Wired Releases Creative Commons Sampling CD

An anonymous reader writes "In this month's issue of Wired Magazine, there is an included CD featuring songs from The Beastie Boys, David Byrne, among others. The unique thing about the CD is that all of the tracks are released under Creative Commons Licences, making them legal to share."

Sharing is only the half of it

[Raindance]

These songs are licensed under the Creative Commons license-- which means not only are you free to share these songs, but you're free to tinker with them. Extract samples, make new mixes, whatever. In stark contrast to the norm.

This isn't just about "good free music" (though it looks like it is that). It's about artists and labels "getting it" about what creates a culture of creativity and walking the walk.

Seeing this makes me happy.

RD

No commercial sampling for a few.

[plumpy]

Most of these songs are licensed for commercial sampling, but a handful aren't.

Chuck D and the Beastie Boys, two bands who have built their careers on sampling (like most of the artists on the CD) won't let you sample their work commercially. (The other band that doesn't is "My Morning Jacket", but I don't know who they are.)

Bizarre.

Re:Sharing is only the half of it

[Infonaut]

As a point of clarification, there are several varieties of CC licenses [creativecommons.org] (one of the great things about CC), some of which specifically allow derivative works and some of which do not.

"The" Creative Commons licence?

[Chuck Chunder]

You mean "a" Creative Commons licence. There are a variety of them, and what you are permitted to do varies between them.

For example some of the tracks on the disc are only samplable (?) for noncommercial purposes which is probably a restriction that doesn't fit with some peoples ideas of "freedom".

Re:RTFA

[Technician]

I don't see any CD. Are we talking about the October or November issue?

RTFA

Clip magazine, November issue (get the CD free with your copy, on newsstands now!) end clip

Re:contract

[zerblat]

It depends on what the contract says, but AFAIK, standard recording contracts are generally exlusive and cover all recordings that the artist apears on while the contract is valid. Most of the artists on this CD (but not all) seem to be signed to small/independant companies, which should make it easier to get permission for things like this.

Of course, that only covers the rights to the recording. You'll also need permission from whoever is the copyright holder, which usually means the songwriter's publisher, rather than the songwriter.

Ask Chuck D yourself...

[Anonymous Coward]

The nice thing is you can give Chuck D a call and ask him about it yourself. He hosts Unfiltered [airamericaradio.com], a talk show on Air America Radio [www.airamericaradio]. I believe it airs every weekday and can be heard either on the radio in 30+ markets or via RealAudio or MS streaming.

Chuck D's been pretty vocal [rapstation.com] on the side of pro-music sharing, so I'd be interested in anyone who might ask him why he doesn't want to be sampled...

Re:MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

In the olden days, promote interest in the industry and provide standards. I built a pre-amp in the record days, and it had to compensate for the audio curve records used to attenuate the low frequencies and boost the high frequencies to increase the over-all frequency response. This curve was the "RIAA" standard, and that was my first time having anything to do with them.

Morpheus supports Creative Commons

[fcrick]

The file sharing client Morpheus supports Creative Commons, and properly tagged mp3s are recognized in search results in the client. Creative Commons will soon begin tagging all their mp3 files in the Copyright id3 tag. On Morpheus, you can even search 'cc:sampling' and 'cc:sharing', and you'll find and be able to download all properly tagged Creative Commons content.

Re:Ask Chuck D yourself...

[Gordonjcp]

It's all to do with permission. If I sample something, and get permission to use that sample, that might well exclude me giving away permission to let other people sample my sample, if you see what I mean. No?

Ok. I sample a chunk off a record (say, the bassline from Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Relax). I get permission from ZTT to use that sample, but not to distribute it apart from my record. This effectively means I can't give people permission to sample my record, in case they sample the bit off Relax. It's a viral licensing scheme, effectively, where "closed" samples "infect" otherwise open content.

Re:High Quality...

[808140]

"Vorbii" is not the correct plural of "Vorbis". You see, Vorbis is not a second declension masculine noun as is often assumed, but rather a rare 4th declension neutre. In extant literature it was only used in its singular form -- obviously in the glory days of Rome Vorbis could not have been associated with a popular digital music format, and rather described the feeling that one has when one hears a pleasant sound. Understandably, this noun was uncountable and as such was never seen in the plural.

Therefore, when constructing the plural for this noun, you should use the widely accepted English plural, namely, "Vorbises".

Just wanted to clear that up. Vorbii is a pet peeve of mine.

What I want to know is...

[marktaw.com]

Who sanctioned this CD? Most artists when they're signed to a label aren't allowed to perform for anyone else without the label's permission. That's why on every Garbage CD it says "Shirley Manson appears courtesy of..." - She's licensed to Garbage by her record label (or something like that).

So this means that all of these artists are appearing here with the permission of the record labels, though there may be a few exceptions.

An artist like the Beastie Boys can negotiate a favorable record contract with a smaller label. David Bowie does this. He sold the future royalties to all of his songs (it's amazing that he had them in the first place), and now only works with smaller record labels that are happy to have him because he's gauranteed sales, and in exchange they give him complete creative control. It's just a small step to negotiating ownership of your music as well.

An artist like Zap Mama (an excellent group, by the way) may, by virtue of being small, be able to negotiate a favorable contract because they may be able to generate income from things like touring, giving lessons and workshops and so forth, so having a record contract is just a matter of distribution more than promotion... I'm not saying this is the case for Zap Mama, they're actually fairly big, especially outside of the United States, but *perhaps* they could do this kind of thing.

But.... odds are it didn't happen this way. Odds are the record company *owns* the rights to all of these songs, and *the record company* decided to release these songs under creative commons. As ar as they're concerned, the artists may not even have needed to be asked do this.

The question then becomes - why would they do something like this? Are they being foward thinking? Didn't Apple just come out with an ipod pre-loaded with U2 songs? Could it be that the record labels are finally attempting new channels of distribution and figuring out new ways of making money in the digital age?

Another poster praised the Beasty Boys for their ability to change, and surely the Beasty Boys had *some* input into what went on their CD, and some input over the release of their songs under Creative Commons. What I want to know is - how much? And how much was the label.

One song by the Brazilian Minister of Culture...

[Serious Simon]

Interestingly, one of the songs is from Gilberto Gil, not only a well known artist but also the Minister of Culture [cnn.com] in a government which has a positive attitude to Open Source software.

Re:Wrong.

[byolinux]

All the sampling licenses allow for sampling.

Some don't allow commercial sampling.

Re:looks good but,

[westlake]

In the 1850s, when P.T. Barnum sponsored Jenny Lind's tour of the states, revenue from ticket sales was only part of the deal, there were lucrative product endorsements, sheet music sales, etc., etc. Lind had an international reputation, but Barnum's instinct for promotion drove profits from the tour to dizzying heights (front row seats selling for something like $150 gold dollars) and Lind was free to marry and retire at thirty as an independently wealthy young woman.

There are artists who are simply more comfortable and productive in the studio work than in live performance. But a techie forum like Slashdot seems a strange place to argue that live performance is not the only legitimate form of music.

Creative Commons Search Facility

[HangingChad]

For those of you that don't know CreativeCommons also has a content search function for material released under one of the CC licenses. Submitted links are reviewed by CC before they'll add the material to their listings. Just follow the link labled Content.

When I listed my material there CC vaulted to the top of my referrer list in just a couple weeks.

Re:How can the Beasty Boys

[senbei]

From beastieboys.com:

Here's the deal with copy protection on To the 5 Boroughs. Read it.

• There is no copy controlled software on US or UK releases of
  Beastie Boys' To the 5 Boroughs.
• The disk is copy controlled in outside of the USA and UK - which is
  standard policy for all Capitol/EMI titles (and a policy used by all major labels in Europe).
• The copy protection system used for all EMI/Capitol releases including
  
  To the 5 Boroughs is Macrovision's CDS-200, which sets up an audio player
  into the users RAM (not hard drive) to playback the RED book audio on the
  disk. It does absolutely not install any kind of spyware,
  shareware, silverware, or ladies wear onto the users
  system. You can find more information on the technology used
  
  
  here.

This is what EMI has to say about it:

Reports that spy ware is being included on the Beastie Boy's CD, To the
5 Boroughs are absolutely untrue.

While the Beastie Boys CD does use copy control in some territories, there is no
copy control on the Beasties Boys discs in the US or the UK. Where copy
protection is used, it is Macrovision's CDS-200 technology; the same technology
being used for the past several months around the world for all of EMI's
releases in those territories. This Macrovision technology does not install spy ware or vapor ware of any kind on a users PC. In fact, CDS-200 does

not install software applications of any kind on a user's PC. All the
copy protection in CDS-200 is hardware based, meaning that it is dependent on
the physical properties and the format of the CD. None of the copy protection in
CDS-200 requires software applications to be loaded onto a computer.

The technology does activate a proprietary Macrovision player in order to play
the CD on a PC, and that player converts WMA compressed files to audio on the
fly. It also temporarily installs a graphic skin for the player. Nothing is
permanently installed on a hard drive. These details can be verified in the 'install.log'
file in the computer's root directory

Beware Wired adhesives

[irenetheno]

..or something. After extracting my CD from its clear plastic packaging (just a single piece of plastic glued around the CD--holding it against a page), it turns out that it's unreadable.

I guess I *will* have to download it.

mount: /dev/scd0: can't read superblock

Did anyone else's CD survive packaging and transport?

Additionally, it's great to see a CD with the copyright notice, "Some Rights Reserved."

Re:so ?

[ragingmime]

In all the lawsuits that the RIAA has filed so far, there's been some logical basis for their case - and it's usually something like "People our using our stuff without our permission; make them stop." There's some logic in that: the RIAA makes its profit off of intellectual property that people are getting off KaZaa for free. There would be no such logic in the case that you're describing.

I don't believe that RIAA is as fanatical as the /. crowd tend to think. The RIAA is constantly looking out for their bottom line at the expense of "free information," but I don't think that they're as fanatically against free content as you think. I'm sure they don't love the idea (they're selling the stuff; free content can make bought content less desirable), but you don't see anybody suing, say, purevolume [purevolume.com] or music.download.com [download.com] because they have no case and because, in many cases, the labels providing free content are members of the RIAA.

The logic RIAA's arguments have of course been slanted towards their point of view, and "knowing better" is probably defined as "being able to profit and not get in trouble," but there is some logic there, and it would say that a lawsuit wouldn't benefit the RIAA or its members.

I say this, by the way, not as some nutty corporate sympathizer but as someone who's starting a little indie record label [nuclearsoup.tk] that's giving out music for free. There are certainly a lot of problems with the music industry, but you paint labels as totally evil corporate suits. They're certainly interested in the bottom line, but that doesn't make them out-and-out jerks.

By the way, IndyMediaWatch guy, INAL, but if you're the plantiff in a lawsuit and you lose, I don't think that's really a problem - it's not like you'll be fined; it's just that the defendant wouldn't be punished or anything. You have a problem when you lose and you're the defendant.