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Debate: Is Creative Commons Good For Artists?

George Howard writes on the Tunecore blog:

image from www.google.com"The real impact (intentional or otherwise) of the very vocal arguments put forth by Creative Commons with respect to copyright’s contribution to 'restrictive permission culture is that… people begin to believe that copyright is somehow bad or evil, and that anyone who wants to enforce copyright is anti-progress, anti-collaboration, anti-public benefit… Artists tend to have – at best – an uncomfortable relationship with the monetization of their work, and need no encouragement to devalue it." 

Not so, writes Glyn Moody on Techdirt:

"Copyright, with its ever-expanding range of restrictions and harsh punishments for those who overstep the mark – even unwittingly – hardly promotes that exchange. Creative Commons licenses are the true allies of artists who are struggling for recognition and remuneration, thanks to their broad permissions and explicit encouragement to share and enjoy, which promotes and enhances that exchange – and helps to generate that crucial financial return too."

What do you think?  Does Creative Commons help or hurt artists?

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7 Comments

  1. CC gives creators more control over their rights, and that actually values copyright even more. In my opinion that’s a good thing.
    Empowering an artist to say “you’re free to use my work, share it, remix it, etc.” gives more weight to “but don’t use it for commercial purposes, unless I agree and get properly compensated for it”.

  2. The current copyright laws still have a long way to go to catch up to the digital age. CC helps artists circumvent ©opyright shortcomings. As an artist, I should have more control over how I can license my works.

  3. CC doesn’t harm, on the contrary, it gives more control to the artist to be able to choose exactly everything. How many artists did you heard saying “I just didn’t want people to be able to go to prision just because they downloaded my music”? How could they have a choice about it – regarding their own work! – before CC?

  4. Why throwing copyright away? The structure behind the music industry is too complex. Collecting societies, music publishers, managers and record companies, they all seem to profit from the artists. The internet is an inspiring marketing environment for new and promising artists. They can manage their own music copyright and set their own conditions at http://www.villamusicrights.com

  5. The problem is that the Tunecore article is inaccurate in a lot of it’s points it makes about creative commons. If you look at the comments for that article a lot of the people that know more about it than the writer point out what he got wrong.

  6. BTW, I want to point out the irony that the Tunecore homepage has a testimonial from Trent Reznor with a picture of his Ghosts I-IV album which was released under creative commons. Thought that was kinda funny.

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