The Deathboy and the Bizarre
Okay, Scott, I'll bite. Please take this in the manner it is intended; sarcastic pub-chatter riling from a friend, indended to provoke thoughtful laughter, not an assault on your integrity. You cunt.
Deathboy wrote:
[lots of bravado about how you make music for the fun of it, how you have a real job and how people seeking to make fame and fortune out of music, in the modern day, are deluded]
Great...
[Creative Commons By Attribution No Commerce licence]
...er... either this is a huge piss-take, in which case colour me guilty for taking the bait, or you really haven't thought your argument through.
I also have a hobby which I enjoy, which I release the produce of for free; I write the odd bit of software and software documentation. I'm also realistic about the fact that such produce has almost zero monetary value in the "new economy".
So I release my material as public domain. That means anyone can do anything with it, for any purpose, without needing my permission or payment, and that I renounce my copyright. If someone later manages to make money from it, good for them, but I get nothing, not even a mention.
Let's be clear; this is not what you are doing. You are restricting what people can do with your produce. And I can only conclude that the reason why you place these restrictions upon your produce, is that deep in your subconcious...
Deathboy IS secretly hoping that limo WILL arrive one day
(New Readers Start Here: A "no commerce" licence prevents people using all or part of your work to make money. A "by attribution" licence means that people must name you if they re-use your work as part of their work.)
Why do you specify a "No Commerce" licence, if you genuinely think that the pay-model for intellectual property is dead?
The only possible reason for you to do this, is you're worried you'll miss out on some huge royalty deal one day, when someone samples your music as part of a chart-storming hit record. Yeah, right.
That isn't going to happen, Scott.
You said so yourself. Your limo isn't coming.
So have the courage of your convictions and take the "No Commerce" off your licence.
Secondly, why do you specify a "By Attribution" licence? You said that you made music just because you enjoy making music, and you don't care who likes or dislikes it. So... why care whether you're credited? Again, the only conclusion I can reach is that, subconciously, you're secretly waiting for that limo, to whisk you away to fame.
But, you know that isn't going to happen. You said so yourself. Your limo isn't coming. Not only are you not going to make money off it, but you're not going to get famous off it either - well, not enough for a limo. So, have the courage of your convictions and take the "By Attribution" off your licence.
As you've probably guessed, I spend a lot of time looking into copyright issues. I have to, my day job is working with open source software. I've read my Stallman and my Raymond. I know my cathedral from my bazaar.
I had an epiphany a couple of years ago. My conclusion was a stark one; the 1990's licences like the GPL and Creative Commons are themselves already out of step with a society in which information is freely distributable.
Twenty years ago, I wrote some shareware for the Atari ST (the late 80's 16-bit home computer that wasn't the Commodore Amiga). Shareware was the precursor to free software; the software could be copied, but if you liked it, you were encouraged to pay the author something. In return you might get an upgraded version, or you might just get a thank-you note, or nothing. In my case, I offered some extra levels for my computer game.
Five years ago I wrote a website which allowed people to read classic literature (HG Wells, Jules Verne and the like) on their mobile phone. I kept the copyright in both the phone website and my old shareware.
A couple of years ago, two things happened on one day. Firstly, my wife nagged me that the mobile-phone-literature website was genius, and that I should try to sell it. Secondly, I received a shareware registration payment for one of my Atari ST games. A shareware payment, for a twenty-year-old game. Somebody actually read the README file and took up my offer to buy a bunch of extra game levels for five quid.
Great, you'd think. But no, it wasn't great. I had the source code and I even had an Atari ST, but... they were in the attic, and hadn't been touched for over a decade. I was now a busy soon-to-be father, and barely had enough time to redecorate the room we'd allocated as a nursery, let alone have time to faff around with twenty-year-old computers.
If I expressed my spare time as financial value, it would actually cost me more than five quid to go up into the actic, dust off the kit, copy the levels disk, go to the post office and send it, and that's presuming I could actually find a spare single-sided 3.5" floppy disk to write the data to (even double-sided PC disks were already being phased out).
Y'see, the time window for my limo arrival had been and gone. Copyright wasn't helping me, it was hindering me. I realised that...
...the most difficult part wasn't writing software or making music, it was finding a way to make money off writing software or making music.
I had no practical idea how to make money off my supposedly genius website, and I wasn't going to figure it out any time soon. Sure, I had an excellent plan for making five quid in twenty years, but no idea how to turn that into something that might pay the bills. So for all you smug creatives out there thinking you're so much better than salespeople, you're not.
Salespeople are the geniuses.
Salespeople are the ones who deserve the limo.
You may hate them. You may despise them. But they're smarter than you. They figured out what you haven't; how to make money from what you'd do for love.
For all the Open Source geeks who think they're so superior to the sales guys in the next office cubicle; you're not. How the hell do you think that your salary gets paid? You know, the one which lets you pay your bills so that you can carry on your hobby of making music or writing software in your spare time?
Even you people, like me, who develop open source software for a living, that's not genius. The genius is the person who found me a job. The recruiter, that's the real genius. They're the reason I can pay my bills. Without them, I'd be destitute, unable to pay my electricity or broadband bill, unable to do my hobby-programming.
Now you can come up with some bull about the new economy, but that fact of the matter is that you still have to pay your bills. And that means money. And that means making a sale. And that means salespeople.
That's not to say the old economy is still valid; it isn't. Value comes from the bespoke, the new creation. In a world where, once created, something can be copied for no additional cost, the only value is in holding back your initial creation until you are promised enough to start work (see Street Performer Protocol)- assuming your work has any value at all. That's the only way the limo is going to arrive - not after you've created your work, but before. The value is in the potential, the anticipated demand, not the finished product. And for that, you need a salesperson, not a copyright agreement.
Copyrighting your work won't help your limo chances, and putting copyright on your work whilst laughing at the limo-wannabees just makes you look like a hypocrite.
Stop waiting for your limo. Abandon copyright completely, go Public Domain.
Deathboy wrote:
[lots of bravado about how you make music for the fun of it, how you have a real job and how people seeking to make fame and fortune out of music, in the modern day, are deluded]
Great...
[Creative Commons By Attribution No Commerce licence]
...er... either this is a huge piss-take, in which case colour me guilty for taking the bait, or you really haven't thought your argument through.
I also have a hobby which I enjoy, which I release the produce of for free; I write the odd bit of software and software documentation. I'm also realistic about the fact that such produce has almost zero monetary value in the "new economy".
So I release my material as public domain. That means anyone can do anything with it, for any purpose, without needing my permission or payment, and that I renounce my copyright. If someone later manages to make money from it, good for them, but I get nothing, not even a mention.
Let's be clear; this is not what you are doing. You are restricting what people can do with your produce. And I can only conclude that the reason why you place these restrictions upon your produce, is that deep in your subconcious...
Deathboy IS secretly hoping that limo WILL arrive one day
(New Readers Start Here: A "no commerce" licence prevents people using all or part of your work to make money. A "by attribution" licence means that people must name you if they re-use your work as part of their work.)
Why do you specify a "No Commerce" licence, if you genuinely think that the pay-model for intellectual property is dead?
The only possible reason for you to do this, is you're worried you'll miss out on some huge royalty deal one day, when someone samples your music as part of a chart-storming hit record. Yeah, right.
That isn't going to happen, Scott.
You said so yourself. Your limo isn't coming.
So have the courage of your convictions and take the "No Commerce" off your licence.
Secondly, why do you specify a "By Attribution" licence? You said that you made music just because you enjoy making music, and you don't care who likes or dislikes it. So... why care whether you're credited? Again, the only conclusion I can reach is that, subconciously, you're secretly waiting for that limo, to whisk you away to fame.
But, you know that isn't going to happen. You said so yourself. Your limo isn't coming. Not only are you not going to make money off it, but you're not going to get famous off it either - well, not enough for a limo. So, have the courage of your convictions and take the "By Attribution" off your licence.
As you've probably guessed, I spend a lot of time looking into copyright issues. I have to, my day job is working with open source software. I've read my Stallman and my Raymond. I know my cathedral from my bazaar.
I had an epiphany a couple of years ago. My conclusion was a stark one; the 1990's licences like the GPL and Creative Commons are themselves already out of step with a society in which information is freely distributable.
Twenty years ago, I wrote some shareware for the Atari ST (the late 80's 16-bit home computer that wasn't the Commodore Amiga). Shareware was the precursor to free software; the software could be copied, but if you liked it, you were encouraged to pay the author something. In return you might get an upgraded version, or you might just get a thank-you note, or nothing. In my case, I offered some extra levels for my computer game.
Five years ago I wrote a website which allowed people to read classic literature (HG Wells, Jules Verne and the like) on their mobile phone. I kept the copyright in both the phone website and my old shareware.
A couple of years ago, two things happened on one day. Firstly, my wife nagged me that the mobile-phone-literature website was genius, and that I should try to sell it. Secondly, I received a shareware registration payment for one of my Atari ST games. A shareware payment, for a twenty-year-old game. Somebody actually read the README file and took up my offer to buy a bunch of extra game levels for five quid.
Great, you'd think. But no, it wasn't great. I had the source code and I even had an Atari ST, but... they were in the attic, and hadn't been touched for over a decade. I was now a busy soon-to-be father, and barely had enough time to redecorate the room we'd allocated as a nursery, let alone have time to faff around with twenty-year-old computers.
If I expressed my spare time as financial value, it would actually cost me more than five quid to go up into the actic, dust off the kit, copy the levels disk, go to the post office and send it, and that's presuming I could actually find a spare single-sided 3.5" floppy disk to write the data to (even double-sided PC disks were already being phased out).
Y'see, the time window for my limo arrival had been and gone. Copyright wasn't helping me, it was hindering me. I realised that...
...the most difficult part wasn't writing software or making music, it was finding a way to make money off writing software or making music.
I had no practical idea how to make money off my supposedly genius website, and I wasn't going to figure it out any time soon. Sure, I had an excellent plan for making five quid in twenty years, but no idea how to turn that into something that might pay the bills. So for all you smug creatives out there thinking you're so much better than salespeople, you're not.
Salespeople are the geniuses.
Salespeople are the ones who deserve the limo.
You may hate them. You may despise them. But they're smarter than you. They figured out what you haven't; how to make money from what you'd do for love.
For all the Open Source geeks who think they're so superior to the sales guys in the next office cubicle; you're not. How the hell do you think that your salary gets paid? You know, the one which lets you pay your bills so that you can carry on your hobby of making music or writing software in your spare time?
Even you people, like me, who develop open source software for a living, that's not genius. The genius is the person who found me a job. The recruiter, that's the real genius. They're the reason I can pay my bills. Without them, I'd be destitute, unable to pay my electricity or broadband bill, unable to do my hobby-programming.
Now you can come up with some bull about the new economy, but that fact of the matter is that you still have to pay your bills. And that means money. And that means making a sale. And that means salespeople.
That's not to say the old economy is still valid; it isn't. Value comes from the bespoke, the new creation. In a world where, once created, something can be copied for no additional cost, the only value is in holding back your initial creation until you are promised enough to start work (see Street Performer Protocol)- assuming your work has any value at all. That's the only way the limo is going to arrive - not after you've created your work, but before. The value is in the potential, the anticipated demand, not the finished product. And for that, you need a salesperson, not a copyright agreement.
Copyrighting your work won't help your limo chances, and putting copyright on your work whilst laughing at the limo-wannabees just makes you look like a hypocrite.
Stop waiting for your limo. Abandon copyright completely, go Public Domain.