Last year, Cultural Commons Collecting Society (C3S) submitted an entry to SXSW's Panel Picker. You may remember our call to arms to help vote for us in late August. Actually, and only with the help of our supporters, we made it. The session "C3S: Putting the Revenue in Creative Commons" has been held last week on Wednesday.
Having conceptualised a good part of Berlin music conference all2gethernow's discussion topics, I suddenly find myself with heaps of thoughts and content not published on ContentSphere. It just would be a shame to not make use of it. These topics are dealing with issues and they are raising questions. I contributed them to a2n because of their relevance in today's music business.
No matter what an expert's study on the case might look like, the proof of availability for a sufficient number of free licensed content to counter GEMA's presumption has to be brought forward to court. The "GEMA assumption" is part of German jurisdiction, therefore it's much likely the ruling has to be found at Germany's highest court, the Federal Court (BGH). But the true challenge is its verifiability.
The licence market is protected by the GEMA presumption. The income of composers, authors and providers (labels) of GEMA licences is protected. Where's the threat? They are "threatened" by new providers, say authors of works under Creative Commons licence. Those are constrained in selling their licenses. Free licensed songs would represent a product substantially expanded by valuable properties. It is no substitute product but nevertheless a competitive one.
The line between private use and commercial use is not that clear, and it is not explicitly defined by Creative Commons. The definition rather relies on the author being the licenser. But in case you are about to license a work - just ask the author if the purpose you are intending is considered private or commercial use. The metadata of any work licensed under Creative Commons should allow for a contact option.
I guess I won't have to comment much on this one. Just imagine this scenario: Warner Music on YouTube finds a presentation Lawrence Lessig did. Warner Music demands Lawrence Lessig to take down the video of his own presentation. No April fool's joke, no misinformation, no fiction. They have done so. And of course, Lessig stands up against.
After publishing the most recent article on Dubber's pitch for Popkomm, I once more browsed Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 1.0 Generic License). Actually, I happened to find a metaphor he used that perfectly fits my comment on ContentSphere which I'd like you to think about.
Andrew Dubber just recently pitched a topic to Popkomm - "Music As Culture". If you read the outline of this hopefully upcoming speech at New Music Strategies, you might recognise a bit of Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture". We've seen the USA extending copyright terms, and European countries suggesting to do so. Just yesterday, the European parliament voted in favour of a prolongation.
You will remember my article on music distribution platform Jamendo going with Creative Commons. Today, I just read news from a week ago that they are about to integrate a new search tool. It supports promoters, agencies, movie makers and game manufacturers by providing search categories like mood, occasion, genre and language. Business customers of Jamendo who would like to make commercial use of tracks offered can purchase licenses within Jamendo PRO.
Michael Masnick had me checking out Richard Smith’s article on the issue of extending copyright. Richard Smith from London’s Guardian features the book "Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind" (free download under CreativeCommons license) by James Boyle, professor of law at Duke Law School, North Carolina. The books’ core statement is that "the world has made a colossal cultural mistake that shames our generation".
