29 Oct
2003
29 Oct
'03
10:39 a.m.
On Wednesday 29 October 2003 04:42, Frank Barknecht wrote:
I mean, programmers like Paul Davis put months and
years of
work into free software, too, without holding back the right
to commercial use. Commercial use only has to follow "the
rules" like: no copy-protection, no rights' stealing, etc. And
Paul surely wants to eat, too. Why should artists get to keep
more rights for themselves than the programmers?
It's not so much "more rights" as "different rights". In the
software arena you have source code you can hold back or give
out, and the GPL requires that you give it out. This is because
there are two ways to "use" software.... you can run it (the
typical definition of "use") or you can incorporate some of its
code into your own program.
While this certainly happens in music, whether by sampling in the
case of electronic forms or by quoting melodies and chord
progressions in more traditional forms, there's not quite the
same synergy to this kind of "source code sharing" as there is
in programming. I haven't seen a free music license yet that
requires you to make your original unprocessed multitrack
recordings and/or sheet music available if you use music under
the license in your own project, for example.
So we look at the effects of the GPL and try to come up with
something analogous for music. The GPL is basically written so
that the code can spread far and wide without being co-opted and
ultimately controlled by some big corporation with an agenda.
In the music biz, that big corporation is analagous to the
RIAA-associated record companies, or perhaps the people that use
music in commercials, movie soundtracks, etc. I think the
definition varies for each artist.
The best I've been able to come up with for my own experiments so
far is "verbatim electronic distribution via the internet
permitted, all other rights reserved, contact me if you're
interested". Maybe there's some existing free music license
that's this way (kind of like the dual GPL/commercial license
used by Qt and some other projects.) But even more than
programmers, musicians have different goals with their music. I
don't think you'll ever see one particular free music license
become ascendant for that reason, and I don't know what a good
catch-all license would entail. But I understand the intent of
the "no commercial use" licenses. They wouldn't qualify as
FSF-approved free software licenses, but then, they're not
covering software.
Rob