Re: Could you please forward this proposed license to Teosto? (was: Re: Choosing a license for Frets on Fire songs)
Hi Matthew,
2007/4/26, Matthew Johnson <debian@matthew.ath.cx> wrote:
On Thu Apr 26 16:25, Jason Spiro wrote:
> Copyright (C) <year> <copyright holders>
>
> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
> a copy of this work (the "Work") to use, modify, copy, publish,
> distribute, publicly perform, and/or sublicense copies of the Work,
> and/or to charge a fee for the physical act of transferring copies,
> and/or to offer warranty protection for a fee, and/or to permit
> persons to whom the Work is furnished to do all of the aforementioned
> actions, subject to the following conditions:
>
> * Persons distributing the Work to the general public may only do so
> if the Work is distributed and/or bundled with game software.
> * No person may musically rearrange the Work or modify the lyrics of
> the Work unless that person obtains permission to do so from either
> the author or the copyright holder.
This contradicts "Permission is hereby granted, ... to use, modify,"
above.
I don't know much about how to write licenses, and this is the first
one I have ever written. I figured that everything after the "subject
to the following conditions:" would automatically override the initial
permissions I gave. I guess I was wrong?
May I suggest using a CCby licence and adding 'may only be
distributed with the game' rather than cobbling together your own
inconsistent one...
CC-BY-ND doesn't let anyone put additional restrictions on covered
works; it says: "Licensor shall not be bound by any additional
provisions that may appear in any communication from You." And we
can't use a CC-BY-NC-ND license with additional permissions either:
"...the game's music can't be distributed with a CC license. The
problem is while the songs can freely be distributed with the game,
they can't be distributed or otherwise used independently of the game
without a specific license from Teosto."[1]
It *is* possible to make new licenses by copying and editing the text
of Creative Commons licenses.[2] Perhaps I or someone else could
modify the text of CC-BY and add restrictions on redistribution
separate from game software, musical rearrangement, and changes to
lyrics? But since CC-BY is a much longer license wouldn't it'd be
harder to wrap one's head around it in order to modify? Maybe it'd
just be easier for us to fix the license I wrote.
And then again, I wonder if Teosto will accept *any* license we write.
Maybe we should just send them the license I wrote (after it's
fixed), ask them if they'll accept it, and if not, ask if they could
kindly either change it to their liking or write their own.
Maybe it'd be more worth it just to get more DFSG-compliant music out
there instead of spending more effort on this. It can't be that hard
to find good open-content music and to get the artists to release the
individual tracks so we can remix them for FoF, can it?
Cheers,
Jason
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=383316#125
[2] http://creativecommons.org/policies#license says: "We do not
assert a copyright in the text of our licenses. Modified versions of
our licenses, however, should not be labeled as 'Creative Commons'
licenses."
[3] For those just tuning into the conversation now: Teosto is the
Finnish songwriters' copyright collection agency. They collect
royalty payments on behalf of most Finnish musicians. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teosto
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