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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...
It is about time. I make music with various trackers and midi crap. I give the music away. Anyone who remembers the old Amiga mod scene should welcome such. Take a look at some free music: www.kosmic.org (they've done it all. from 2 channel mods to 32 channel xm's released in mp3 format. These guys rock. Too bad I can't find old Future Crew releases)
This is our answer to the big music companies that want to revoke our rights. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'll find my music elsewhere.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
I'm probably going to get modded to hell for this but I'm going to ask it anyway: Who is Brett Glass and why should anyone care if he disagrees with an artist's choosing to release music under some kind of open license? Is he "somebody" in the music industry? A RIAA hack? An (unknown to me) artist? What interests does he really represent?
You're using her as bait, Master!
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.
faq about oal here.
interesting discussion on list group here.
radio station on live365 playing OAL here.
You say that you give your music away, but in all honesty, is it something that anybody would pay for if they had to? It's kind of easy to be on the side of giving stuff away when there aren't any income possibilities for it.
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Seems to me like the license does exactly what it's supposed to, and he is opposed to that. Kind of like saying: "I don't like the color blue because it's blue!"
Maybe what he's looking for is some form of the OAL based on the LGPL.. but that's not what the OAL is all about. It doesn't say every musician has to produce under the OAL.. it says that if you want your music to be free (for everyone), the OAL is a good choice.
I don't think his critisism is a critisism at all.. it's a very good summation of the points of the OAL.
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?).
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.
Here.
You can browse the music that's up there already, download it, whatever. I've got a few songs up there, give them a listen.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
good starting point for a license for music?
Yes.
We, at GNUArt, directly use the GPL to protect Art.
After discussing it with RMS, we agreed it would be possible:
Lots of artists trust us, just browse our gallery for free "GNU" Art...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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.
Agreed. Here's a bit by Brett in which he lays out his views on the GPL ("The GPL ... was designed explicitly to hurt programmers' livelihoods.") and Stallman (who "says that good wages for programmers should be 'banned.'")
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!
Well, if Glass is correct in his summary, then I would have to say that the very first bullet point:
represents a fatal flaw. This would imply that you could not release a "teaser" MP3 , say one ripped in a lower audio quality, and still retain your other copyrights to the song. That seems shortsighted and unfair.
So, to use a software analogy, Red Hat and Mandrake are performances of the work Linux. Well, does Mandrake really trumpet the fact that it?s Red Hat based? Not really anymore. Does Red Hat actively recognize Mandrake's contributions to popularizing linux? No. Do both distributions include proper credit to the authors of their content? Yes.
:-)> . (Beginners should try anything from '77 or '78. That's Gerry Garcia on lead guitar, BTW.)
I think the OAL is more about song writers than performers. I do not believe that a performer could release a conventionally copyrighted song under the OAL. This would probably be a copyright violation because no royalty would be paid to the work's owner under the original copyright. On the other hand, if Willie Nelson had released "Crazy" under something like the OAL, then he would be associated with the work, not Patsy Cline.
Ultimately, though, songwriters make money on royalties. I don't see how they can do this under the OAL, so I don't think it has a chance for any group or artist that relies on album sales. For those that rely on performance revenue (like the Grateful Dead), the the license would make perfect sense, because it would promote distribution of the performance recordings and create new consumers. For example, I always thought the Grateful Dead were about a hippie drug culture until I downloaded and burned a concert for a fried and discovered that they were a really, really good performance band. I would have never discovered this if they had not given away the rights to record their concerts.
So, in the interest of spreading the love
My question about free music: where's the Classical? That's even a different deal, because a good portion of it (i.e. everything written before the world starting getting excited about extending the copyright period at a rate faster than things were coming out of copyright) is not copyrighted itself; only the performances would be. Surely there are classical music groups out there who've recorded music that they wouldn't mind giving away for free? For instance, university orchestras?
Is there a good repository for this sort of thing in Ogg Vorbis and/or MP3 format? (The former preferred since we're talking about Free stuff here.)
-Rob
I think it is obvious that this license is not for everyone. Just like the GPL (ducks a swing from RMS). I both write software and record music.
If my music is, for example, written for a game or a web site or something where the music is basically ancillary to the main part of the entire work then I would have no problem releasing the audio under the OAL. However when the audio is the main part then I do not want that audio taken and molested by anyone who wants to harm it.
When I write a song at 2 am with my guitar it is very spiritual. I don't sing mathematical truths or other factual data, I sing a unique interpretation of my life as I have experienced it. This song is not something that anyone else can understand the same way I do. Other people may be able to identify with it and share some common ground, but no one can truly feel the same way I did when I recorded it - if they did then they would have mysteriously written the exact same song.
I want to keep these songs mine, like journal entries, as a collection of memories. I don't want some teenager with a eukalalie recording a modified version of my memory.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
I don't agree that this is a silly criticism. Look at the Windows95 launch, and how they used "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones. While the Stones did sell the rights for this song to Microsoft, the average Slashdotter-slash-musician here would be completely aghast--and have absolutely no recourse.
The software world doesn't have a concept of "selling out" (well, we do, but generally it's a positive thing: "You sold your company to a behemoth for 50 mil? Good job!"). In the music world, particularly pop music, this is a huge thing. Fans are everything--you make music for your fans. If your fans think you're a corporate shill, or they get your songs pummelled into them constantly by obnoxious commercials, and can't stand to listen anymore--you're going to lose your fan base. And who are you making music for anyway?
Neil Young ("This Song's For You") would be turning in his grave, if he was dead yet.
- dlek
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...
Use a sample (no matter how small) from an OALed recording without asking, and your finished work must be licensed under the OAL and given away.
OK, I'm going to toss a WAV file up on my website somewhere and make sure that sample N has the same sample value as sample N of some other WAV that is under the OAL. Then I'm gonna thumb my nose at the EFF and all the other AIP (Anti-Intellectual Property) imbecils we've had to put up with for the past several years.
Slashdot posting an article by Brett Glass, with a link to an essay by Brett Glass!? Is It Happening? Are the Slashdot editors finally waking up and realizing that OSS runs business into the ground, that the only reason so much of the Internet is built on OSS is because of fat defense contracts and stuff that leaked in from the traditional business model? What is waking them up? Perhaps IBM selling SourceForge services and not paying LNUX is waking them up. LNUX fired developers Friday and Slashdot knows it might be next. Maybe Hemos and CmdrTaco actually want to have jobs and not just be "new new economy" losers standing in the unemployment line. Well sorry, it's probably too late for you guys. You've spent the last few years at the forefront of the AIP movement, it's a little to late to change your tune now.
Of course, Slashdot always has been less leftist on the week-ends, probably because conservatives don't goof off as much during the week.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As far as I know, music is sold today without any license agreement of any kind.
True, but keep in mind, the record company's "licenses" are passed as laws. The things you are allowed to do and not do, the Audio Home Recording Act, the DMCA, much of that could be placed in a license spelling out exactly what you're allowed to do.
The RIAA, etc, don't need to make licenses, they just pass the laws they need, and save a lot of trouble.
Software has been a little different because the software monopolies (Microsoft, in other words) haven't been paying much attention to Washington. Just wait until they figure out how to lobby with the efficiency of the record labels, your next MS software might contain no license agreement, since the terms Microsoft likes will be part of copyright law.
The EFF-branded license has the one "downside" of an ad-clause BSD license--it allows (or seems to; it's very poorly worded) the sale/distribution/commercial use of the creator's work by anyone and everyone without payment or (situational) permission--without the BSD "upside": the creator's option to un-BSD derivative works for whatever reason (like, say, sale/distribution/commercial use). The OAL is the most pro-mega-distributor, anti-little-author license I've seen outside an RIAA-affiliated label contract. Wait--actually, it's worse than anything the RIAA has come up with yet, because people are suspicious enough to read label agreements carefully; but "art's not about money, man"-spouting idiots will use the OAL because it's EFF-certified "free"--free as in serf, I guess.
(And oh-- Add another red X to your "EFF: Corporate Whore" scorecards at home.)
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
In case you forgot, the reason shutting down Napster was wrong was because it was a file transfer mechanism. The NRA is a closer ally to Napster than the EFF. The reason sharing music is okay is because it does not violate copyright. The reason the media conglomerates are opposed to things like Napster is because it takes the power away from them. They haven't lost money yet.
Copying bits is practically free. That is one reason to share them. The GPL was designed to protect copyright holders while allowing them to share their bits. It was about sharing knowledge. It could be extended to cover sheet music, lyrics, and tableture, but not performance.
I agree with a lot of the critique. I also would like free music. I would also like artists to have more control over their own copyrights. Freedom is the answer, not conformity.
By confusing the issues, the EFF is damaging the cause of free software and of freedeom in general.
> be very hard to live if you licensed all your
> work under the GNU art license. "
GNUArt protect art, not the artist, this means that if -for example- Britney Spears put one of her songs under the GNU GPL License, she is not obliged to do so with all the rest (Thanks God
A full time artist may also live by GPL'ing his stuff, as if he gets enough recognition, he then may earn money with either concerts, expositions or whatever else, which doesn't forbid any other to do so with *his* creations, but just gives *him* a chance to get more recognition with fewer risks as either
I think GNUArt is the missing link and I'll translate it ASAP. Please, use the Fish, till then.
A former famous hardcore band from France also "gave" us the responsability of putting all their stuff under the GNU GPL License: Garlic Frog Diet...
Also, Tompox, in my
And BTW, there no License called the GNU art License, we only use the GNU GPL License itself.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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.
It just goes to show that you can't appease the trolls.
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/
The most telling example for me is busybox, an embedded Linux toolkit that I created in 1996, which is a critical part of most of embedded Linux systems. Lineo took that toolkit into their product, as have most of the other embedded Linux companies. It gave them a time-to-market advantage. But because it was under the GPL, all of the various companies (especially Lineo) that improved Busybox contributed their work back under the GPL, and it's now about 5 times as functional as what I released, and everybody profits from that functionality. If I had used the BSD license, they would all have made their own improvements, duplicating effort, and keeping them proprietary, and fewer would have the benefit of that product, and the public version would still just be the 1/5 that I wrote. That's how a lot of non-GPL products have gone in the embedded market.
Thus, I think sharing works better than a handout.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Um, then it sounds like a good analogy, since there seems to be a 1:1 corrilation between programmers and musicians.
I'll take this a step further.
When I first saw a computer at age 6 (a Vic 20 in our landlords' basement) I *KNEW* that this was what I wanted to do with my life. Like some people *know* they want to be musicians. It didn't matter to me weather there was any chance of making money out of my choice. For years I ran BBS's, freenets, Public UUCP access points because it was my contribution to society. I *HAD* to use my skills, it would have been akin to walking around with my eyes closed all my life when I could open them, the thought was foriegn to me.
I gave away my talents for years. In 'exchange' I got to hone those talents, and eventually one of the organisations I volenteered for offered me a professional job. I still often volenteer on weekends, because I feel it's my obligation. I can do good with my skillset.
Is this the feeling that people who are talented musicans feel? I hope so.
I'm a sysadmin, but if I was a programmer I would write under the GPL. If there was a reason that I had to licence my work, I would choose a similar license to do so under.
Cheers,
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
As for why I released them under that license, I respond: why not? Those recordings were done many years ago. I will never make any money off of them, nor do I really need or want to. I didn't make the music with the intent of making money... I made it because I wanted to. I learned long ago that the kind of music that I wanted to create wouldn't be the kind of music that would make me rich... or even make me enough money to live off of.
If someone else can get some enjoyment out of them, then that's great... if not, then oh well... But they're definitely not going to do any anyone any good just sitting on cassette tapes in my closet.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
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.
If that's the way you feel, then this license is not for you. However, for people who care solely about the art, this license is great.
The free exchange of ideas in classical music led to some great artistic achievements that would not have occurred had strict, modern copyright laws been in place then. For instance, when JS Bach was young, he left his job as a church organist and walked 200 miles (no internet in those days :^) ) so that he could hear the music of Dietrich Buxtehude. He ended up staying several months, studying and transcribing as much of Buxtehude's music as he could. This had a profound influence on Bach's development as a composer. I shudder to think about how Western music would have been affected if Buxtehude, worried about retaining credit for his work, sicked some IP lawyers on Bach and forced him to go away. It is ironic that today, Buxtehude is mostly remembered because of the transcriptions that Bach made. If he had sought to protect his reputation, he probably would have vanished into history by now.
Similarly, Bach may have vanished as well had not a small number of 19th century composers such as Felix Mendelssohn rescued him from obscurity. Though long dead, Bach has mainly remained famous through the interest of other musicians who want to reinterpret his music. My favorite example of this is Bach's Chaccone in D Minor for violin, which has been arranged for piano by Johannes Brahms and for guitar by Andres Segovia, as well as several others. These three versions are all sublime pieces of music, yet only one of them would exist if the current copyright laws existed then. These are not isolated occurences, I could go on for ages about all of the pieces with names like "Variations on a Theme by Some Other Composer", but I think you get the idea.
Anyway, to reiterate my point, fiercely guarding credit for the music you create may not be the best way to establish your reputation. Using this license is not likely to damage anyone's standing as an artist. However, if one only wants to make money off of their music, the OAL may not be a good idea, but the indusrty standard way of doing things hasn't exactly lined the pockets of many musicians either.
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau
Sensitive, are we? I don't see how disagreeing with what you wrote equates to a "personal attack" on you.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
the score is not copyrighted, you can rearrange it as you see fit, as you can with any music over 65 years old as in my understanding (IANAL). The performances ARE copyrighted, now if you want to spend a few hundred thousand dollars paying for your favorite orchestra to rehearse/record your favorite classical songs, so be it. The music is free the performance is not.
I understand all that... I believe I noted that in my original query. And, indeed, perhaps I should have mentioned that I am aware of the Mutopia Project which uses GNU Lilypond to put classic scores online. But I was hoping that there might be some repository of performances of classical music in digital format which had been made freely available.
I really don't expect to find much in the way of the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, or other orchestras with big-ticket CDs. But this world has a wealth of good quality small-name orchestra, including some of the better University orchestras. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those were willing to release recordings of their concerts for free. (I mean, heck, sometimes the performances are free to the public.)
-Rob
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...
Artistic works given away for free for others to improve upon and give them away for free as well? That sounds remarkably like what happens in places that don't sell their culture at the highest price possible. Namely, anyplace but North America. This describes perfectly songs written for cultural events such as Carnival in Rio de Janerio. Or Christmas in Mexico. Or any traditional music in the Far East. It could also describe public domain works from Europe like Germany's classical music, Italy's operas, and England's plays. Although these are experiences sold to the public, they are sold in a fundamentally different way than how it's done in the US. (ie, you could pay to see a concert or a play, or you could get a copy of the script off a friend and do it yourself - results may vary) This music license is probably exactly what the US needs to develop its culture.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
In July 2000, at the H2K conference in New York (2600's Hope conference), Jello Biafra gave the keynote speech. Later that day, he sat on a panel about intellectual property.
He suggested there should be something like an "equal exchange" for artists (equal exchange is the organization that, among other things, makes sure people are being paid fairly to grow coffee). This seems pretty close to the OAL idea from the EFF. It's definitely an idea whose time has come (even though the GNU Artistic License, and other licenses, have been available for years).
On a side note, Jello was/is really pissed that his Vegas song got used in a car ad. He fought a long and very costly legal battle with the rest of the Dead Kennedys, and lost. He wrote the song, but in the end did not control its destiny.
On a side side note, there's a new Dead Kennedys album of live takes from the bay area. It's fantastic! Sorry I don't recall the title right now...
But let's face it, the real issue is societal turbulence.
There have been middlemen between IP producers and IP cosumers, and they have done quite well over the years. Indeed, they have done so well that they have near infinite resources with which to lobby the government.
IP producers and middlemen do not want to lose out in the information age, any more than a Linux programmer wants an all-microsoft world.
But how to accomodate both sides, when both sides demand extremes? One side wants every copy paid for, the other wants everything to be free. It has not been a black and white issue in the past, and should not be one in the future.
Some type of reasonable freedom to share needs to exist, while preventing widespread piracy and copying.
If such a system can be developed, all the arguments about IP and licensing will be moot -- things will remain roughly the same. I can transfer my right to utilize IP content 'A' to another person, but I can't make unlimited copies of IP 'A'.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Honestly, this particular license isn't likely to go real far, and it wouldn't matter much if it did- if you don't like being exploited DON'T be a musician or singer. Charging up and trying to protect musicians against the big bad OAL is beyond laughable. My god, you consider THIS the big threat for the modern-day independent musician?
..when I saw he had trademarked YMMV and AFAIK. Seems to have a pretty loose grasp on IP principles.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
OK, ``just for the record'':
If I write a piece of software and distribute it under a proprietary license,
1. Do you think I'm acting unethically?
2. Do you think my license should be ruled unenforceable?
3. If not, why is it unacceptable to require someone to make certain contracts, but acceptable to require him not to make certain contracts?
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
How many bands and musicians have done bad covers of All Along the Watchtower and Free Bird and Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and I did it MYYYYY Way! are out there? And that's from the commercial versions - the folk tradition shared far more music, sometimes keeping names attached. There was a while that everybody was recording Summertime and the Livin is Easy and Cold Rain and Snow and Pretty Peggy-O and everyting Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie or Alan Lomax wrote, sang, or collected and every female vocalist had to solo everything that Joan Baez soloed, whether they had a voice like hers or not. And this was good. (OK, 90% of it was crap, but 90% of everything was crap....) And you know Woody Guthrie's music far better than you know the music of some singer-songwriter from the 80s who had their 15 minutes of fame and the record company who owns their contract hasn't advertised it since then.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
Brett, I've done a google search on the terms 'Brett Glass GPL' and found a great deal, as you can imagine. I've actually spent a couple of hours reading your various attacks against the GPL in a variety of forums over the last couple of years.
You tend to make a few points that are worth considering, but the value of those points tend to be diluted by your hatred of the GPL, and the lengths to which you will go to attack it and anyone who supports it. Declaring that people who use the GPL are either morons who don't know their own self interest or evil sons of bitches who want to hurt others is not helpful. Describing the GPL as not being an Open Source license due to the discrimination clause when the authors of said license explicitly wrote the Open Source terms to encompass the GPL also does not make you seem like you are interested in listening to anything anyone else has to say on the matter.
The GPL is a mechanism to implement a social contract, where programmers put their software under the GPL to ensure that said software can have continued relevence and utility in the network effect economy of the software world. The value in software is, as you know, not intrinsic to the bits. Microsoft paid $50,000 for QDOS and made untold billions off of it. The reason they did is because DOS became the standard of compatibility for all the software made for the IBM PC, not because DOS was particularly well made. In a winner-take-all software market, what can programmers do if they want to have a piece of software be available for public use and public evolution, without worrying about a bad actor doing as Microsoft did with the Kerberos standard in Windows 2000 and taking a public program or specification private and then using network effects to freeze out other usage?
The GPL is a license of one's own work to the public under specified terms. You seem to think that it is unfair that programmers may not take GPL'ed work and then do anything they like with it, but the same could be said of any commercial license. If you or anyone else wants to create something with functionality similar to a GPL'ed product but under non-GPL'ed terms, then you can very well go off and write it yourself, the old fashioned way. If the labor of others, available under the GPL, makes it hard for you to make a living creating similar work, then that's too bad. That's competition. Those programmers working under the GPL have sacrificed much (as you like to point out) to release their software in that way.
There are a lot of reasons not to use the GPL, even for publicly distributable software. There are many kinds of software that would have better effect and influence if they were to be released under a BSD or Apache style license. That's a debate worth having. But claiming that the GPL is evil, as you do, is unconvincing unless you would claim that any kind of restrictions placed on you for the use of someone else's property is evil. If you want to write commercial software, do like everyone else does and write it yourself, or pay to license it from someone else.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
His post certainly does represent your views, which you've made abundantly clear over and over here. You seize every opportunity to flame the GPL and anyone associated with it, and your complaints always boil back down to the same point - once something's GPLd you can't turn around and make a derivative work proprietary. Oh, the horrors. That's the whole point to the GPL! If you don't like it, don't use it. If you spent half the time coding that you spend flaming, you might amount to something.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
> 1. You may or may not be acting unethically. If you use the GPL with full knowledge and approval of the destructive effects it will have upon others, then -- yes -- you are acting unethically. You are knowingly and willingly hurting people who have done no harm. This is fundamentally unethical according to any code of ethics.
Am I correct, then, in assuming that you will agree with me that placing software under non-free licenses is unethical?
I say this because the GPL is no more "destructive" than a standard "you-can't-touch-this" license: while there are strings attached to it, these strings do not come into play unless you invoke freedoms which a non-free license does not give you. If you treat GPLed software the same way you treat, say, Microsoft software, you will be just as well (or badly) off as you are with Microsoft.
So it is hard to see how the "destructive powers" of the GPL are worse than those of a non-free license. Unless, of course, you believe that the users of computers should not be permitted to compete with the makers of the same computers.
Daniel, assuming that this post will be either ignored or contemptuously dismissed. (yes, I've read Brett's rants before..)
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Let me apply the GPL to your words:
I'm full of horseshit. I think that words grow as people add annotations and interpretation. But it's not the same fucking thinking as reinterpreting music because I'm stupid. Changing things on the sentence level lets me change meaning.
Let text be text. If you want to write annotations, they're separate. They're something new and different. Changing the text itself makes us poorer because we don't know who wrote what. Knowing who wrote code doesn't really matter if you want to use it.
Sigh.
Brett,
is your idea of a business model, taking something that is obviously in the public domain, sneakily trademarking it, and then charging people for access? I find it odd that you critique the GPL on philosophical grounds when your own actions are blatantly in your financial self-interest and devoid of philosophical or ideological rationale.
Bruce Perens may have his own agendas, but at least they are born out of a consistent ideology and principle. You seem to be nothing more than a corporate shill. Perhaps you'd like to share your thoughts and opinions on the DMCA and S3CA ?
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
no i am not familiar with your work, but as I have no reason to think you a liar, i will take your response at face value and apologise to you. But, your single handed rejection of open source software does identoify you as someone who ascribes to an agenda. Maybe you arent a shill, but you are parroting shills. Anyone who claims that open source, or proprietary, software is unifoirmly bad is someone who has an agenda. that may be you, bill gates, bill mundie, or richard stallman. reasonable peope do agree that business models in software are necessary and notice that business models can be built on either OS or non-OS software. as ong as you uniformly insist on one or the other, you're argument will, unfortunately, be mistaken for that of a shill.
my opinion of your trademarl of YMMV is the same, and it also extends to Life, People, and Windows. Though not to TIME-Life, People Magazine, or Microsoft Windows. There are trademarks and then there are responsible trademarks. i'm quite familiar with what trademarks are about, and am consistent in my disregard for their heavy use.
its refreshing to see someone with a mainstream media platform acknowledge thee DMCA is bad. I hope you address its inequities in an article if you havent already (if you have, please send me the link!).
The issue of programmers needing to eat is a red herring, and your trademak is unrelated to that issue.
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
why do you write GPL software if you think its a danger to the software industry? *confused*
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com