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Simon Metson
Simon Metson

Posted on

Creative Commons WM license?

Was wondering if there's value in something like a CC-WM license - e.g. you're free to share this music, so long as the payment pointer is preserved. Have folk here thought about that?

Top comments (10)

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hessel profile image
Hessel van Oorschot

He Simon. Sorry for missing this question. In short: you don't need a new CC license to do this. The right combination/selection of CC licenses will do the trick.

But: do you have any ideas about embedding the payment pointer in the actual music file? And (advocate of the devil) how easy would it be to detach the payment pointer and replace it with another payment pointer resulting in "paying the wrong person"?

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drsm79 profile image
Simon Metson

It’s pretty trivial to remove/replace a pointer. I was thinking along the lines of “you can embed this via these means”, as opposed to more permissive things. Reusing to soundtrack a video would be difficult, too, though @antoniotalarico and the @kendraio folk could maybe help there...?

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hessel profile image
Hessel van Oorschot

“you can embed this via these means”.. ok, I hear you. The answer is not black or white. Even within the open licensing communities you will find multiple answers. The core feature of Creative Commons of course is the "allowed to share" mentality. So we think our glass is half full / most people are good people.

On top of someone's copyright is an agreement (the CC License) asking you to respect the rightsholder's wishes and allowing you to do certain things with the copyright protected work e.g. download, share, build upon, monetize etc.

But that's part of the story. If hundreds of thousands of people download music on your website, do they understand what is allowed and what isn't allowed without additional consent? And in this case I am talking about rightsholders who are not playing with WM models yet.

But now you want to add a WM model to a downloadable song. So on top of the CC conditions you are applying a fair revenue model based on a payment pointer. So misusing the CC conditions is illegal and replacing the payment pointer is illegal or in many cases unfair. But again, there are totally legal examples like: download a CC BY licensed song with the original creator's payment pointer embedded. Replace the payment pointer with your own payment pointer, keep the attribution part in tact (crediting the rightsholder) and upload / monetize the song to your favorite platform. Totally legal.

Preventing misuse:
One (technical) solution is to connect fingerprinted assets (songs) and payment pointer(s) with the unique verified rightsholder ID. There are multiple scenarios out there, they are not a one-size-fits-all solution. However, rightsholders should be and stay in control to decide the licensing terms, monetization model and the level of protection.

From a psychological perspective there is nothing new happening here. Most creators are very proud at first when their creations are shared and their audience is growing. But when the artist finds out someone else makes (more) money from his/her music ... that's the moment when the lawyers are contacted.

And there are always smarter people out there who like to test your (security) system. Here is an example of YouTube and RIAA using MD5 hashing to follow music files online while others just publish a script to download the YouTube file and delete the MD5 information:
github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/com...

Anyway, I don't want to return to the bad old days of blocked content / DRM so let's work on fair WM models and keep faith: most people are good.

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antoniotalarico profile image
Antonio Talarico

This is a bit of a tricky thing to do and, from what I know, you need an extra level of abstraction to pull it off. I've been thinking about it too an, to me this is the perfect use case for Paystring potentially. With the idea that an TrackID (possibly generated through ISRC/ISWC if registered) gets linked to a payment pointer and therefore creating a new clause. It would look something like: Paystring = TrackID + Payment pointer.

So far, we've managed to dynamically "swap them" as you play, but it's more of a good work around to the limits of having a payment pointer restricted in a metatag. The "trigger" of a track becomes the attribution to its play button as to make it look like they're linked, but aren't really.

Hope this helps.

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hessel profile image
Hessel van Oorschot

my email address: hessel@tribeofnoise.com

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cyberdees profile image
Desigan CHINNIAH

Likely one for @anna and @hessel among others to weigh in on...

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radhyr profile image
Radhy

I'm also wondering if it's viable to do something like this on the internet, but more like splitting the WM revenue between the original creator and the distributor. Though, in my case, I'm only exploring the technical aspect on it, not the licensing (since that's not my forte).

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drsm79 profile image
Simon Metson • Edited

For Audiotarky the idea is we get the payment stream while people browse the site and the last 10s of a track, the creator gets the stream when their track is playing (apart from the last 10s). We’ve got an embedable widget that will do the same & some technical prevention (the referrer must be our site) to stop simple cross linking, but someone could download a track and reupload it etc. Be nice if that was protected legally, and we can improve the technical protections over time.

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mikolo007 profile image
Michael Akala

Hi guys, I have read through everyone contribution. But I am yet to find out what am looking for.

I want to know how to connect the Music URL to a payment pointer, since it's possible to do.

For example according to everyone writeup once thee Music URL is connected to a payment pointer, everyone who download or stream through that URL, micro payment will be coming in for the Artist (musician)?

Please am I right with my assumption?
If yes. How do I connect my Song URL to a payment pointer. I really need your help guys.

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drsm79 profile image
Simon Metson

Unfortunately it doesn’t work quite like that. You need the player of the track to know how to handle the ilp pointer as well. I’m doing that on Audiotarky.com/$/ & have been thinking about upstreaming some of that to amplitude (the js player we’re using).