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Pearl Jam Releases Video Under Creative Commons
minitrue writes "Pearl Jam released their first music video in quite a while under a Creative Commons license allowing anyone to "legally copy, distribute and share the clip" for noncommercial purposes. Creative Commons thinks this may be the first video produced by a major label ever to be CC-licensed. So although the file is only available as a free download via Google Video through May 24, fans can continue sharing it online themselves in perpetuity."
These are guys who've been in the arena trying to fight unfairness with Ticketmaster and the bigger Music Houses. While they might not be everyones flavour musically, they are definately on of the bands trying to break molds with how their music is distributed. Maybe this is a little bittersweet, but damn good to see someone trying to get paid without ripping half the world off.
Actually, I just remembered, this could have been so much better if they opened up the licensing to allow remixing and editing, didn't NIN do that and give out Garage Band files of the work too? Maybe they'll open it up by hosting it past the 24th, even torrent it, that'd at least add some credibility and promote the "share" aspect they seem to be pushing, at least one would hope.
In essence, video clips are just advertising, and based on that, this move would not qualify too much on the revolutionary side of things. But, if you think about it as a political statement, it's a very good thing to do in dark times like these. Think about how many folks are going to see such a license for the first time on their lifes. Think about all the fan-kids out there with garage bands that will start seeing open licenses as something cool. Think about how many media droids are going to need to educate themselves on the "open" movement to be able to write a comment on that. Of course, none of this could happen, but how can we know?
Your ad could be here!
I disagree wholeheartedly. That unfamiliar, not-exactly-in-tune-to-the-cent pitch you hear from Eddie's voice (and at some point throughout the song, from every other harmonic instrument, as well), is something missing in today's soulless and sterile music enviornment. Call it "blue notes" (actually bluer "regions" around notes), emotion, angst, feeling; even call it "out of tune," if you want. I'll take it every day over whichever plastic, overcompressed "prostitute with a thug posse"s the labels (albeit, the same bastard labels) give us as options. Auto-Tune (and the like) do have their uses, but this is NOT one of them. There are other places to go if that's the sound you prefer.
What is that supposed to mean?
They produced a music video, as musicians sometimes do.
They released it under a Creative Commons license, which is rare.
This allows people to do rare things with a mainstream artist's creative content, like download it/enjoy it/distribute it for free.
Most artists would have prohibited the above mentioned activities in their license.
Thus, what Pearl Jam has done is interesting news for most of us, and it would benefit fans if other artists followed Pearl Jam's lead.
So what is there for you to possibly complain about? That they haven't sold many CDs at your store? What does that have to do with anything?
Do you have a coherent point to make, or did you just want to post incoherent ramblings?
I know some people don't like RMS, but he nailed this one for sure. Just look at the Slashdot headline for this article "Pearl Jam Releases Video Under Creative Commons"... lumping them all together just as RMS suggested people would. "Creative Commons" without describing the varient doesn't mean anything at all, yet that is the message the headline gives and a real problem with the suite of CC licenses. Certainly, people can specifiy which CC license you are talking about (as the body text of the slashdot article does), but it's still overly confusing.
Consider the analogous slashdot heading "Company Releases Program Under GPL" -- the GPL is a title that unlike CC has a specific meaning, if it's GPL you know what to expect whether you like that license or not. The problem with CC is really worse than the similarily vaguely defined label "open source" because some of the CC licenses are really quite restrictive.
I do understand what the people behind CC are trying to do, and I respect that. I just wish that they had put more effort into promoting the use of individual specific licenses instead of the CC 'brand'. GNU does this well, they have GPL, GFDL, LGPL as their own separate brand instead of just calling it a "GNU license" which doesn't convey the specificness those different concepts represent.
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