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Wired Releases Creative Commons Sampling CD
An anonymous reader writes "In this month's issue of Wired Magazine, there is an included CD featuring songs from The Beastie Boys, David Byrne, among others. The unique thing about the CD is that all of the tracks are released under Creative Commons Licences, making them legal to share."
These songs are licensed under the Creative Commons license-- which means not only are you free to share these songs, but you're free to tinker with them. Extract samples, make new mixes, whatever. In stark contrast to the norm.
This isn't just about "good free music" (though it looks like it is that). It's about artists and labels "getting it" about what creates a culture of creativity and walking the walk.
Seeing this makes me happy.
RD
Most of these songs are licensed for commercial sampling, but a handful aren't.
Chuck D and the Beastie Boys, two bands who have built their careers on sampling (like most of the artists on the CD) won't let you sample their work commercially. (The other band that doesn't is "My Morning Jacket", but I don't know who they are.)
Bizarre.
I thought all "artists" gave copyrights to the company for their works ... can the artists do such a thing because I doubt that RIAA would :-\
just my 2 bytes
Not all the songs allow sampling...
Sampling Plus: Songs under this license allow noncommercial sharing and commercial sampling, but advertising uses are restricted.
Noncommercial Sampling Plus: Songs under this license allow noncommerical sharing and
noncommercial sampling.
Music, photos and film/video footage gain value the more they're heard or seen; they can't be diluted or depleted like physical property. Ultimately artists who approve sharing and sampling of their work will sell more music. Free downloading has worked well for us, a historical film archive, and led to more business. See http://www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php.
Funny, I don't see anything from Metallica on this CD.
MPAA is Motion Picture Association of America, has nothing to do with music, I believe.
They don't have much to do with movies either. Just with suing people.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It could be legal problems -- If they live by sampling, they'll have to get the rights to release the samples that they're using.. They may not have been able to get a release for anything more than non-commercial sampling.
As for the flip-flop, they may be experimenting to see which approach sells more records, or they may be trying to get back into the good books of all the fans they would have pissed off with a DRM'ed CD.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The file sharing client Morpheus supports Creative Commons, and properly tagged mp3s are recognized in search results in the client. Creative Commons will soon begin tagging all their mp3 files in the Copyright id3 tag. On Morpheus, you can even search 'cc:sampling' and 'cc:sharing', and you'll find and be able to download all properly tagged Creative Commons content.
Your signatures belong to me.
The Creative Commons organization always had multiple licenses with different terms; it never meant just one thing (so the complaint was never valid). But more importantly, this matches "free software" licensing and "open source" licensing which are also varied in what is allowed and what copyright powers are retained. You can't know that a program is "free software" or "open source" and know that everything you might want to do with the work is allowed (most licenses don't cover software patents, for instance); you can't be sure what is allowed downstream for derivatives from your derivative (some licenses don't have a copyleft, for instance).
How is this new set of CC licenses new? I can't answer that for everyone, but only one thing changes for me: I host "Digital Citizen" on alternate Wednesdays from 8-10p on my local community radio station (WEFT 90.1 FM). On my show, I air only things which can be copied and distributed (at least verbatim). CC-licensed music and talks make up a good deal of my show (in the language of CC licenses, I make a "Collective" work).
The Sampling license doesn't allow the entire work to be copied and distributed. But the other sampling licenses (Sampling Plus, and Non-Commercial Sampling Plus) do allow the entire work to be copied and distributed. So, for the first time, knowing that a work is a CC-licensed work is not enough to merit inclusion in my show. I have to make sure a CC-licensed work is not licensed to me under the Sampling license.
This isn't a big deal, but it is a change.
Digital Citizen
Well, before the phonograph, musicians had to *gasp* PERFORM to make money. Then came a sort of golden age, where you could theoretically make a few records, then sit on your ass and watch the money roll in.
Now it seems like that golden age is coming to an end, forcing artists who can't perform live out of business. A good development, IMHO.
Meep.
Ok. I sample a chunk off a record (say, the bassline from Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax). I get permission from ZTT to use that sample, but not to distribute it apart from my record. This effectively means I can't give people permission to sample my record, in case they sample the bit off Relax. It's a viral licensing scheme, effectively, where "closed" samples "infect" otherwise open content.
Metallica are selling FLACs of their live concerts here. In their FAQ they acknowledge that they know they aren't DRM protected and can be shared.
The main problem with this is Slashdot itself. When I discovered this at least six months ago I thought this was pretty major news as Metallica were one of the main, vocal opponents of DRM free music, which of course means it easily can be distributed via P2P file sharing. Do you think my Slashdot submission was noticed ? I don't ever remember seeing it.
Maybe Slashdot has secretly been taken over by RIAA, and don't want Metallica's change of heart to be known about by anti-DRM proponents.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf