Creative Commons and Wired

Looking forward to this issue of Wired (November)
WSJ.com - This Compilation CD Is Meant
To Be Copied and Shared:

16 high-profile artists, many of them signed to the same global music companies that have brought the lawsuits, are participating in a project that will allow music lovers to freely copy and trade some new songs without risking legal retaliation.

Next month, songs by the Beastie Boys, David Byrne and 14 others will appear on a compilation CD whose contents are meant to be copied freely online, remixed or sampled by other artists for use in their own new recordings. "The Wired CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share." was compiled by the editors of Wired magazine, of San Francisco, as an experimental implementation of a new kind of intellectual-property license called Creative Commons. About 750,000 copies of the disc are to be distributed free with the magazine's November issue. The disc also will be handed out to audience members at a benefit concert by Mr. Byrne and others tomorrow night in New York.

Creative Commons is named for the nonprofit group that came up with the concept for the license. The Creative Commons license lets the copyright holder spell out which rights it wishes to reserve and which are being waived without waiting for a permission request. That is a contrast to the typical arrangement, in which the copyright holder declares all rights reserved, forcing people who want to use the work to hire lawyers to seek permission.

In this case, all 16 participants are allowing their work to be shared on the Internet. Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson describes Creative Commons as a way of declaring that the recordings come with "some rights reserved," as opposed to the traditional "all rights reserved." The new license was developed by Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who also contributes to the magazine, which is owned by Advance Publications Inc.

"ARTIST SONG

Beastie Boys 'Now Get Busy'

David Byrne 'My Fair Lady'

Zap Mama 'Wadidyusay?'

My Morning Jacket 'One Big Holiday'

Spoon 'Revenge!'

Gilberto Gil 'Oslodum'

Dan the Automator 'Relaxation Spa Treatment'

Le Tigre 'Fake French'

Paul Westerberg 'Looking Up in Heaven'

Cornelius 'Wataridori 2'

Matmos 'Action at a Distance'

The move comes more than a year after the Recording Industry Association of America filed its first lawsuits against people distributing music free over peer-to-peer networks. In the debate over intellectual-property rights that is at the heart of the music-piracy issue, not everyone is so sure it is a good idea for artists to cede any rights. Jay L. Cooper, a music attorney who counts Sheryl Crow among his clients, says he would hesitate to advise a client to issue a song under a Creative Commons license, which he describes as "a blank check." "You don't want to make it for all time," he said. "What if you change your mind in two years?"

If Creative Commons were to catch on more widely, artists might decide to let some of their music be traded free on the Web to promote concerts and related merchandise, as well as to drive sales of CDs and digital tracks protected by standard copyright notices.

In an interview, Mr. Byrne compared online file-sharing services to free public libraries, and pointed out that those institutions once were a new concept, too. He said: "If you were a publisher, you didn't say, 'Oh no, Mr. Carnegie, don't go build those libraries -- it's going to destroy our business.' "

Mr. Byrne is signed to Warner Music Group's Nonesuch Records. He owned the rights to the song he contributed to the compilation, "My Fair Lady," because it had never been included on one of his releases with the label.

Wired's editors spent months shuttling to New York and Los Angeles, working to convince artists, their managers, record labels and lawyers that it was in all their interests to give away some of the valuable intellectual property that the industry has argued for years it must keep under lock and key. In the end, the magazine approached 50 to 60 acts, including Jay-Z, Moby and Coldplay, to find 16 participants. The musicians who participated contributed their efforts, as a promotional gambit.

"The artists were relatively easy to get on board," Mr. Anderson said. "The labels have different priorities. Some of them, once briefed, got it, and some of them never really saw the advantages."