The Music

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ravanwin
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The Music

Post by ravanwin » Thu Feb 16, 2006 4:48 pm

All,

There is some exciting news to tell you. The Forest has very officially quit it's addiction copywrighted music.

This means we are only to play music by local, unsigned or uncopywrighted artists or artists who give us permission to play thier music to the public.

We believe this will make us a more unique space, will encourage people to listen to new music and will foster more creativity.

"Who's Playing?" a customer might ask.
"That guy in the corner."

We can also play music (corect me if i am wrong) which was RECORDED more than 50 years ago. So, we can play some nice old stuff. I am sure Kim has an excellent collection of rareities that will be making an apearance on our stereo.

At the moment there is a computer by the decks. Please ask to add any of your favorite non-copywrighted music to the i-tunes sections. We are very happy that we will be promoting more local and independent artists. This includes artists from the forest arsenal of geniuses.

Again, we believe this is a massively great thing to be doing and we are proud of our position. However, if any artists or members of the collective have an concern they would like to discuss in relation to this policy, please say so.

Yours,
Ryan

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Jimmy Bastard
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Post by Jimmy Bastard » Thu Feb 16, 2006 5:19 pm

Is anyone an authority who can clarify what exactly we are allowed to use?
There's a whole host of confusing terms.

Copyleft
Anti-copyright
Creative Commons
Share-alike
Open Music Model
Copyright-free
FairShare

A cursory scan of the above on wikipedia just makes my head go all cuntybooby.
Anyone know whch ones are useable?
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Jimmy Bastard
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Post by Jimmy Bastard » Thu Feb 16, 2006 5:22 pm

Maybe this thread would be good to link to host sites of legal download music.

http://blog.largeheartedboy.com/

largehearted Boy is a music blog featuring daily free and legal music downloads as well as news from the worlds of music, literature, and pop culture.
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beev
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Post by beev » Thu Feb 16, 2006 5:43 pm

For the kind of music you've heard of (ie popular artists who had a proper record deal), the writer has to have been dead for 70 years and the performance must be at least 50 years old.

For obscurities, the only requirement is that the writers & performers have not <strike>sold their soul to the devil</strike> registered with either the prs (perfoming rights society) or the ppl (phonographic performance something or other). If anyone you know makes good music, ask them if they are registered. If not, send them to us and we will make them famous :D

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chris
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Post by chris » Thu Feb 16, 2006 6:01 pm

as far as i understood it, forest has always only played non-copyright music.

pretty sure i'm correct on that one...
Maybe it could work? But it will be a kaleidoscopic blend of mysterious shadows and rainbow hued-dreams seen through compassionate tears.

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Gaz
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Post by Gaz » Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:01 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_ ... ed_Kingdom

Man it's a confusing world but after reading this and other things these are the basics as I see it...

The problem is not copyright itself.
Everything that is created is automatically copyrighted.

"British law states that an individual's work is placed under copyright law as soon as it leaves that person's mind and is placed in some physical form...Once in physical form, as long as it is an original work...copyright in that work is automatically vested in (i.e. owned by) the person who put the concept into material form."

"Absence of the copyright symbol does not mean that the work is not covered by copyright."

Also if a CD has the copyright symbol on it it doesn't necessarily mean the artist is a member of PRS etc and will enforce copyright controls. It is all down to the copyright holder as to how they want to enforce (or not enforce their rights) especially for commercial reasons.

The problem we have is in the enforcement of these controls.

If Artist A makes a CD he has copyright of that work. He can give permission to whoever he wants to play it on whatever terms are agreed. However, he signs up to PRS, a record company etc. and gives away those rights to them and they enforce copyright controls collectively and collect money to give back to him.

Artist B on the other hand doesn't care about money or protecting his work and keeps hold the copyright. He lets whoever he wants to play it in public, sell it etc. do as they wish. He might use copyleft as a symbol to show this or something else, even though this seems to have no legal basis in law.

We need to get music from artists who are expressly happy to let us play their music and who have not signed up to PRS etc.

How long?

Look at this really useful chart:
http://www.museumscopyright.org.uk/private.pdf

You will see in most cases for us it's going to be a case of any work where the musician died 70 years ago or more.

"Copyright in sound recordings expires either 50 years after the recording is made, if the recording is published during that period, 50 years from the publication or if during the initial 50 years the recording is played in public or communicated to the public, 50 years from said communication or playing to the public if the author of the broadcast is an EEA citizen. Otherwise duration under the laws of the country of which the author is a national applies, unless such a duration would be longer than offered in UK law"

and/or

"Copyright in literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works expires 70 years after the death of the author."

The difference is there because the author can die 20 years or more before a work is published.

eg.

Mozart's Requiem - no problem. I print his music. I perform his stuff. I pay him nowt.
New CD of Mozart's Requiem by Berlin Phillamonic - wait 50 years.
1956 recording of Mozart's Requiem - spin it.

All of John Lennon's work - wait til 2050.
All of Lennon/McCartney - wait til 70 years after Paul kicks it.

Obsure blues dude who died in 1936 - yeah momma

So it isn't correct to say we are not going to play non-copyright material from now on as all created material is copyrighted (for up to 70 years after the copyright holder dies) What we are trying to do is play free-to-use stuff or get permission from copyright holders to use their stuff.

If you've got anything that's good bring in your stuff and we'll fire it up.

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Post by Jimmy Bastard » Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:34 pm

Thanks Gareth.
Good clear informative post (also like 'yeah momma' bit)

It's still all a bit of a mind-grind.
Where would we stand with something like
http://www.dfarecords.com/radiomixes

I use this as an example as

1) The site is of a high-profile legitimate business.
2) The artists in the mix are also high profile.

How does this become legitimate?
And where would we stand if we aired these mixes?
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Post by Jimmy Bastard » Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:57 pm

Two more links, anyone care to state where we stand?
http://www.subpop.com
The media section has a legal download section.
Are we cool to play them?
http://www.ubu.com
An extraordinary and exhaustive resource of the avantgarde.
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Dandolo
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Post by Dandolo » Fri Feb 17, 2006 2:20 am

As of 1 January 2005, recordings made on or before December 31 1954 will no longer be protected by UK copyright law.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3547788.stm

Reading this article, I maintain that all recordings made over 50 years ago are no longer protected by copyright law, regardless of the physical condition of the artist. Why else are record companies quaking in their boots? The 70 year law is on the intellectual property, the written music itself. Forgive me if I'm wrong. Maybe wishful thinking?
Last edited by Dandolo on Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by ravanwin » Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:01 pm

we have never played copy-righted music, this is true. however, we are curently clarifying our policy and using modern tools to ensure quality control in this endevor
r

chombee
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Post by chombee » Mon Apr 24, 2006 2:01 pm

Hey-ho.

About the ambiguity of using 'non-copyright' music. It's true that coopyright applies to everything, but a copyright license can be used by its owner in two ways:

1. In the Proprietary way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary in which the proprietor exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties.

or 2. In the 'Free' (as in freedom) way.

So The Forest could say we only use Free (as in freedom) music, or say Free/Libre music or something, or you could say we use non-proprietary music, to avoid the confusion over the term 'copyright.'

I think if you're making a point of using Free music, you should probably make a point of using Free software as well. All Microsoft and Apple software is proprietary of the nastiest type. Both M$ and Apple have huge online music downloading services now, and these are very much not Free/Libre music services, in fact they're developing all kinds of scary new technologies to make sure peope can't share and derive from music and art in a Free/Libre fashion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management

I think The Forest should avoid being seen with these types of people.

Someone in this thread mentioned 'copyleft' in relation to music. Copyleft is a kind of copyright license that can be applied to software, art or music. But instead of using copyright as a way to restrict the right to make and redistribute copies of a particular work, copyleft licenses use copyright law to ensure that every person who receives a copy or derived version of a work can use, modify, and also redistribute both the work, and derived versions of the work.

The "and derived versions" in that last sentence is the specific thing that makes a license a 'copyleft' license rather than just a 'free' (you can do what you want with this music) license. Copyleft says 'you can do what you want with this music (or whatever), but anything you publish that is derived from this music must also be published with a copyleft license.' That's what makes it copyleft.

In a non-legal sense copyleft is considered to be 'the opposite' of copyright, though in a legal sense a copyleft license is just an unusual type of copyright license.

Copyleft is the technique originally used be the free software people hence Linux and all of that.

Specifically copyleft licenses usually grant four freedoms to the user of the software/art/music:

1. the freedom to use and study the work,
2. the freedom to copy and share the work with others,
3. the freedom to change the work,
4. and the freedom to distribute changed and therefore derivative works.

And on and on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft Surprisingly many proprietary copyright licenses actually deny the user all four of these freedoms (Apple and Microsoft's licenses, for example, deny all four).

Another thing The Forest should be interested in is The Creative Commons and Creative Commons Licenses.

The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons

There are several different kinds of copyright license called Creative Commons Licenses that artists can use to release their work:

* Attribution (by): Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only if they give you credit.

* Noncommercial or NonCommercial (nc): Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only for noncommercial purposes.

* No Derivative Works or NoDerivs (nd): Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it.

* ShareAlike (sa): Permit others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work (this is the same as copyleft).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_License

This page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons has a list of 'open source' record labels, though I'm not sure if they offer music free of charge that The Forest could use. This page: http://www.jamendo.com/ has hundreds of albums of free of charge and free as in freedom music that The Forest could download and use.

I'd be interested in helping out The Forest with free software. I think it's a bit funny to play only anti-copyright type music on an Apple computer with apple iTunes. That's very heavily copyrighted software. The Forest should use Free Software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software which would probably mean using Ubuntu Linux http://www.ubuntu.com/ on the computers and playing music with something like rhythmbox: http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/index.html

If people are interested we should think of putting together a plan to free The Forest from proprietary software.

- Sean
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Post by ravanwin » Mon Apr 24, 2006 3:40 pm

i am up for using more freeware and, yeah, i guess it us funny to be using i-tunes everyday. build a better mouse trap and all that....

as for our musical policy.... there are loads of good places to find new and interesting sounds. right now we've been pretty focused on haveing music from us or from around us. we play copywriteed music but ONLY with the explicet consent of the artist who knows us and knows what we are about. i have no idea if this stuff is CL CC or Cwhatever.

Still, the sooner everything is linux, i'd say the better.
r

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beev
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Post by beev » Mon Apr 24, 2006 7:05 pm

the sooner everything is linux, i'd say the better.
I'd agree with that

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Post by chris » Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:10 pm

except for the fact that linux is utterly crap.

ever tried video editing on linux?
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Post by chombee » Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:56 pm

except for the fact that linux is utterly crap.

ever tried video editing on linux?
No, but you might want to take a look at these:

http://diva-project.org/
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
http://www.kinodv.org/
http://pitivi.sourceforge.net/
http://www.jahshaka.org/content/section/4/26/

That's 5 video editors, and I'd expect there's quite a few more. Admittedly video editing may be one of those areas which are still up and coming on linux, but these at least show that it's on the way. Things can improve surprisingly fast in free software.

Linux is like yoga, if you approach it with heavy expectations, either positive or negative, you'll probably be disappointed, if you approach it with an open mind you'll probably have a rewarding experience.

Are The Forest's computers used for video editing?
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Post by ravanwin » Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:24 pm

i don't think the forest computers are being used for video editing at the moment.

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chris
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Post by chris » Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:22 am

i agree linux is lovely correct idea and way to go for forest computers and probably life in general, however...

just i find linux really hard to use (i have it at work), it crashes as frequently for me as other systems i have used in the past, and much of the software seems less solid, not as well thought out and of course there is less of it. my point on video is that this is something i like to use computers for (not recently really) and whilst people have been developing video stuff for linux for ages it is still not particularly close to the useability of commercial software.

people who use linux tend to be programmers who like to have command lines. i hate command lines and that seems to be the main problem for me and linux

but for something simple like web surfing in forest linux is probably good.
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Post by chombee » Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:13 pm

Well, there are hundreds of distributions of Linux, many of which are very different from each other. Some are very good. Some are very bad. Some are made for geeks who know everything about linux. Some are made for normal people. What distribution of linux did you use at work, and how recent was it?

It sounds like it's probably very different from a recent version of, say, ubuntu, which is now on the internet machines in the forest.

It's not really accurate to say that people who use linux are programmers. There are probably several tens of millions of people who use linux, and there are several big projects, like GNOME, that aim to make linux user friendly. I've had a lot of experience with WindowsXP and with Ubuntu, and I'd say Ubuntu is significantly easier to learn and use, as well as to install, secure and maintain, it's vastly more stable and reliable, and it gives you access to a repository of nearly 20,000 programs for free.

Certainly there's no argument in terms of reliability and ease of install - these can be directly compared and the differences observed. As for ease of use - I've setup ubuntu for quite a few people who were unhappy with Windows over the years, these were all just normal people, and everyone's been more than happy with it.

Ubuntu is used pretty widely by people who aren't all programmers, the Andalusian regional government in Spain for example uses it on hundreds of thousands of desktops, and a lot of schools in the developing world use it.

It sounds like you've had a bad experience with some crappy distro or a bad setup, I'd encourage you to take a look at Ubuntu, it's brought linux forward a big leap in the last couple of years.

There are some specialist areas where linux is still catching up with Mac and Windows which means it's not the best thing for people who are specialists in these areas. I wouldn't be surprised if advanced video editing was one such area. I think another is advanced audio editing, although there was a windows computer music guy who came along to our linux weekend at the forest and taught himself all the linux audio tools over the weekend, and he was surprised with them. I can't think of anything else.

In any case, the forest should use linux, it'll mean the computers break less often, and maybe some people who come through the forest will realise that there is something other than propping up the big corporate monopolies out there, and that would be positive.
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Post by chombee » Thu May 04, 2006 4:28 pm

In case anyone is interested, I came across a new project aimed at resolving this confusion about how "Free/Libre" applies to the copyrighting of music, art and other stuff that isn't computer software:

Benjamin Mako Hill's article 'Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement': http://www.advogato.org/article/851.html

and the new 'Definition of Free Content and Expression': http://freedomdefined.org/ which hopefully will become widely adopted.
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

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Post by viracocha » Thu May 18, 2006 9:21 pm


* Noncommercial or NonCommercial (nc): Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only for noncommercial purposes.

Why do they have a problem with making money of music? I'm very much against intelectual property but hey, if I create something and you copy me feel free to earn any money you can!

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