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Scott has a thoughtful entry up wondering if Creative Commons licenses interfere with performing rights organizations like BMI and ASCAP.

Here is my Creative Commons rant as I haven’t had one in a while. As I’ve talked about before here, I just “don’t get” the Creative Commons. They seem like good people with a noble purpose. I get asked occasionally why, being allegedly a web nerd and down with the online music, I don’t have CC licenses on all my stuff.

I don’t really have a good answer other than that licenses, even very gentle ones like the Creative Commons, just don’t seem very progressive and/or rock and roll to me. “Here is my free music… AND NOW HERE ARE THE RULES FOR MY FREE MUSIC.” What’s the point?

It all just seems like artists are worrying about one potential disaster scenario: someone makes money off of their work and they don’t get any. But at the end of the day, most of the people using Creative Commons licenses are so far away from this ever happening that it seems ridiculous to me to even be the least bit concerned about it. What if Madonna rips off one of my songs? First of all: what makes you think Madonna wants your songs? And as an unknown artist, what do you really have to lose if that were to happen?

Being worried you’re going to lose out on the possible royalty winfall feels like lottery mentality to me. The odds are so so so SO small that you will ever win anything worthwhile or be ripped off by anyone powerful. I likes worryin’ just as much as the next guy, but even I can’t get worked up about something as improbable as that.

If there’s money to be made in churning out crappy tracks in a home studio and putting them online, it seems infinitely more likely to me that the money will come from delivering good music and building a fan base that’s willing to support you to make more. That should probably be the thing that artists need to spend a lot of time thinking about, not whether they bought a Super 7 ticket today.

I’m not against the Creative Commons by any means, I just don’t understand what I as an artist have to gain by using their licenses. I’d happily put one on my music the moment I could see some sort of practical benefit to it, but right now I just don’t see the use.

Posted on - November 27, 2003 [at] 7:12 am by Brad
Tagged in - rant

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5 Comments on this post

victor on Creative Commons and Me
November 27, 2003 at 4:06 pm

Well, I’m just learning about this stuff myself and I’m hardly a spokesman for the CC but I see one of the major purposes is to provide an *organized* alternative standardization to corporate profiteering protectionism in the guise of copyrights, patents and specifically: major label “record deals” where you sign away all of your music for the rest of eternity.

You, selling music on this site, can continue doing what you’re doing and no one has to be affected by it. But having CC around makes things easier when you start interacting with other artists, in other contexts — collaborating, remixing, broadcasting live performances, compilations, common distribution points (like magnatune)… Why start from scratch every time your music crosses paths with each of these?

as an aside: Universal Vivendi seems like a bigger threat to the integrity of music as an art than Madonna. The first thing that helped me understand this was unhooking from the idea that music is a commodity like pencils or cars — so it’s not all that freaky for me to see music as something to be shared openly and widely — and when there is profit that it goes to the place it belongs.

Gray on Creative Commons and Me
November 28, 2003 at 2:00 pm

I don’t think it’s a question of why start from scratch, it’s a question of why add restrictions to free?

Brad gives his music away totally utterly 100% no-fooling for free. You can do *anything* you want with it, period, no credit required.

The question is why would you bother doing anything less free then that?

scottandrew on Creative Commons and Me
November 29, 2003 at 6:29 pm

I’ve never thought that CC licenses are about “adding restrictions to free.” They’re more about “lifting some restrictions on copyright,” which plays better with artists who might want to put their stuff on the Web but have been FUD’ed into believing that scurvy P2P pirates are out to get them.

It was explained to me this week that the CC licenses were rolled out back when the RIAA was trying to kill off webcasting; as a result, all of the licenses permit “performances” (which includes broadcasts under US law) royalty-free for noncommercial use. It doesn’t seem to me like they considered all the angles.

victor on Creative Commons and Me
November 30, 2003 at 1:36 am

oh, yes; no doubt the CC licensing is an evolving thing.

“why add restrictions to free?”

This assumes there are two ways to convey music: for pay and for free. Period. Following this logic there is never any sane reason where the same piece of music in different contexts can be either or both. (This is what call Brad’s “lottery mentality.”)

There are other scenarios for which CC is a viable alternative. Again, I refer you to magnatune.com — I’ve talked with people there, they don’t strike me as being obsessed with “Lucky 5 Syndrome. They just don’t want their potential customers prosecuted for copying files.

mIKON FRiNK on Creative Commons and Me
August 5, 2004 at 3:53 pm

Well… The main thing is not free or restricted… Or yes it is… But that’s the whole point…

Comercial Artists will say “here’s my ‘free stuff’” at concerts or whatever. But if you get a free album because so and so was late getting to the show and felt bad… (I got a $25 2CD set one time because a flight was canceled and the guy had to reroute things and delay the show by an hour…)Nut does that mean that he smudged off the copywrite…

If you don’t make a fuss about copywrite does that mean your rights are not protected? Even i you never excercize them…

CC gives you a way to make your intentions clear… Sinces they are working hand-in-hand with the FSF (About the most hippie-minded rock-n’-roll organization in the professional computer world…) It would be hard to call them anything but advocates for the free world…

But anyway thanks for the link to Scotts page… I’ve been wondering the same thing and having trouble getting Google to pull anything of relivance except your entry… Even if you’re dissing the whole thing you gave me the info I needed! – I like that!

Rock on!

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