Hilary Rosen Loves Creative Commons

13.7Billion Years writes "Former RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen has written a piece in Wired extolling the virtues of Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons licensing, providing such juicy tidbits as 'I'm still cynical about its origins, but I've come to love Creative Commons,' and 'the industry ought to embrace Creative Commons as an agile partner providing tools for new ways to do business.' She's not quite ready to pooh-pooh the current all-or-nothing licensing regime just yet but this sounds like good progress."

Comments

Convenient

[Hatta]

Shame she's not in a position of power anymore. Funny how this happens after she leaves.

Open Source Tunes

[Rightcoast]

The issue also includes a 16 track Cd with Chuck D, Beastie Boys, Danger Mouse and others that can be sampled, burned, and used under Creative Commons

Re:incompatable with gpl

[MP3Chuck]

" it's still IP, and thus should be more open."

What the hell more do you want? The individual unmixed tracks ready to load up in Pro Tools (or should they use a more OSS-friendly file format)? The instruments they were played on and sheet music to go with it?

Some people will never be satisfied ... damn.

Really odd

[blueskies]

No one finds it really odd that suddenly she writes an article supporting the CC? What's in it for her? What is the underlying motive?

Maybe she is trying to subvert the CC from within?

Hilary Rosen

[Infonaut]

In this article Rosen revealed a bit of herself. She's not the one-dimensional creature that a lot of RIAA-haters have made her out to be. Her position at the RIAA was never easy:

The presumption in these attacks was that Rosen was calling the plays for the music business and not the other way around. She seems to prefer it that way; she gets paid $1 million a year to shelter the executives from criticism. But in fact, according to those closest to her, she's not the hard-liner in the crusade against file-sharing. Yes, she's the frontwoman. But there are five CEOs backing her up - and some of them make her look like Mary Poppins. "They still think they should put teenagers in jail," says technology guru Esther Dyson. In fact, Rosen tried to steer the labels toward the online future long before they saw it coming. In the mid-'90s, Rosen brought Dyson to a conference of music executives to brief them on how technology would transform their business. Dyson described for them the inevitability of digital delivery, an eventuality Rosen says she had begun to understand but wanted her bosses to hear from an outsider. But as Dyson spoke, the label executives became defensive, then furious. By all accounts, the meeting devolved into a shouting match.

Sure, as the head honcho at the RIAA she was on the wrong side of a lot of issues, but she's not exactly Pol Pot either.

Re:Hilary Rosen

[quantaman]

So since she wasn't murdering people and instead concentrated on suing 12 year old s and reducing our freedoms, she deserves a cookie or something?

And look at all the great PR that's gotten them, besides if she didn't do something as drastic it is very likely her replacement would of (and perhaps more). In the struggle for freedom sometimes the greatest sacrifice is by those who would have you believe they work for the enemy so that they may fight them from within. Now I don't believe for a second Rosen was in an allout subversive struggle against them but I do feel she was a more moderate force trying to hold back the true extremists, perhaps given the organizations she was representing it was all we could of reasonably hoped for.

Funny how things change...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilary's outlook has changed but not her underlying assumptions. When she was the public face of the RIAA, she knew on what side her bread was buttered. I'm sure her departure wasn't entirely voluntary. The Pigopolists no doubt wanted to (and as a matter of fact, did) put in her place someone who would get more favorable attention from the new regime in Washington than would an openly gay mother who had previously been one of the principal organizers of Rock the Vote.

She had previously said that she did her best to move the recalcitrant organization she was in to recognize the unstoppable synergy between the advance of technology and human creativity. On the other hand, she was well paid to represent their interests as they saw them, and did so all too well.

It's at least refreshing to see her moving in the direction she is now. By contrast, think of David Boies....euuuuch!!!!!

Intellectual property tax?

[tepples]

Now, if the creative equivalent of the farm tools is pens, paper, instruments, and recording hardware, but you're missing out on the exclusive right to farm the land -- the tools won't do you any good.

And without a way to pay property tax on the land, the land won't do you any good either. To continue this analogy, we need an intellectual property tax such as that specified by this bill.

Re:Problem with "Farmers" Analogy

[An Onerous Coward]

You've been out of the loop for a while. The Republicans wisely got rid of "The Death Tax", and in their enthusiasm to eliminate it, they even voted down a Democrat proposal to keep the estate taxes only on money above and beyond the first billion of net worth.

Thanks to the foresight of our leaders in Washington, we are all safe to pursue the American Dream of working hard, skimming a bit off the top, sticking it to a bunch of pensioners, and ensuring your descendants to the fifth generation never have to do anything productive.

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Such a philosophy doesn't sit well with a portion of the Slashdot crowd who think that society would be better off if artists and writers knew their place -- give away your stuff for free, and hope that you make money by playing live concerts or live book readings. If somebody violates your copyright, don't fight back too hard -- you should be lucky to get what you get. And a big hearty fuck-you if you're uppity enough to put copy protection or DRM on your work -- what's done with your work should be the choice of the Slashdotter, not you. If you have the same aspirations of being a millionaire that, say, a (insert typical Slashdotter profession here) has, check yourself -- you're an artist, and if wandering the countryside in search of scraps was good enough for artists of the 13th century, it's good enough for you. In short -- know your place. A farmer gets to leave a legacy for his children. You don't.

[wearily] The people who say this kind of thing are hardly ever artists or writers themselves. Very often they're parasites (like Rosen and Valenti) who want to get rich off artists' work, however.

I am a writer, among other things; I make a not-insignificant amount of money off writing, and you can be damn sure I want every penny my books earn. However -- I do not believe that my work is perpetually my property, or that of my heirs; perhaps more to the point, I do not believe that it is perpetually the property of my publisher, or any corporation, and most especially not of scumsuckers like the RIAA, the MPAA, or Disney (this last being mentioned because it's largely due to the Mouse's efforts that we have the absurdly extended copyright laws we do.) The government makes, or is supposed to make, a deal with the creators of original work: you put your work out there for people to enjoy (and hopefully buy) and in return, we will protect your right to profit from that work for a limited time. Period. If you don't like it, lobby to amend the Constitution.

My equivalent of a farmer's field is not my book. That would be my computer, which is unlikely to be of any use to my children by the time I die ... My books are the equivalent of a farmer's crop. No rational person would argue that farmers should be paid in perpetuity for crops they harvest once.

last in line

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone else has already ripped your faulty analogy to shreds. That won't stop me from doing it too, however.

The musical artists already don't leave a legacy behind under the current system, because they don't own their copyrights. If you want the RIAA to make you famous, you have to give all your work to them, so THEY can leave it behind for THEIR children. You, the artist, are currently left empty-handed.

Not that it matters, even if artists these days did keep their copyrights, your logic would still be faulty. I just wanted to point out that even if your logic were solid, it still wouldn't apply, because the current system doesn't work that way either.

Incidentally, They Might Be Giants, the greatest band in the world, has been giving their music away for free since the day they started performing. They retain all their copyrights, because they did not do business with the RIAA. In other words, they played the game the way the slashdot crowd would like to see it played...and they have been making a living at this for 20 years, which is much longer than most RIAA bands can even hope for.

So, everything you said is wrong from every possible perspective.

Re:last in line

[shark72]

"The musical artists already don't leave a legacy behind under the current system, because they don't own their copyrights. If you want the RIAA to make you famous, you have to give all your work to them, so THEY can leave it behind for THEIR children. You, the artist, are currently left empty-handed."

For what it's worth, the way it typically works in a recording contract is this: if you write your own words or music (as opposed to simply being a singer or performer) you keep those rights (that's how composers and lyricists make a lot of their money -- e.g. for radio or juke box airplay, it's the composer and lyricist who make money, not the record company). The record company usually has the copyright on the recording (although it's often shared with the engineer and/or producer). If you don't want a record company to have a copyright on a recording of a song you've written, the best way is to go it alone and come up with the money to hire the engineer and the recording studio. Once you're established, you get more leverage here. This is the reason that many artists end up starting their own record label.

"Incidentally, They Might Be Giants, the greatest band in the world, has been giving their music away for free since the day they started performing. They retain all their copyrights, because they did not do business with the RIAA. In other words, they played the game the way the slashdot crowd would like to see it played...and they have been making a living at this for 20 years, which is much longer than most RIAA bands can even hope for."

I'm a huge TMBG fan as well. Elektra/Asylum has the rights to lots of their earlier recordings (from the Flood era). I was glad to see that they went the indie route when they weren't cranking out the hits necessary to get big label distribution. The Spine was released on a much smaller label (Zoe) with which they presumably have more leverage. You probably know more details about the arrangement than I do.

"So, everything you said is wrong from every possible perspective."

Please take it down a notch.

Re:Rosen's view of copyright..

[Red Pointy Tail]

That's why they have high inheritance tax - if you didn't earn it, then you really shouldn't be enjoying it that much.

Maybe they should have a copyright inheritance tax or something - upon death, 50% of the copyright revenues goes to the government, and after two generations most companies won't bother to hold on to it.

Re:incompatable with gpl

[GreatBunzinni]

What the hell more do you want? The individual unmixed tracks ready to load up in Pro Tools (or should they use a more OSS-friendly file format)? The instruments they were played on and sheet music to go with it?

Now that you mentioned it, I believe that the idea of a user being able to remix/remaster the song to be very interesting. And I'm not only thinking about the creative side. For example, if a certain song was presented in a format where the varius tracks were unmixed and the mixing was made in real time, the listener could specify certain surround properties which he liked best. He could shut up the vocalist to get an instrumental/karaoke track, listen to an individual instrument or even reorganize an entire orchestra. That sounds pretty cool to me. There aren't any technical limitations to achieve this. DVDs are more than capable of holding the data needed. Real time mixing isn't a problem either.

Some people will never be satisfied ... damn.

There was mono... Some people weren't satisfied. Then stereo... Some weren't satisfied. Then surround... Some people weren't satisfied. Then... Then... You follow the pattern.