Free Music License?

MJ Ray mjr at phonecoop.coop
Mon Aug 15 18:21:42 UTC 2005


"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams at gnu.org> wrote:
> Software, music and documentation, articles, ..., are all different
> kind of works, and need different kind of protections. [...]

*Programs*, music and documentation, articles are different kinds
of work. Software is a representation. It can be a representation
of programs, music, documentation or whatever. Arguing that it is
different is rather like arguing that paper and music are different
kinds of work: it's not very illuminating.

The argument that novels are fine as verbatim copying is rather
unfortunate. For example, see the problems with works like "the
Wind Done Gone" which I think might also exist for verbatim-copy
works. Basically, the freedoms to use, study, adapt and copy
are still desirable and "verbatim copying only" isn't that. The
author of a verbatim-copy opinion piece is cutting their own
nose off to spite their face, too: if I need to adapt an idea
to my audience and I can't adapt their expression, then I
don't use their expression and I'll probably only cite the
primary sources.  If their article isn't a primary source
(which most opinion pieces aren't), they lost a credit.

There may be other copyrights not addressed by the GPL which are
interesting for some software. I'm not that familiar with them
and no-one in this thread has yet given useful references (the
aforementioned volumes of legislation are, er, voluminous). I'm
interested in the claim that CC doesn't address them either:
if that's true, what are projects like Free Culture and Remix
doing about performances?

I may also be attending FAVE/3avc this weekend in Bristol,
where we might find people who know more. Anyone got a good
list of questions I could take?  http://www.fave.org.uk/

-- 
MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/



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