Free Music License?

Bernhard Reiter bernhard at intevation.de
Wed Aug 17 11:03:52 UTC 2005


On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 02:33:29PM +0200, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:

> I  was  thinking  that  the  differentiation  between  functional  and
> non-functional was easy. But working on various projects, I found that
> is not the  case following the evolution of  usage and distribution of
> "digital  object".  

It might be difficult, but that does not mean it cannot be done.

> If  we  want  to  keep them  free,  the  right  of
> modification  is   very  important...   

I agree, but there are limit where the compromise in the other
direction actually helps the freedom in the society.

> A  nice   example  is  digital
> archiving.  In digital  archiving, you  have to  protect the  data and
> meaning  of the  data. If  we take  into consideration  just  the data
> (without  the meaning)  it's already  difficult  to keep  free a  work
> without  making modification  (because conversion  is  often (always?)
> modification in digital format).

We could consider a mere transformation just that and not a modification.

> A lot of non-functional work  has a functional description behind. 

Can you give an example for this?

> Can we disallow modification  of "non-functional" free work ?  or does the
> separation make sense today ?
> 
> {For me, the questions are still open...}

You to throw the motivations of the authors into the ring.
Each bit of information needs to be written or assembled which is effrot.
If we want quality works we need to compensate for this effort.

I remember an article that claimed that around in the French revolution,
copyright was completely abandoned and the quality of publications went down
significantly. Unfortunately I do not have the reference on this one.
It was a few years ago.

> > Keeping a single license, that is applied to everything, will only
> > hurt the community in the long run.
> 
> Making new "virtual" boundaries  between digital free works will limit
> their current and future usage.

If the aim is: How do we bring in more freedom into a human and
democratic world, we can make different compromises. 
I think that categories will help the process a lot more 
than burning all copy-rights on the same bonfire, 
like legislators tend to do.

To make realistic suggestions for the politicians,
we need to accept that many people accept the idea of economic reward.

	Bernhard
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