Creative Commons tagging

To: linux-audio-user
Cc: advocacy@xiph.org

I've been following the rise and rise of music made with Linux, which have been announced on this list and Jan Weil has been listing.

Many of the released files have no licensing information. In most parts of the world, this implies "All Rights Reserved". If you are making music, or samples, that you are happy to share with others then you should consider tagging your files with a CreativeCommons license.

Embedding licensing information allows people using music browsers and search engines to _find your stuff_ (songs, samples, source materials -- it's up to you). We want Linux distributions to provide tools for people to find and use free media, and music made with Linux should be ready for that.

Creative Commons provide a guide to embedding licensing information and also more specific information about putting licensing information in Ogg Vorbis files.

This basically involves adding a LICENSE comment, such as:

LICENSE=Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ verify at http://example.com/cclicenses.html

Using the commandline vorbis-tools, these tags can be added easily. To add licensing information to an existing Ogg Vorbis file:

  vorbiscomment -t "LICENSE=Licensed to the public ..." file.ogg

To add licensing information while encoding a WAV file to Ogg Vorbis:

  oggenc -c "LICENSE=Licensed to the public ..." file.wav

Please include the URL of the license you choose in the LICENSE tag. Information on CreativeCommons license choices is here.

Looking forward to a web of free music,

Conrad.

Free Software and the Music Commons

I was chatting to thomasvs and jono at GUADEC (about BULIDING FREEDOM, of course); Thomas suggested that we should have something like iTunes Music Store (iTMS), but for free music. What's cool about iTMS is how it integrates with the iTunes software; wouldn't it be cool to integrate Free Software music players, like Rhythmbox, with the growing commons of Free Music, like Internet Archive's Open Source Audio collection, or the Linux Audio music produced by the linux-audio-user community?

I discussed these ideas with Colin Walters on the last evening of GUADEC. Having Rhythmbox browse the RSS feeds of hot new free music would be cool. Getting podcasts of linux-music on your desktop would be cool. Some of the more artsy CreativeCommons Music sites are difficult to navigate, full of DHTML and light-grey-on-white text. We should make Free Software that navigates what's freely out there and encourages users to listen to it.

We're not building media applications in a vacuum -- Free Software wants to be the best way to find, play and remix Free Media.

FUCK TV!

Conclusion

We have the opportunity to bring about major social change by creating a new way for humans to create, find and use media content. The existing structures of media distribution are embodied in the way we divide those who produce content from those who consume it, and this division is embedded in the design of current hardware and software. We can create a better way.

Free Software and Free codecs provide the technology, and CreativeCommons provides the licensing. Gnome and GStreamer are a great platform for freely creating, editing, annotating, viewing and remixing content.

Annodex is a way to tie all this together so that anyone can publish media, such that it can be linked and indexed globally, and so that people can surf among millions of media sites seamlessly as browsing the web.

I ate snails

This week I have been staying with Thomas and Kristien, and their crazy cat Lunya. Last night I went to dinner at a Basque restaurant; when I got back, Thomas asked how it was.

<kfish> I ate snails. <thomasvs> Did you remove the shit from the end of the snails? <kfish> The wha???

In related work, we've been having Ogg fun preparing the GUADEC recordings.