{"id":92,"date":"2008-12-20T21:23:54","date_gmt":"2008-12-20T21:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.gregbueno.com\/wp\/vexvox\/2008\/12\/20\/copyright_copyleft_copycenter\/"},"modified":"2008-12-20T21:23:54","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T21:23:54","slug":"copyright_copyleft_copycenter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/2008\/12\/20\/copyright_copyleft_copycenter\/","title":{"rendered":"Copyright, copyleft, copycenter"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I decided to experiment with releasing a CD earlier in the year, I became a member of ASCAP, just to be thorough. I'm nowhere near the point where I could start using ASCAP's services, but I didn't see the harm in signing up.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, I started receiving a e-mail newsletter from ASCAP containing some pretty good links analyzing the changing paradigms in the music industry. One thing that struck me was the vitriolic tone of the newsletter's author against Creative Commons.<\/p>\n

In fact, ASCAP gives some pretty confounding advice<\/a> about Creative Commons. From what I can tell, ASCAP thinks Creative Commons encourages creators to give away all their rights, leaving no recourse for compensation or protection. But I don't get that sense from Creative Commons at all. Lawrence Lessig<\/a>, of course, answers ASCAP's claims, and in doing so confirms a few things that makes me skeptical of Creative Commons as well — but not to the degree of ASCAP.<\/p>\n

When I read that CC licenses are non-revocable<\/a> (see the quesition "What if I change my mind?"), I had to stop and think about it. If I slap a CC license on some music files I post to the web, anyone who grabs that file can use it under that license. If I take that license off, the next person who downloads the file can't use it under that license, but the previous person can. So, uh, how do I make sure that distinction is explicitly noted? That would be up to me, the content creator, to figure out, and I have enough to think about with creating content.<\/p>\n

But for the most part, I don't see much harm in Creative Commons, and I don't see how it would interfere with the mandates of ASCAP. ASCAP doesn't deal with mechnical royalties, and Creative Commons seems more applicable to tangible products — i.e. recordings — than to live concerts and broadcasts. If I screw myself out of mechanical royalties because of an overly-generous CC license, what business is it of ASCAP's? Maybe in the realm of podcasts would ASCAP's involvement be an issue, but putting a file on my web site does not constitute a broadcast or performance. It's distribution of a physical product. And ASCAP clearly stays out of that business altogether.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I'm not going to slap a Creative Commons license on everything I create. In fact, I really don't have any plans to use Creative Commons at all. CC licenses are good for people who want to encourage derivative works, and I'm really not that generous. Every time I think about using a license, my instinct always seems to lean toward more restrictive language. If that's the case, I may as well slap on "All rights reserved" on my work and be done with it.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I'm just trying to get things finished. I'm almost reaching the point where I need to consider these options more seriously, but I'm going to put that off for now.<\/p>\n

Still, Creative Commons doesn't strike me as the bogeyman ASCAP would like me to believe, and at the same time, I'm not convinced it's the panacea for an aging and sickly commercial music model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I decided to experiment with releasing a CD earlier in the year, I became a member of ASCAP, just to be thorough. I'm nowhere near the point where I could start using ASCAP's services, but I didn't see the harm in signing up. A couple of weeks ago, I started receiving a e-mail newsletter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkgj-1u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}