[free-sklyarov] Copyright as a restriction

[Stephen R. Savitzky]

Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org> writes:

> begin Xcott Craver quotation of Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 06:39:40PM -0400:
> 
> > 	Finally, you want there to be a commercial incentive for
> > 	smaller companies to reject DRM.  Hence visibility in the form of
> > 	a sticker or logo, bragging that this CD is better.  Think
> > 	of it as the music equivalent of a "FAT FREE" label.
> 
> Lydia Kinata did this one:
> http://zgp.org/~dmarti/open_logo/
> 
> It could also be used for non-DRM players, sound cards, media, you 
> name it.

I like this, especially if it can be construed as meaning: "go ahead and
make _fair use_ copies, but don't go selling a million of them".

One of the problems with many of the "open" licenses, like the EFF's
OAL, is that they go too far.  If somebody sells a CD with one of my
songs on it I expect to get paid, thank you -- there's a standard
royalty for that (about $0.12 IIRC).  But I also don't want them to go
so far as to prevent the purchaser from making a copy for their car's
tape player or their kid's MP3 player, or lending it to a friend, or
re-using the tune (as long as I get the composer's 50% share of their
profits).  

In fact, I'd like to see a license that prohibits distribution in a
use-restricted format; might be difficult for songs given compulsory
mechanical licensing (US only, I think), but feasible in other cases.

It's sort of like the Open Content License's option of reserving to the
author the right to make paper copies.  What I want is *not* an "open
source" type license (which is what's best for software), but something
in between, that guarantees fair payments to the author and fair use to
the purchaser. 

-- 
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