)?
I thought the primary difference between the GPL and the BSD license (besides all the holy-war crap) was that the GPL requires you to GPL anything built off of it, whereas the BSD license allows your stuff to be built-upon without contribution back to the original.
For instance... Microsoft (and others) have made use of BSD's TCP/IP stack, because it's licensed under the BSD (and therefore MS doesn't have to open-source all of their code built off of it like the GPL would require).
Seems to me that this music license that Glass is critiquing is actually much more like the BSD license than the GPL.
i am a musician, and in a band. I do want to be paid for my music, and I want copyright restrictions, i don't want people to obtain free copies of my work. Why? because I want money. Think of it this way, serious bands need money, because they devote all their time to making music, If my band could do that, we'd be much more productive. Oh sure you could cry that the bands are too rich, well that's the select few that are major bands.
When you buy an album forget that your paying the RIAA tax, your supporting a band that you love. This does nto mean you should let down the fight against the opressive RIAA and their tactics, but don't let hte music be the casualty in this world. Bands are poor, bands need as much money as they can get to perpetuate themselves unless they don't mind working a dayjob.
Photos.
Judging from the critique (I'm yet to read the license itself), the OAL would prevent them from selling CDs.
THe most important critisizm of the OAL in that article is the whole issues of covers. Even with the GPL, each contributors efforts is acknowledge (They do, after all, retain copyright). That doesn't happen with OAL (apparently).
Let's say, for example, that composer X writes a song with good lyrics, but a really bad melody. performer Y comes along, keeps the lyrics but writes a much better harmony for the song (take Machineheads cover of 'Message In A Bottle' as an example, not that there's anything wrong with original, I just prefer the cover myself). According to the critique, performer Y would get no credit for the song, but composer X might earn shitloads of money from the popularity of the new version.
That is a major flaw with the license...
"Faith is the last resort of a desperate man" - Me
The basic problem artists have with the music industry isn't the inability to make music for free. Musicians have always been able to do that. Trading riffs is part of the culture. The problem is the fact that the music cartel won't make the artist's music avaiable without him or her signing over the rights to it.
Some of Glass' critiques seem a little silly - they're intended goals of the license, not flaws.
That's not a bug, that's a feature!
To claim that a critique is "silly" because you disagree with the author's point of view is rather condescending, and does not contribute to meaningful debate. Is the purpose of this license to create a moral imperative to release music for free (much as RMS uses GNU as a platform to argue the immorality of commercial software)? If so, the issues Glass raises merit serious discussion.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
From the summary of the critique(the page is slashdotted so I didn't read it) it sounds like the critique is not about the method of sharing, but, rather, about the sharing itself. If you don't want to share your stuff--don't. Just don't tell other people that they can't, or shouldn't.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
Here is a short critique of Glass's article:
Glass uses ad hominem attacks against John Perry Barlow, but fails to instruct us in any way as to why Brett Glass is any more credible than John Perry Barlow- in fact Glass strongly urges that anyone looking for legal advice regarding this legal license look elsewhere.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
After discussing it with RMS [stallman.org], we agreed it would be possible:
I agree with most of RMS's views, and I applaud the GPL. However, why do people give him veto power over their own ideas? I can understand discussing a subject like this with him, since he has probably thought about it more than the rest of us, but I get the idea that many people are unwilling to try an idea unless RMS approves it. As with anything, people need to sift through RMS's ideas and decide for themselves which are gems and which are just BS.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
--Brett Glass
A $1000 computer with a monitor, CDRW and high speed internet connection (and heaps and heaps of GPL software) runs about the same as a guitar, amp, 4 track and mic. The really big difference is that I don't need all the software that would otherwise cost a bundle if it wasn't free to make my music.
It scales about the same too. A top 40 album with a producer, engineer, mixer, full band, studio time, etc. runs about the same as a cvs repository, hosting, several computers, office space, QA, etc.
I'll ever release my music under this license. Why not?
grants the worldwide public permission to:
Modification
This means, you can mess my song up and release it under the same name. Like hell you can. Remix it if you must and release it under your own name, but don't make me responsible for what you do to it.
Note that this clause isn't saying the same thing as: you have the right to sample from this track and create a new track from the samples you've made - under your own name, which I'd have no problems with (unless people start sampling complete riffs, which isn't quite my taste), it's saying "redo a track released under this license any way you see fit and then release it as a "fork" of said track." This may be fine for software, but music has a very different dynamic, which I think the EFF people are forgetting. Artist + Track of which integrity has been preserved are much more important in music than it is in software.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
I find music and code to be virtually identical in nature: It is the structured ordering, presentation and manipulation of simple primitives, to create a more complex body of work, so it makes sense to me to have similar licenses.
Is this kind of license needed for music? Definitely. Just like the coding profession, some pieces, indeed, some jobs, are entirely dependant on using free tools, be they code libraries or sample libraries. As noted, every major operating system today now ships with free (GPL, Q, BSD, or similar) tools and components, which can be copied and distributed without any royalties. Some software products have succeeded in obtaining large market $hare, some have not.
Those products that have lined the pocket of IT professionals (including mine) were built both with privately owned IP, and public (GPL, Q, BSD etc.) IP. Those that were built strictly with only private or only public IP did not become successful or profitable based on the IP they used... that's a red herring in this discussion. The nature of the license does not dictate the profitability or success of a software, or music, product.
So what is the impact, if I choose this license, to me? Well, just like the GPL work I've done, it means that others can do what they want.
Does it prevent me from releasing other work? Of course not. I can OPL/GPL some work, BSD other work, and use a restrictive EULA for other work. Since I'm not a one-hit-wonder kind of guy (I'm a professional, I "publish" a lot), this isn't a problem.
Is my ability to capture revenue altered by my choice of license, be it in code libraries, or in songs? Of course it is. But it's my choice.
People just don't understand. I don't mean they don't see it my way- I really mean they don't understand. Most people have never had a serious discussion about property rights and the way that the government grants monopolies to creators with the stated goal of fostering innovation.
Another more pithy way to put it is this: We don't subsidize the pony express now that mechanical transportation is available.
The bottom line is scarcity. gnovos is trying to say that some people think it's the talent that's scarce even if copies of their works are free, but that people are wrong and talent is not in fact scarce. This is basically right on the money. If talent *is* scarce, then the music industry needs to find ways to reward talent that make sense, like charging for live performances and other things that can't happen without talent, rather than trying to jealously contain free copies of recordings.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
You also probably signed an agreement when you took your job that released your copyright and designated your creative output as "works for hire". That's great for you! Unfortunately, there are many, many fewer businesses willing to pay a salary for a in-house composer to write music works for hire. Just because you signed away your copyright doesn't mean all programmers do. I know at least one former coworker that signed a deal where he retained rights to all his work.
"You on the other hand are only asked to create art for a few hours every so often. "
This is patently false. Most composers are not asked to create their art. They create it and then try to sell it. In circumstances where this doesn't obtain (recording contract, commissioned work), meeting the demands of the request for music is no less arduous than programming (don't try to tell me otherwise; I've done both). Even writing a decent 3 minute pop song is hard work. Much like programming, music does not spring fully formed from a wellspring of creativity. It requires practice (education), good basic themes (design), and editing (debugging). And, if you try it live, unlike programming, you have to be able to reproduce it in real time. Also, unlike programming, it's hard to find someone to compensate you for that time.
My fundamental objection to your argument has to do with your contempt for musicians and the difficulty they face. How many people write/play music as a day job to support their dreams of being a programmer? How many do the reverse?
Many people are satisfied to play music as a hobby, for friends or family, or take the occasional weekend warrior gig. For these people, something like the OAL is great. That's fine. Many devote their lives to it, hoping against hope that they'll be able to eke out a meager living. For these people, it would be insane to release under such a license. A statistically insignificant number make piles upon piles of money (though not NEARLY as much as their labels make off of them). For these lucky few, we can hope that they understand that their fans want the joy of sharing the music with their friends, a la the Grateful Dead. The real fact of the matter is that without musicians in the 2nd and 3rd categories, you wouldn't have anything decent to do while you hack away. So don't be a fucking ingrate, dig?
I do heartily agree with you that everyone is talented, and everyone is an artist. But we all have different talents in different quantities, and talent without hard work is worthless. Hard work takes time, and if you don't get compensated for that time, you don't eat.
There's no free lunch. Even authors of GPL software are getting money from someone for doing something, or they'd starve.
Or are you saying that other people don't have the right to make songs that reflect their experience of life, just because part of that experience involves your songs?