[A2k] UK: Creative Commons and the Music industry

[Michelle Childs]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/28/creative_commons_talk/
By John Oates
Published Thursday 28th April 2005 13:43 GMT
Creative Commons president Paula Le Dieu was in London last night to chair
a panel debate on what Creative Commons licenses mean to the music
industry. Judging from the views expressed by some senior music industry
figures there is clearly a need for just such an explantory approach.

Le Dieu explained that CC licenses aimed to do something that existing
copyright is failing to do. She pointed to 12m pages of content on Yahoo,
acceptance by 70 countries and the BBC=92s use of a CC-type license for its
archive as evidence of the strength of CC licenses.

Although the evening narrowly avoided descending into stereotypical
mud-slinging, Fran Nevrkla - ex-chairman of the British Phonographic
Industry and representing the dinosaurs - did lower the tone by dismissing
the importance of CC licensing, the culture it comes from and its
relevance to the real world.

Nevrkla continued to insist that CC licensing was the product of =93learned
professors living in rarified luxurious environment supported by public
funds=94 and that promoting CC licenses as a business model was =93nonsense=
=94.

He stuck to his guns despite the repeated, polite explanations from his
neighbour Neil Leyton who runs his record label Fading Ways Records on
just such a basis. He explained that part of the reason for choosing CC
licenses was to allow the fans to copy and share music without being sued
by over-active music industry lawyers.

Emma Pike, director general of British Music Rights, took the unusual step
of recomending musicians use Kazaa rather than a CC license. She also
expressed concerns, shared by others in the audience, that Creative
Commons does not do enough to warn artists what rights they are ceding by
signing up to such a license. Damian Tambini, who heads up CC licensing in
the UK, promised to look at this for the UK version of the website
currently under development. =AE



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Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs
Consumer Project on Technology in London
24, Highbury Crescent, London, N5 1RX,UK.
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http://www.cptech.org

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