[pp.int.general] Protest certain musicians?

[Bernhard Schillo]

Nicolas Sahlqvist schrieb:
>
> Free content vs. unfree content is interesting to discuss, I went 
> through sites such as jamendo.com <http://jamendo.com> that claim 
> to distribute free music and listened carefully on some of the tunes, 
> it did not take me long time to find a lot inspired from unfree 
> content where in some cases with the original artists voice in the 
> tune.. It is up to the "artist" that releases the music to decide if 
> it is free content where later a court of law may deem it is not due 
> to how inspired the "artist" was of unfree content. This happens in 
> the commercial music industry and artists loose there revenue in such 
> court cases so how can you be sure that the music that is claimed to 
> be free actually is free?
That's the point why i'm a little bit sceptical about free licenses for 
music.

In my opinion free licenses are not the solution. In the field of 
software it's really a little bit different than in the field of music. 
Software exists since some decades. Music exists since the beginning of 
mankind. Since copyrights were invented the culture has become 
privatized and monopolized. But the digital world on the contrary was 
closely attached to the free software movement from the beginning. So 
the movement for free culture was modeled on the free software movement. 
That's okay, but we have to remember, that music is already much more 
monopolized as software. So if i as a musician want to play some 
standard songs, then with 99,999 percent safety there are songs among 
them that are "owned" by some major labels/publishers, because the "big 
four" own more than 80 percent of all music rights which are traded. But 
that's not my perception of culture. I want to get together with other 
musicians and play cultural standards without ending up in jail like the 
old japanese bar-manager and piano-player, slashdot wrote about some 
time ago: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/09/1351233

That's the point why the culture now becomes splitten by the free 
licenses. I already supposed, that the big players of the music 
industry, the major labels, don't suffer from free licenses. Free 
licenses like CC replace the function that formerly the indie labels 
had. The indie labels were a kind of talent scout for the big labels. 
When an indie label built up an artist which then had some success, in 
most cases the artist later signed a contract with a big label, cause 
they were able to pay more money. Now free licenses play the role of the 
indie labels. If an artist has become famous enough with free licenses 
he also will in most cases sign a contract, cause the advantages are 
big. As long as the policy, the collecting societys, the international 
alliances are ruled by the major labels the policy will be to keep free 
licenses as a playground for semiprofessionals and a talentscout for the 
big industry. The disadvantage will be mainly with the indie labels.

That's why i as a musician watch the free licenses a little bit 
critically. But it seems to me as if the discussion didn't got that deep 
already. I hope that i am understood at least here on the international 
mailinglist. Like i already said in other mails, in germany it's really 
complicated. On the german mailinglist for copyright-related topics and 
whenever it comes to that topic on another mailinglist, Christian 
Hufgard is dominating the discussion and i have not enough time to argue 
against him again and again. Even here on the international mailinglist 
he prevents us from discussing constructively. He manages to keep busy a 
dozen of pirates. Unbelievable...

Regards
Bernhard Schillo