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 | Comments: License change for Scene.org | 03 Mar 2005 |
| | Scene.org staff has been receiving a lot of requests to remove files from artists whose previously-uploaded works have been sold to a commercial entity. Some of these requests have been polite, few have been not so polite and then there have been down-right threatening demands with associated legal language.
As you know, Scene.org exists as an archival and distribution service for the good of the community, run & supported by the members of the community. I'm sure you understand that we do not have the resources to continue to handle these requests nor defend ourselves should someone decide to initiate legal proceedings. Thus, we are investigating options to protect ourselves without taking away any rights from the creators of the works.
Chief among these options is requiring a CC (CreativeCommons) license for all works in the archive -- both past & present.
We realize this is a major change, and thus would very much welcome any comments and suggestions from our users through the discussions area.
Should you be or know someone who is legally-savvy in these matters, we would very much welcome an opportunity to consult with you directly
(contact: staff@scene.org). |
| | posted by velluv |  |
|
| To kick-off the discussion here, I'm going to post Jesse's (Ior) great letter to CreativeCommons for advise.
I think it rather well serves as an open letter for assistance & comments.
----
Hello,
My name is Jesse Rothenberg. I'm writing to you on behalf of Scene.org and the International Scene Organisation RY, a non-profit organisation registered in Finland. For a decade now we have run the major archival service of the 'demoscene,' a loose-knit community of diverse digital media (audio, graphics, animations pre-rendered and real-time, and combinations thereof) creators spread around the world. This service and more are available off our servers: http://www.scene.org for more information. We host tens if not hundreds of thousands of works and our main server alone transfers an average of 100 GB per day.
Historically, works created within the demoscene have been released more-or-less into the public domain by their authors. That is to say:
Sometimes the authors will append a (c) notice to their works (whether or not that is all that is required in the country of creation is a different
story) but in almost all cases have either signed a document or provided a packaged text in which they explicitly allowed non-profit distribution of the works.
Unfortunately, this trend is changing. As many demoscene participants are active in the design, videogame, animation, film, and music industries -- or will head in those directions -- it should come as no surprise that the demoscene has fostered the birth of new distribution mentalities, primarily the netlabel, as showcased by Simon Carless' (now of
archive.org) Mono411 and Monotonic labels, possibly the first explicit netlabels created.
So it turns out that a number of musicians are now releasing music directly or via netlabels hosted on Scene.org with the aim that free distribution will lead to increased awareness and possibly a commercial deal. So far, so good. The problem is when a commercial deal comes through for a work previously released by the author through Scene.org services.
As it stands we are receiving an increasing number of threatening emails demanding removal of a work.
As Scene.org and its equivalent registered organisation have no revenue streams and staffers are working pro bono, we have no way to defend against legal actions. So we're looking at options that protect: 1) the integrity of the archive, 2) our rights as distributors, and 3) ownership rights of the authors. Naturally, a CC license seems just about right.
So here's the problem and the questions: As Scene.org grew haphazardly out of a grass-roots ideal for distribution, we have had no explicit Terms of Service. We now wish to create/append a requirement to the TOS stating
that: by uploading your work to Scene.org, you agree to a CC license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ ) of your work.
Likewise, all works previously uploaded to Scene.org would fall under this same license.
So I'm writing to enquire about the legality of this action. We want to do this to reduce legal conflict and preserve the spirit in which our services were founded. We don't want to get into legal hot water. Clearly, there's no way we could contact every single author of every work we host.
Can you provide us with any analysis or advice?
Just to make it more confusing: We are a registered non-profit organisation in Finland. Our main server resides in the Netherlands. We have mirrors Japan, Germany, the U.S., Hungary, Poland, Portugal, and Sweden. Our users have created their works in over 50 countries worldwide.
So under whose jurisdiction do we fall?
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Jesse Rothenberg and the Scene.org staff | | |
| I think this is a really, really bad idea, and I'm speaking as someone who has previously released demos under a CC license.
First of all, there's no way you can retroactively impose a licence on all previously uploaded works, no matter how liberal and generous that licence is. Insisting on a CC license for future uploads would probably be legally sound, but impossible to enforce (most of my productions currently sitting on scene.org were put there by a third party (read: party organiser) who had no right to claim that it was released under any particular licence) - and is likely to alienate any sceners who are morally opposed to the CC licence for whatever reason.
Basically, if you were to go ahead with this, you'd have to start the archive from scratch again. Which is obviously your prerogative - it's your site - but it would be a sad day for the demoscene.
I'm not entirely sure what your current problem is, other than "people keep sending us scary legal letters that we don't like". Well, let me tell you something: Cease & Desist orders are designed to scare you. It doesn't mean that they have any legal backing. (And even if you were to create a CC-only archive, I bet people would still send them anyway.) And nobody, but nobody , is going to sue you without giving you a reasonable chance to set things right. My recommendation is as follows:
1. Continue allowing uploads under the same terms as you do now.
2. When you receive C&D letters that are not obviously frivolous - do what they tell you to, however polite or threatening they are. (And respond to them politely.)
3. When you receive C&D letters that are frivolous (e.g. the author has explicitly indicated in the README file that the work is licensed under a CC licence, or the MPAA web crawler picks up a demoscene file by mistake because it has the word 'Matrix' in the title) - well, it's your call. Even if you do back down on every single C&D you receive, I don't think the scene will complain too much, and anyone who's sufficiently outraged can go and host the files themselves.
4. Educate sceners that CC / open-source licences are really great things, and encourage them to place explicit licencing terms on their productions, so that there's not so much of a legal grey area in future.
Incidentally, I see some parallels between this situation and the World Of Spectrum archive, who are, if anything, on shakier legal ground because the material there was (and is) commercially copyrighted. They've endured legal threats and even a DMCA takedown notice, and nothing has ever gone to court. In their case, they go to the trouble of actively seeking out distribution permission from the copyright holders, and taking down the works of those who decline. A bit excessive for demoscene stuff? Maybe. But if someone were to start such a project, I'd certainly help out.
(I am not a lawyer. I am not Optimus either, however much it looks like it. This post is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.) | | |
|
Insisting on a CC license for future uploads would probably be legally sound, but impossible to enforce (most of my productions currently sitting on scene.org were put there by a third party (read: party organiser) who had no right to claim that it was released under any particular licence)
Well, that is not exactly true of every party. I can speak on behalf of a party I know well.
On the general rules for all compos at BCNParty, this is rule number two:
All productions shown on the big screen during the compos will be made publicly available.
I will personally bring the licensing issue with the organizers to make sure that the next edition of these rules include more explicit licensing terms so it's all explained with greater clarity.
I just found a similar clause in the Breakpoint 2005 site:
All shown entries will be spread. We will do our best to make them available in release packs on our compo server directly after the competition was held.
So it's obvious that some parties do actually require the right of redistribution as a precondition to present a prod on the compos. This isn't exactly a legal requirement, as it is all done in good-faith, with the party orga, doing everything in their hands to get the artists works spread. But the rule is very clear
and (altough I am not a lawyer) it is possible that it's legally binding.
Artists should try to educate themselves a little on this subject, because by entering a compo they are effectively giving up their right of distribution. They retain the copyrights for their work, but they give up the rights of distribution for the digital recording. And by later selling their works they are putting the scene.org archive in jeopardy. I'm sure they don't do this intentionally, but it still is a pain in the ass.
If you have the intention of selling a piece of your work, do not enter it to a party compo, do not upload it to scene.org. If you do, make sure you tell your label about it when you sign a deal with them. Let them know that, they won't have exclusive distribution rights and that the piece you are trying to sell, is already out in the wild.
In any case, although I am no legal expert, it seems that changing the archive's policy is the only way to stay out of trouble. This is what other archives seem to do.[Post edited by sin on Monday 7 March 2005 - 12:31] | | |
| | there's a BIG difference between "made publically available" and "will be enforced the CC license". | | |
| Kudos scene.org, this initiative is exactly the right step!
I can't second the points Gasmann lines up at all, even more I have the impression he can't imagine that people who have a responsibility about the distribution of a huge archive of creative works don't want to get bothered neither by c&d letters nor any other copyright issues and just try to protect themselves by putting works under a contemporary licensing model. A licensing model is definately needed here and will help saving you a lot of time plus give enhance your legal possibilities once you receive nasty letters.
I know what I'm speaking about as I had exactly the same issues with my netlabels. After receiving C&D letters I removed all productions involved but was indeed pissed off. After implenting CC licenses problems like that have NEVER occured again.[Post edited by Thinner-Sebastian on Tuesday 22 March 2005 - 11:18] | | |
| Hmm,
just a thought from the artist side-of-view.. Why bother re-releasing old stuff as-is if you eg. actually manage to get a recording deal? Or why even bother sending labels stuff that has been already released in the first place? Too lazy or incapable of coming up with new material or version of the existing tune maybe? Or maybe signed that contract too quickly without reading the small print first?
Of course any artist has the right to reuse or do derivative works of their creative output but whining about in this instance is plain stupid. Why even sign up and/or distribute any material through scene.org in the first place if you know you have the skills to make it big-time anyway? Like, exploit the free services to get your material more widely known and when 'making it' backstab the whole organization that helped in setting you up.
Enough ranting for now, voted for the CC licence. Waiting for the whiners to post their insights/comments about the issue.. | | |
| | I ask myself those very questions every time we receive mail telling us to delete a file because it was sold commercially and exclusively. [Post edited by ior on Friday 4 March 2005 - 19:46] | | |
| hello do some people care, for example if farb-raush licened their stuff it wouldn't make sense since millions of people already own it. I know people that have a complete version of scene.org at their hdd and updated every month.
why even bother to license | | |
| | So that if one day somebody buys farbrausch's candytron 3 years laters for their commercials, they cannot force scene.org to delete the files. | | |
| I support CC, but in Scene.org`s case, I wonder if anyone can claim back commercial rights when the production is uploaded to a server of a private organisation like Scene.org. Scene.org in fact owns the rights for redistribution, because no where did it say it could not when you uploaded.
I don`t think Scene.org can be forced to take anything down. As far as I`m concerned, anyone having sold released demo material with exclusivity problems should shoot themselves in the head. 2ce. | | |
| Scene.org in fact owns the rights for redistribution, because no where did it say it could not when you uploaded.
In that case, I own the Statue of Liberty, because there's no notice attached to it to say that I don't. Cool :-)
The fact is, when you create something, you get copyright on it automatically, without having to attach notices to it, and nobody can distribute it without your permission. OK, it's widely accepted that when you upload your work to scene.org (bearing in mind that the uploader isn't always the copyright holder...) you are making some sort of agreement, but the details have never been legally defined. Are you granting distribution permission to everybody, or just scene.org? Is that permission perpetual, or just temporary? We probably agree on what the answers to these questions should be, but legally speaking there are no correct answers. | | |
| Here`s how it works in the real (legal) world: If I give you my sources, then you have my sources and you can look at them and use them. If I still want to give you my sources but I don`t want you spreading them, I`ll let you sign an NDA. Likewise, if I give my stuff to scene.org, and scene.org doesn`t sign any NDA, then there`s no restriction on scene.org for redistribution.
And as far as I`m concerned, everything data, including software, ought to be free of charge. The only point where it gets difficult is with privacy information, but that`s another story :) | | |
| Back to the Britney Spears analogy... I didn't sign an NDA when I bought a Britney Spears album, but that doesn't mean I'm allowed to copy it for other people. (Disclaimer: I don't really own any Britney Spears albums. Honest.)
NDAs are a different thing entirely - they're for protecting facts and ideas, which aren't covered by copyright. If you show me the sources to your amazing new 3D engine but don't make me sign an NDA or grant me any licence, then I'm not allowed to publish the sources or incorporate them into my own programs (because that would be a copyright violation), but I am allowed to write a magazine article explaining how it works. If you don't want me to do that, you need to get me to sign an NDA. | | |
| Well, IANAL, so chances are you know more about this than I do.
I should think the copyright notice on the CD`s become effective the minute you have purchased your favourite Britney album, i.e. you are not allowed to play records in public, charge money for it, etc.. (thank god in this case, also) But the difference is that the notices are on the CD. You are expected to understand this when you buy the CD.
Swinging back to the NDA story once again, I think there are no legal grounds whatsoever that you can use to stop me from distributing sources that you have sent to spot X and that I downloaded from spot X, without clicking or agreeing with any eula`s or nda`s or whatever. Not if I were the owner of X, nor if you were the owner of X. So why should it be different if a 3rd person were the owner of X..
I agree, Scene.Org should of course also try to protect itself as much as possible. But the problem is once Scene.Org becomes a juridical personality, it will cease to be the completely unbound and virtual entity that it has always been. Issues as ripping, reverse engineering, hacking, cracking, scamming, virus-writing, and home-movies about malice and whatever else has been a scene addendum will become endangered. I`m not sure that is a good evolution because it destroys what has always been part of this scene`s hart and soul. And the *absolute* last thing the scene needs is a discussion about what is allowed and not allowed on the scene.org servers. I`m very serious about this.
Well, I hope you people can figure out *something*, but I would be very carefull with this.
Thanks for discussing this. Cheers.[Post edited by a0a on Monday 4 April 2005 - 16:12] | | |
| Think about this one guys. If you go to a creative commons license.. doesn't that mean you have to be careful about sampling from other commercial artists that are not associated with the scene? If you put a "no derivatives" thing for your license.. see it wouldn't make any sense now would it. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea and I vote for it too but maybe creative commons will have to come up with an entire new license for scene stuff.
I'm tired right now so I apologize if this doesn't make any sense, I will correct it if someone needs clarification | | |
| | If you rip the commercial work of another person you are already (as I understand it, but I am NOT a lawyer) breaking the law. Regardless of how you license your work. Unless your rip is in fact a remix and falls under the fair use policy. Fair use meaning that your sample is small enough, or your work has subtantial changes over the original, thereby constituting a new and genuine piece of work of which you are the copyright holder. [Post edited by sin on Monday 7 March 2005 - 12:21] | | |
| An important point to consider is this:
There is no such thing as "the CC license"!
There only are "several CC licenses"!
CC licenses are available in various flavours. To require every demo/track/whatever to follow only one such CC license is an accident waiting to happen.
Over at http://muzik.agnula.org people get a choice of several more or less free licenses, which is the only way to go for scene.org, too, in my strong opinion. Otherwise you will lock out people who would like to contribute material allowing commercial distribution and derived works, which the CC license linked in the announcement explicitly forbids!
Regarding the relicensing: Putting all material on scene.org under CC/by-nc-nd/ will disallow one important thing possible now: to make derivative works. I know, the Scene in parts is not really into open source, but still: Derived works like remixes etc. up to now are possible without having to ask the original writers.
By relicencing to a CC-nd license ("no derived work") this will be forbidden for every piece on scene.org available. Welcome to the death of Scene remixes!
So I would strongly urge you to choose another license than CC-nd. Personally I would prefer a more "public domain" CC license for old material, which allows commercial distribution and remixes. Then everyone who doesn't want this, will have his/her stuff removed, period.
But at least remixes should not be forbidden.[Post edited by fbar on Saturday 5 March 2005 - 11:35] | | |
| IMHO, I also think that the no-derived-works license is a little too restrictive. It might be good for some musicians who don't like to see their tracks remixed, but that policy is trouble waiting to happen. Is a torus rotating in Demo-A a derivative work of torus rotating in Demo-B? Almost certainly not, but it's difficult to prove.
Here is a list with other CC licenses, some of which might be more suitable for certain types of work:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ | | |
| As expressed in other posts, I think that changing the archive's policy is perhaps the only way to stay out of trouble. But I have a question that perhaps someone can throw some light onto.
The copyright holder of any piece of work, is the one that decides what others can do with that work. In the case at hand, the copyright holder would be giving scene.org the right to archive the work and the right to distribute the work for free , and every other scener that downloaded it the right to redistribute it for free . He will however remain the copyright holder of the work.
It ocassionally happens that the copyright holder of a piece of work, decides to change the licensing terms for whatever reason. This happens with some open source projects, for legal compatibility, they sometimes change their licenses. The project administrators contact each and every author with a line of code in the program (for which the author owns the copyright, unless otherwise specified) and when everyone agrees, the license is changed. If an author disagrees with the new license his code is removed from the code base and rewritten under the new licensing terms.
Seeing as this works in the OSS world. Could this mean that if the author of a piece hosted in scene.org changes his mind in the future and decides to sell the work and transfer exclusive rights of distribution to the label, he has every right to? And scene.org would then have to delete the work regardless of site policy? Or would these change be non-retroactive? (after all the author is the copyright holder and he is the one choosing how the work is distributed) | | |
| As I understand it: when people change the licensing terms of an OSS product, the old licence stays in force and is not revoked. People are free to continue to distribute the software under the terms of the old licence, OR the new one if they consider that one more desirable.
In your demoscene example - let's say a musician releases a track at a party under a Creative Commons 'no-commercial' licence. They still own the copyright on the track, so they could later offer a different licence to a record label, granting them commercial distribution rights. The CC licence is still in force, so everyone else is still allowed to distribute it non-commercially.
OK, you were talking about selling the exclusive rights... I think this would be done with a contract that effectively says "I, the author, agree not to grant any more licences to anybody else". (Licences grant freedoms, contracts take them away.) That contract could not have any effect on licences already assigned. | | |
| Thanks for the info.
I think this would be done with a contract that effectively says "I, the author, agree not to grant any more licences to anybody else". (Licences grant freedoms, contracts take them away.) That contract could not have any effect on licences already assigned.
So if what you are saying is correct. It would be enough for scene.org to change their policy, and demand CC compliance. If the author later decides to sell his work on a whim, nobody can force scene.org to remove the work. And if the author sells "exclusive" distribution rights of a piece to a label, then the author is the one breaking the law (you can't sell anything you don't have the right to sell), so scene.org should be safe. | | |
| Perhaps this was already addressed by the post of rebootjac but, just to try to make it straight... what about those demos which feature commercial music, graphics or any other licensed material? (not to mention code or algorithms, given the trend towards software patents)
Doesn't that mean that you'll be potentially facing legal battles continuously in the future? Can you really apply a CC license to such materials? And, more in general, can you really do so retroactively? | | |
|
what about those demos which feature commercial music, graphics or any other licensed material?
Those works are already breaking the law , the legal status of these works will not be affected by scene.org's new policy.
Patents are a subset of intellectual property law. They have little to do with copyright law and/or licensing, they all fall within the same IP law gimmick, but are different beasts alltogether.
Doesn't that mean that you'll be potentially facing legal battles continuously in the future?
I don't see why. If a particular piece of work contains material to which scene.org doesn't have the right of distribution, the scene.org can (and probably will) delete it upon request from the owner. Note that if your demo uses a commercial track, you own the rights to your demo, but you do not own the rights to the track. Unless it's used with permission, in which case you still do NOT own the rights, but the original author has granted you the right to distribute his work along with yours. | | |
| Well, they may be already breaking the law, but they are also already in the scene.org archive. Deleting them, and we are not only talking about minor prods, will mean to constrain the scene.org archive to a limited subset of the scene, rather than its actual coverage of the demoscene as a whole.
At the same time, detecting the infringing prods is not an easy task. Music can be the easier case, but graphics can be more difficult and, when it comes to software patents, I don't think there is any practical manner to verify wether a release is infringing any. If the law is taken to its whole extent, there is no practical way in which scene.org can assure that the content they are trying to offer under a certain license is not already covered, at least partially, by other licenses or patents... | | |
| @spock
Well, they may be already breaking the law, but they are also already in the scene.org archive. Deleting them, and we are not only talking about minor prods, will mean to constrain the scene.org archive to a limited subset of the scene, rather than its actual coverage of the demoscene as a whole.
There aren't that many productions that include material ripped from commercial work. Many of them are known and it would be easy to remove if at all necessary. However I think you are getting the impression that the change of policy would mean that the scene.org crew would have to go, work by work checking everything. IMO, it would be best to change the policy to say "all works hosted in this archive are subject to this license" (by default) and then, only if there are violations that can be proved, remove the offending content from scene.org. IMO, it is best to deal with each violation on a per-request basis. I don't know if there are enough requests that this would mean a full-time job for someone, but I wouldn't expect so.
At the same time, detecting the infringing prods is not an easy task.
You don't need to detect, you just need to listen to complaints. When some artist or label (to which the artist is under contract with), wants their work removed, you simply check if their claim is valid, and then go and remove.
Sure it would be great to keep it all! Keep everything for the archive's completeness! So we have a historical record of everything. But you have to keep in mind that breaking the law will almost certainly mean that the archive would have to be either closed, or maintain it illegally. I think these two outcomes are much much worse than just removing a few prods, for the sake of keeping the archive in operation.
Besides, scene.org doesn't archive everything , it's close but not quite everything . I remind you that a great deal of the demoscene history is hosted in Aminet. ;)
Music can be the easier case, but graphics can be more difficult and, when it comes to software patents, I don't think there is any practical manner to verify wether a release is infringing any.
In fact I think that music would be the most difficult of all to regulate, because the cases of scener musicians selling their work to labels is far more frequent that somebody selling a complete demo, after it's been uploaded onto scene.org. (ps: correct me if I'm wrong)
If the law is taken to its whole extent, there is no practical way in which scene.org can assure that the content they are trying to offer under a certain license is not already covered, at least partially, by other licenses or patents...
I agree, maybe there isn't a way. But that's not the point, that's a different fight. The point here is to give scene.org the legitimacy it needs to distribute the work, and offering artists a way to publish their work for free without risking the archive. | | |
| | This habit of using bold case is fucking annoying, I should just stop it. ;) | | |
| IMO, it would be best to change the policy to say "all works hosted in this archive are subject to this license" (by default) and then, only if there are violations that can be proved, remove the offending content from scene.org.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I don't see how this is any different from the status quo. Current policy is something like: "We have a good faith belief that the authors of these works intended them to be freely shared. If you can show that the author doesn't want this, tell us and we'll take them down." Your proposal sounds something like "We are making these files available under a bogus licence that we drew up with no consultation from the authors. If you can show that the author doesn't want this, tell us and we'll take them down." The current policy might not be legally watertight, but the alternative would be far more damaging for scene.org's credibility. | | |
| | Yes remember folks that about 99.955423% of the complaints we've had have been about musical works. | | |
| | who cares, the scene is dead, instead of wasting time on licensing crap start wasting time on making demos, yeah sure there is no way back since scene.org started being "official", but this will not bring the scene back alive | | |
| | Yes, we'd all rather not waste time on licensing crap. Unfortunately the scene.org maintainers don't really have a choice, because they're having licensing crap forced on them. Which is kinda the whole point of this discussion. | | |
| the scene is not dead, and legal issues are for real. They are going to play a increasing bigger role next years so maybe it is smart to keep track of it, and actively participate in the discussions.
I for one wonder how legal it is to change the licenses of all the files on scene.org, without telling everyone who made the content. I hope it's okey to do that. And I'm in favour of alowing remixes to be done of tracks&demos, if that is legally possible.[Post edited by numtek on Thursday 10 March 2005 - 6:00] | | |
| | How about something like, "all works are available under the CC license, unless stated otherwise", so everyone can make up their own conditions if they want to...? | | |
| | I agree with lb. At least have the decency to refurbish or remix when you release old stuff. If a publisher want your stuff as-is, then they'll have to live with a free version circulating. | | |
| lb said it best.
What really raises the hairs on my neck (not to mention my bloodpressure) is that essentially, these music artists gleefully use scene.org's bandwidth to promote/better themselves, only to start balking about tracks they managed to pimp out.
I'm probably not alone in the strong feeling that these people should have their entire presence on scene.org questioned. Want to sell your tracks? Fine. Go host your other tunes at your own expense too. There's no telling when they start bitching about yet another track they lazily sold off. | | |
| | Agreed (see my post below.) Scene.org should make it clear to contributors that it is not to be used as a site for promoting materials for commercial purposes, unless the contributors understand that they have contributed to an archive site and that the contributions are done with a non-exclusive, perpetual license. | | |
| it is on our TOS, but seems ppl dont really read it and sometimes sign a record deal for a track who has been released at some demoparty or netlabel in the mean time.
The threats and requests we been getting arent that threatning. But aknowledging that they could potentially have their way due to our neglect to find a proper system of handling our archive does scare us somewhat.
We want to be able to tell someone "your request to delete a track from our archive wont be satisfied because its been previously released for free to the public and we have the right to archive and share it" instead of "we're not sure on the international law on these matters so i guess we'll just put the track offline till we are able to contact the author and find out if he was aware that he shouldnt be signing a track he already released at demoscene party / netlabel catalogue" | | |
| Isn't there any implicit trust relationship between scene.org operators and those who post material on the site? I wonder if that could be used by a lawyer as part of a legal proceeding.
Whatever license(s) the operators choose, they should enforce any such implicit trust. Obviously, these troublemakers are breaking such a trust, especially the ones who are bringing out their legalese.
One thing you might want to do is enforce the point that this is an archive site, and that people who contribute to it must abide by that fact, or not contribute at all. | | |
| Just out of curiosity, how often does scene.org get complaints? And who do these complaints come from?
Could these not just be simply ignored?
For example, take a look at SoulSeek, it is a centralized p2p client, which initially started off distributing independent music. Now it is flooded with commercial music and still no action has been taken because of its relatively small size.
Is scene.org really large enough for record labels to worry about?
Does scene.org really have the finances to pay the record labels if they sue? (ie: why would you sue someone with no money? - especially if its not a sure thing)
Most smaller record labels do not have the resources to sue anyone, so unless the complaints are coming from the behalf of Sony,etc they should not be an issue.
I really do not think this is something anyone needs to really be concerned about. (Then again, I'm not the one who potentially gets sued.)
A simple solution aswell might be for scene.org to become a company. That way, if scene.org is sued they can walk away with everything scene.org owns (read: nothing) and everyone who maintains the site does not have to worry about legal issues. Perhaps a fundraising initiative could be taken to raise the money required to register the company. (Even better, get someone in some strange faraway country (with no copyright laws) to register the company.)
As a desperate measure, perhaps some of the coders in the scene community could get together and build our own (ie: modify an existing) decentralized p2p network where a couple of 'users' simply collect ALL the files.
I personally believe anything admitted to the demoscene is part of its history, and should not be removed. The demoscene has a digital history, if the files are removed, what do we have left? | | |
| Most people seem to agree that retrofitting a license is bad thing; why could you not enforce a (not so restrictive) license on all works from this date on? Just start one day and inform that all files with a date newer than that date will be covered by your new license. This will not reduce the number of mails from musicians 'making it' in a near future but at least the problem will stop over time (or you are free to ignore their letters).
What your license should be I don't know. | | |
| | thats starting to become our devised plan. to force it for the new uploads (all the music releases atleast, maybe not party stuff just yet). and just "strongly suggest" + allow users to register their old stuff already archived at our server. we wont force any license on any past productions without the direct consent/will of the makers, thats for sure. | | |
| The problem with this is, in a word, deniability . Scene.org might set up this new policy, add a new message in the FTP upload directory saying "by uploading a file, you agree that... bla bla bla...", and whatever else - but then an author can quite reasonably come back later and claim that they never agreed to the licence, because:
1. the file was uploaded by somebody else
2. they didn't know about the change of policy - they just uploaded a file like they've done hundreds of times before
3. sure, you've got that message there now , but you can't prove that the licence was in force on the day I uploaded
... and possibly lots of other excuses.
Now, if we require all new files to be accompanied by a README containing an explicit CC licence notice, then it's a lot harder to deny. It'll also be a lot harder to persuade sceners to adopt this change, and a lot of work to monitor - but that's the price you pay for a rock-solid* legal position. My suggested compromise is for scene.org to continue accepting unlicenced files, but delete them immediately on the slightest complaint. They can, and should, put up more of a fight for files which are clearly CC-licensed by the authors. (Well, I say a fight, but in practice it's more likely to be "Take this file down immediately!" "Nice try dude, but the licence in this README file here says that we're allowed to distribute it. Look." "Oh. Er, bye then.")
- * OK, nothing is ever completely undeniable. In extreme cases, the author could say "I didn't write that README file. Someone else added it later", or "But that just says 'composed by Paniq'... that could be anybody!" Presumably that's an issue with CC licensing anywhere, not just on the scene, and it just comes down to how persistent you're prepared to be in arguing. | | |
| Yes sadly we thought about it, deniability is of course a concern..
And the only way we can actually enforce any such undeniability on a really sound legal basis is to have representatives and the author in one single room signing a contract :P
Not too practical ;) | | |
| Deniability as described is a double-edged sword.
Provided scene.org gets all SandyVagina on people who walk the "*now* I want it off of the intarwebs" path, there's always the option to boot off the complete works of said offender under the grounds that there's no telling where the rest came from. "Just making sure 'yall!"
I'm not saying these people ought to be napalmed off the face of the planet, but it would be a nice start. Perhaps survivors learn to read future contracts more vividly concerning prior art, or *GOD FORBID*, actually learn not to sell prior art to labels. For heaven's sake, we have opposable thumbs. | | |
| Isn't there a scener with this kind of expertice on the legal field we are talking about to give his view?
In my oppinion, when a demo is released its freeware. It's made for the masses to be freely spread in anyway possible. This is the intention when it was made and released by every scener!
If the demo 3 years later is sold by e.g.
the coder to a firm and it's not freeware anymore than we have a interesting legal casus.
Questions which i can think of right now are for example:
Did every scener involved in the prod. gave his permission ? If not is the copyright legally obtained ?
When some one sends a letter to scene.org asking to delete a file, let them send proove why they think they own the copyright.
All in all when something is released as freeware imho this is for eternity. The status can't be changed to copyrighted by some firm.
magic/nah | | |
| i was just told my help might be useful here.
i am a full-fledged lawyer in germany and will browse through this discussion as soon as i have time for it. i read the CC agreement quite a while ago, will have a closer look at it again as soon as i've found out what the problem is. | | |
| Okay, having read through this whole thread, I suggest the following .
1.) Demand all scene.org uploads to include a license file that includes a declaration of conformity with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 License.
This file has to be actively included in the package. Gasman is right when he says people could just deny having agreed to the license as part of the upload if this file isn't actively included.
If you want to save yourself some time, do not offer uploaders to have a choice among the six (or by the time whatever-many) licenses. You could theoretically do that, but doing so will get you into trouble (or at least a sh**load of work) when certain situations take place. I'll talk about this later in the reasons for my suggestions.
This action WON'T affect the data you already have on scene.org.
Yes, this steps makes uploads more difficult than they are.
This measure demands a certain announcement time. Hand in hand with this measure goes a certain "education of the scene" that the CCPL (Creative Commons Public License) is a reasonable thing the demoscene just needs to be able to handle current developments.
2.) Concerning the data you already have on scene.org, leave things the way they are and remove files when requested to do so. The author(s) -- if not stated otherwise, which will utmost probably not have happened -- remained their rights to remove their productions from scene.org when they uploaded. That means that they can come up to you and ask for their files to be removed.
Yes, this is a pain in the ***.
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Why I recommend these things?
First of all, you can never prevent EVERYBODY from making trouble. When somebody wants to cause some, he or she will, no matter what license you apply to scene.org uploads. And the fact that some mails are impolite or even insulting doesn't have any influence on what legal solution should be chosen for this. These mails are just insulting, not more or less.
Gasman DOES have a good point in what he says, and he knows whereof he speaks. You cannot just claim that a certain license just all of a sudden applies to all works on scene.org. Well, technically that's not true. You can claim it, but the license just DOESN'T apply retroactively. Sometimes states can do this retroactively. Scene.org, however, cannot.
But I don't agree with Gasman here that things should be kept as they were before.
For a couple of reasons:
1.) Introducing a new licensing system doesn't start the whole archive from scratch. It's just a new way of handling things. The data already saved on scene.org doesn't change or just disappear. It was just uploaded prior to the date of CC introduction.
2.) Introducing the CCPL is important for something nobody has mentioned here yet. And that is the legal background of public exhibition of demoscene-related work. Like we had it at our Digitale Kultur e.V. boot at CeBIT this year. We showed demos all day long for a week but didn't have a legal agreement that allowed us to do so. We assumed we'd be allowed to and asked all the artists we could find in the short time of preparation that we had. But introducing the CCPL to scene.org would be a HUGE help to our work, as we try introducing the demoscene to the public. It would be absolutely impossible to ask every author for permission every time. A general CCPL for all uploads would make a lot of people's lives a lot easier who just want to promote the demoscene, which all sceners benefit from.
3.) Yes, with the CCPL in place, artists would not be allowed any more to demand their work to be removed from scene.org, as the license states this:
"[...] Licensor hereby grants You [...] perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to [...]"
That would lighten up your (the scene.org admins') lives a bit, I guess. And it's just fair as well, as this is the least thing artists can grant you in exchange for free hosting and service: not being EVEN more trouble.
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SOME MORE REMARKS
* REMIXES?
The question whether or not remixing of songs is allowed or not does not necessarily have anything to do with the kind of license you apply. To be more precise, the license you apply to your work has almost nothing to do with it.
When you apply the CCPL I suggested (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs), nobody is allowed to change any of the content. Yes, that means that you're not allowed to just do what you want with the work, in most cases the piece of music.
BUT!
that does NOT mean that a remix is absolutely impossible, for a couple of reasons.
FIRST of all, a streamed music file -- which is the norm nowadays -- doesn't give you a lot of sources to use anyway. Means: You're going to ask the author of the original song for sources. And if he gives them to you for remixing purposes, you're allowed to use them for remixing, as simple as that.
SECONDLY, the "NoDerivs" part of the license does not prevent work that's "influenced" by the original song. This means that you're able and allowed to create your own work that's just influenced by the original. As long as the result of this work is YOUR work (influenced by the original) and not HIS any more (with you f***ing around with it), you're good anyway, no matter what license.
NOBODY is able or allowed to prevent you from creating your OWN work that's just influenced by other work. Nobody is free of influence. Forbidding this would be just stupid.
* PIMPING OUT SONGS IS STUPID?
Concerning the data currently on scene.org, it is stupid for people to "pimp out" songs of theirs to labels when they already published them at a demoparty or on scene.org. But that has nothing to do with the legal relationship between them and scene.org. It just economically doesn't make sense.
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Hoping to have helped you,
Frank "netpoet" Stiegler
P.s.: Some scene.org admins know me pretty well, so if you have questions, don't hesitate to contact me, and I'll be pleased to help. | | |
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