Creative Commons Remix Contest

victors writes "Creative Commons and WIRED recently went public beta with CC Mixter which is a Commons pool for music samples and remixes. The site creates a tree of remix/sources inline with every entry and has Flikr/del.ciou.us style tagging. The launch includes two remix contests and features samples and cuts put in the Commons by Chuck D., Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Danger Mouse and tons more. The winners end up on Chuck D.'s next CD and a CC promo disk and there's already been some pretty astounding entries. Of course every upload is under a CC license that allows legal sampling including contest entries and the big name source tracks and samples. I took over the coding for the site from Lucas Gonze (of WebJay) who did a proof of concept. We're currently working on making the site source part of the CC Tools open source project. That version will support remixing of any media including images, videos and Flash mods."

Comments

Is Chuck D.'s next CD going to be free?

[bwcarty]

If not, wouldn't that violate the whole non-commercial use part of the CC agreement?

Re:Is Chuck D.'s next CD going to be free?

[mmkkbb]

No. Chuck D and/or the record label is the copyright holder, and they can license that content however they wish.

Re:Is Chuck D.'s next CD going to be free?

[boodaman]

You're not getting it.

The Creative Commons license doesn't say anything about prohibiting commercial use of content. In fact, depending on which Creative Commons license you choose, commercial use is explicitly allowed.

You might want to check out the Creative Commons site, which explains the different licenses very clearly.

In short, an artist can retain copyright and control of a song, but allow others to freely use parts of the song (or all of the song) as long as they comply with certain restrictions. Sometimes, those restrictions include not using the song for commercial gain without the copyright holder's consent.

If the license covering the uploaded remixes is something like the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license, then the uploaded remix can be used commercially provided the person using it gives attribution to the author and allows distribution using the same license.

You might want to check the Creative Commons site...there's lots of info there. In short, depending on the license covering the uploaded remix, there's nothing at all preventing Chuck D from including the remix in a commercial distribution.

Chuck D. did this on Revolverlution.

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I kind of think of Revolverlution as an open source album. Public Enemy released a few of their tracks on a website, and had a contest for the best remix. The best one got on the CD once it was pressed.

PE has been in the forefront of digital music releases for some time now. Def Jam wouldn't release "Bring the Noise 2000", so PE released it online. Def Jam sued, said they owned all rights to PE music, even though this was all remixes, and didn't want to sell it anyway. In the resultant dust-up, Chuck and Flav split from Def Jam, released the single "Swindler's Lust" for free to show their anger at being owned, and helped in the start of Atomic Pop, what was one of the first Internet focused labels. Atomic Pop released "There's a Poison Going On" (with Swindler's Lust) for $8 download only, $10 pressed, with an autograph from Chuck. They eventually folded, and it was weird seeing "Poison" at Virgin for $18 when I got it for $10. Chuck still has some links from http://www.rapstation.com/ and http://www.bringthenoise.com/ used to be a PE oriented site, now looks like Fark for Hip-Hop news.

Re:Where is the talent here?

[boodaman]

The Creative Commons licenses generally offer exceptions to copyrights. From the CC FAQ:
Is Creative Commons against copyright?
Not at all. Our licenses help you retain your copyright while allowing certain exceptions to it, upon certain conditions.