Category: .

don’t know that band, nope.

Or that one.

Or the other one either.

And it’s not because I’m old and out of it, it’s because there are that many bands. I mean, I *am* old and out of it, but even if I wasn’t the answer would be the same.

MP3 blogs are a never-ending series of blockbuster microbands.

I’m not bringing this up to put down MP3 blogs or blockbuster microbands, but to point out that it almost never makes sense to think somebody else should have heard of an act that you know. The act might be huge in its genre, but genres are very thinly sliced. Every day of every year I hear another five new bands mentioned. The only thing that’s wrong with this picture is when you have to say “no, I don’t know them,” because that is almost always going to be the answer.

cc0 #2

The main theme in conversation related to yesterday’s post about the CC0 license was that it reduces the amount of trouble it takes to publish music under a permissive license. Commenters differed on whether that was valuable or even a good thing at all.

Crosbie Fitch:

The GPL is a license that restores liberty to the public (otherwise suspended by copyright and patent), albeit at the expense of friction (easily surmountable by coders used to it). CC-SA is somewhat similar.

The CC0 is a license/waiver that unencumbers the art from constraint by the author’s copyright, and friction due to (well intentioned) licensing conditions, albeit at the expense of not being able to liberate anyone apart from the immediate users. It may be that opprobrium will be enough to prevent derivatives of CC0 works from being re-encumbered with copyright.

There is a similar issue (and confusion) between manumission and laissez faire between the GPL and BSD licenses (as between CC-SA and CC0). The GPL is actually freer (in restoring more people’s liberty), whereas the BSD is least encumbered by licensing conditions (the licensee is free to suspend others’ liberty).

teru:

why complicate something that’s really not necessary yet? I am frustrated seeing a new license when I don’t fully understand the old ones yet. Or more accurately, I have never really seen a real example of a CC license giving more or less musical freedom to anyone yet. In theory yeah but honestly, no.

Secondly without attribution, data gets lost. If I like a sound I hear in a work and want to find it, CC0 won’t help or most likely misinform me of it’s origin. CC0 in my opinion will mess thing up and make people lazy.

Mike Linksvayer:

CC0 means attribution is not legally required. It doesn’t mean attribution is automatically lost or that releasing under CC0 is the equivalent of publishing anonymously. … Whether you want to legally require attribution depends on how much being able to legally demand credit is worth to you in creating more friction around uses of your work.

For myself as a musician, I’m a white collar worker who makes music purely as a hobby and I’m damned happy when my music is used at all. But then again I work hard to play well and the biggest constraint on getting better is that I don’t get compensated for playing time. If only I was in a position to impose friction I might be able to make better music.

advocacy for CC 0 over BY-SA

Victor Stone: Consider: Zero

Earlier this year Creative Commons formally introduced a license waiver called CC0 (CC Zero). I urge musicians, as strongly as I can, to consider using this license waiver for the audio samples they put into the Commons.

Audio samples licensed with CC0 with a CC0 waiver are the most flexible and least restrictive. Put another way, they carry the most freedom. Isn’t it hard enough to be creative?

No matter how highly I consider my musical work on my best days, I would like to think there is balance between my personal desires and choking off my great granchildren’s freedoms to speak creatively.

I’ve been putting most of my own recordings into the public domain lately, but mainly because it’s the only license certain to be compatible with anything that somebody might want to remix with. Also, there’s an issue of license obsolescence that I worry about. All I care about is being heard.

Victor’s point about freedom is compelling too, though. That’s kind of a revelation to me. I remember Gordon Mohr of Internet Archive and Bitzi saying something similar 7-8 years ago, and I wasn’t ready to get it. Gordon, you were right.

Also, there’s an issue with music that’s different from code: musicians just don’t understand copyright in any way. Burdening them with the difference between the different flavors of CC license is a non-starter.

goose clone at Rhapsody

Rhapsody has replaced the music player in their site with a new player that is strongly influenced by Yahoo Media Player.

Here’s what it looks like by default: (click through to the full size image to really examine it)

Here’s what Yahoo Media Player looks like when playing back Rhapsody tracks:

Notice that Rhapsody’s player seems to be docked within the page, not the viewport. You’d think that means that you could scroll the track controls offscreen, losing one of the key advantages of YMP. But check out this smart improvement: if you scroll down far enough to push the track controls out of view, a floating mini-player gets stuck to the top of the viewport until you scroll back to the maxi-player:

Major music sites using players directly influenced by Goose/YMP now include Bandzoogle, Rhapsody, Hype Machine, AOL/Streampad, TheSixtyOne, and Lala. I realize that keeping a tally is gross, ungracious, and egotistical, but I need to do it for the sake of my resume.

techdirt on right to play

Mike Masnick at Techdirt… on the “right to play” post:

Oh, and don’t forget, the entire reason why South Korea is suddenly putting in place draconian, self-damaging, protectionist, copyright policies is because the entertainment industry went on a huge lobbying campaign claiming that South Korea was a haven for piracy, and then had the US gov’t include requirements for much more stringent copyright laws in a free trade agreement — despite the fact it was about the opposite of free trade. The entire purpose wasn’t free trade, but protectionism of the US entertainment industry. Soon after that passed, we noted that it would require shutting down any service that permitted unauthorized reproduction… and we’re seeing the impact of that now.

South Korea has been a leader in internet technologies. It had real broadband (both wired and wireless) to nearly every home well before almost every other country. As such, it has a thriving internet industry… but it has also had a thriving entertainment industry made up of execs who embraced the internet. Folks like JY Park, who recognizes that selling music directly is the past, but by embracing that fact, is building a media empire. But, of course, the folks back in Hollywood don’t want to compete and don’t want to change… so they got the US gov’t to force South Korea to put in place these ridiculous copyright laws that help them and harm pretty much everyone else.

Up the road from me in Hollywood, the musicians stand to lose plenty: if all free range MP3s are assumed to be infringing, making music on the internet will be de facto illegal.

Funny extremist commenter over at Techdirt says that Google should be forced both to host and to pay royalties for hosting:

Google shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this sort of thing. The law was put in place for a reason, to make uploaders, and sites holding those uploads, pay suitable penalties to Intellectual Property rightsholders. For Google to avoid the penalties simply by blocking such uploads, means that the rightsholders lose out on payments which are an important part of their livelihood. Don’t they have a right to be reimbursed for their hard, thankless work? To anybody who believes in the morality of Intellectual Property rights, this is simply unacceptable.

the right to play #2

I don’t know of a freedom or right to infringe musical copyright in the role of a listener. That seems like bullshit to me. You want to listen to some band, you’re attached to the consumerist feeding tube, pay up.

I do know of a freedom or right to make music. Musicians have an inalienable right to play. Nothing can disable that. Law should respect it, but it doesn’t either create or destroy it.

The right to play is universal. It doesn’t apply only to famous people, to performances made with the intent to profit, or even to the talented. Anybody who feels like cackling a tune in the shower has just as much right as Justin Timberlake does to sing live at the Grammys.

the right to play

Korea Times: Google Bans Music Uploads From Blogs

Google has banned subscribers to its Korean blogging platform, Textcube (www.textcube.org), from uploading songs onto their blogs, citing the country’s new anti-file sharing provisions aimed at thwarting online piracy. This is the first time that the U.S. giant has disabled its bloggers from posting music files on their personal Web pages.

Predictably, the move is touching off fierce criticism from Internet users who are accusing Google of clipping their freedom to use copyrighted content.

The problem is not the freedom to use copyrighted content. I don’t know of any such freedom. The problem is the right to play.

A guitar teacher will be unable to post lessons, and a guitar student will be unable to post homework. Two musicians working together at a distance will be unable to share unfinished multitracks. An unsigned classical quartet will be unable to post samples of their work. Only the tiny few who work on commercially published recordings will still be able to be heard, and even only the small proportion of their recordings that are completed commercial works will be heard.

Most musicians are amateurs with no financial interest in copyright. The proportion of amateurs to professionals is so overwhelming that the word “musician” is a synonym for “amateur.” Whenever copyright is wielded on behalf of the professionals in a way that makes it harder for amateurs to make music, it is hurting musicians.