[Commons-l] And in other news...

Tue Oct 17 17:04:05 UTC 2006

Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>Judging by the popularity of Flickr, Youtube, and the non free
>creative commons licenses (which account for 2/3rds of the CC usage)
>I'd say that the general public cares not a lick about free content,
>so long as it is available to them at no cost and no one is suing them
>(i.e. free as in stolen beer is sufficient, since there is no RIAA
>going after folks for image copyright violations).
>  
>
In France, a society of authors and composers called SACEM demanded
payment after a class of elementary school pupils sang a song for the
retirement of their teacher (the song's title translates as "goodbye, Mr
Teacher"), in public.

Technically, they were right: this was a public performance of a song
written by a still living artist, as managers of the rights of that
songwriter they can demand payment. Of course, this created an outrage;
the songwriter offered to pay the money owed to SACEM (once the artist
hands management to SACEM, as far as I know, he cannot directly choose
how SACEM manages his songs).

This should remind teachers and parents that things such as using
copyrighted photographs for a publicly displayed work (say, the kind of
"students' works" shown during "open doors" days or at end of the year)
may result in legal issues. After all, what SACEM does, the societies
collecting rights for photographs may do. (Though I suspect they would
have the common sense not to create themselves a public relation disaster.)

In any case, running things with the knowledge that things are ok
because people will break the law and no one will bother does not sound
like a sound approach.

Wikimédia France is trying to push many buttons to get public sources of
photographs to release them under free licenses. It is not easy, believe me.

Regards