Rip. Sample. Mash. Share.
Thomas Goetz, Wired Magazine Articles Editor, spoke to Creative Commons South Africa about the Creative Commons licensed CD that they’re launching in November.
Why did Wired decide to support this initiative?
Creative Commons licenses could be part of what the music industry needs to shake out of this stalemate between extreme restrictions and all out anarchy. Wired saw an opportunity to help that happen, by helping recruit some big-name musicians to try out a license and put out a CD. It’s an experiment, but one we hope will have some impact.
How difficult is it to convince popular artists (and more importantly, their recording companies) like David Byrne to come on board with cc?
Artists like Byrne were easy – they saw the promise of CC, and the role of CC, and they signed on early. Other bands took more convincing, and some, of course, opted not to participate. Same with the labels – some saw it as a worthwhile experiment, others didn’t see what good could come of it.
Do you think that the onslaught of the recording industry on civilians is a purely American phenomenon?
Intellectual property is becoming an issue of global significance, from pirating in the music and film industries to the patenting of seeds in India or Brazil. The problem is one of balance: how do you protect the interests of intellectual property holders – in this case, record labels – to encourage them to create new product, while providing enough latitude for the culture at large to appreciate and use that product without onerous restrictions. So what’s happening in the US with the RIAA is just the tip of the iceberg in finding that balance.
Do you think that cc provides a good enough (quality) alternative to ‘illegal music’ on the Internet?
It all depends who decides to use the licenses. That’s the point of the Wired CD – we wanted to get the best, highest caliber musicians we could, to show that it’s a worthwhile option for artists, no matter how popular – even a massive group like the Beastie Boys.
Will the music by David Byrne and Gilberto Gil be available under a cc license for others to remix?
The songs that each of them have on the Wired CD (available in the November issue) are available for sampling, mashups, and the like – but the license stipulates that the use must be ‘highly transformative.’ so a simple remix doesn¹t qualify – they must be used as building blocks for a whole new song, not just a new edit of the same song.
What do you think about the idea that cc is just another way of flooding the Internet with more American culture – but this time, for free?
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘flooding the internet with more American culture’ – the internet is a decentralized network, so it is whatever people want it to be. The fact that there’s more content from the US is a symptom of the fact that the US is more connected than other parts of the world. But nobody’s ‘making’ that happen, it’s simply a reflection of the network itself. In time, as the rest of the world catches up in internet access, I imagine that we’ll see a whole new balance.
As for the CC angle, well, anybody anywhere can use a CC license, and I know that CC is working hard on beefing up its international licenses. So I’d argue that CC is helping change the balance of what cultures are represented on the Net.
Any future plans for collaborating with and/or supporting cc?
None right now, but we’re still in the thick of this thing.