[advocacy] Open/Free/Personal music licenses

[Daniel James]

> Daniel, is there any plan for 'Open music licenses for
> dummies' or 'How to avoid being cheated by record companies?'

It's something that would be good to get into a musicians 
site/publication. Any volunteers?

As for Ogg Vorbis not being a 'secure' format, we have to question 
what security means to the various parties involved. The conventional 
definition of the content industry is that 'secure' means 
'pay-to-play'. We might define it instead as 'authenticated', ie that 
an encryption key proves that the artist personally authorized the 
release of the track on the internet.

I can envisage a track being pay-to-play without the consent of the 
artist - secure in the first sense but not the second. For example, 
the artist may prefer to have their music freely downloaded and 
shared, either for altruistic or marketing reasons, but the record 
company says no.

If I was signed to a record label that released my music in Windows 
Media Player format, I'd be upset that the people downloading it 
thought I supported Microsoft and all they stand for... 

When an internet user downloads a pay-to-play track, how do they know 
that the artist is getting a cut of the money? Even the 'official' 
site of a musician might be out of their control, especially if they 
are not tech-savvy.

Anecdote: I used to live around the corner from a studio belonging to 
a group world-famous in the 1960's. I phoned them up to say that 
their name had been taken as a .com by some web parasites who would 
sell it to anybody for $thousands, and that I'd help them get it 
back. They didn't have a clue what I was talking about, and a few 
days later I got a letter from their office - created on a 
typewriter.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I haven't seen a 
mechanical typewriter in use for at least ten years.

Daniel

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