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

do you know how old "re-mixed" material is?

[museumpeace]

The Feb issue of Scientific American has an editorial on the history of the idea of copyrights...it begins with a terse description of how Shakespeare borrowed most of Romeo&Juliet:

If William Shakespeare were working today on Broadway or in London's West End, he would be spending a lot of time with lawyers. The Bard adapted Romeo and Juliet from Arthur Brooke's poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, which Brooke, in his turn, had based on a French translation by Pierre Boaistuau of various Italian stories. The history of creative works, whether Romeo and Juliet or the Beastie Boys' "Pass the Mic," is a chronicle of "borrowing" from others. Intellectual property lawyers might use a harsher word. But the framers of the Constitution always intended to provide owners of creative works with only limited monopolies, ensuring that the public gets the right to fashion new works from old..

Re:The Beastie Boys? David Byrne?

[dcarey]

I understand your situation is different if you are making music for a living, but in recent times there has been such a surge of amateur musicians who are technologically-savvy.

Take me for example. I had the unfortunate realisation at age 25 that I was not going to be a rock and roll star, so I switched gears and got a CS degree. But I told myself that I would always make music, but it would have to be in hobby form from now on. Fortunatley with a CS degree I would be able to afford some nice toys for that hobby (at least in theory ...)

Well it worked, and I'm now in the process of recording an album. No, Island records has not flown me to NY for a posh recording session with cameos by Steven Tyler, but I make great sounding music recording the album 100% digitally, with not much $$ invested, thanks to technologies like this (heck, the software was free -- Garageband).

The point is many people like me who always wanted to record in a studio now can -- they can build one that is relatively inexpensive -- and those are the type of people that enjoy tools like this.

I would not be surprised in the future if we see a few people out there who were working professionals who suddenly become famous for musical works they did as a hobby with no intention of making it big in the first place.

Flikr/del.ciou.us?

[Kenrod]

Flikr/del.ciou.us

I hate it when I slam my head into the keyboard too.

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.