Copyright problems with the album Interin by bert jerred

http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/12072

The license shown on the page is BY-SA

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Just copied and pasted from the album page.

The copyright listed in the two files I downloaded is:

2007 bert jerred. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ verify at http://www.jamendo.com/album/12072/

BY-NC-SA

This is a serious problem that can get people into trouble who rely on one or the other.

Can this be cleared up please. Are the songs in question dual licensed or which is a mistake?

drew

Just heard from bert on this.

This may be an opportunity to look into a general issue/problem.

Does the jamendo software allow an artist to change the license on an album after the fact?

If so, how is this properly handled?

And should it allow for dual licenses?

On the change, should the software go into the files and update the license info in the metadata?

If it does do the update, shouldn't it keep a record of the previous license(s) for the safety of people who have downloaded in the past and are relying on the other license. And should the page itself not reflect the previous license and the dates the album was available under the prior license? In fact, would it not be better to never actually change a license but rather to just add the new license? (Except perhaps where there was a real mistake in the beginning and the artist may not have had the right to use the mistaken license?)

What have I missed?

drew

he drew,

to me it seems as if such problems get solved only by using http://pro.jamendo.com/en/

here on "normal" jamendo, i guess you have to rely on metadata that are changeable.

torsten

torsten,

I have no clue what you explanation is supposed to mean. Can you explain further?

But just to be clear, bert says he is changing from a "worse" license to a "better" license from my point of view. The problem is that the license on the album and the license in the tracks don't match and from the wording on the jamendo album pages, i think they should.

drew

Hi,

This is indeed a problem, we do allow artists to change their license after publishing, but that action usually regenerates all the archives. I guess in this case it didn't happen. I'm filling a bug right now and we'll check that next week.

Also, since at least the cc licenses at least are perpetual:

"3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:"

If an artist does change the license on an album, a record of the previous license(s) or even a more detailed license history would be a good thing to keep on jamendo even should the artist pull the albums themselves. People may need this record should an artist go whacko and get sue happy (or an artist's estate.)

drew

@ zotz/drew : I think the pro version of jamendo (http://pro.jamendo.com/en/) gives music users a safer legal stand as it allows them after paying an amount of some dollars to get a printed (i.e. unchangable) document that proofes that this and that song are under this and that licence.
i haven't seen such a document, so i don't know if it is of real use or if it is just a certificate that helps jamendo or the artists to get some money.

@ sylvinus:

sylvinus wrote:
This is indeed a problem, we do allow artists to change their license after publishing, but that action usually regenerates all the archives

What use does this make when a licence is supposed to be perpetual? This rather seems counter productive to me, or did i get something wrong here? I mean what values have licences when they are used to permit on one day to use a song commercially and on the next one you are not allowed to use the same song commercially, do you understand what i mean?

I'm with zotz/drew on this one: there should be a history like on wikipedia-sites where one can see when a licence has been changed.

HOW ABOUT THIS.

let's say you have a commercial project that you need music for

you find something on jamendo

then you pretend that you are a professional and actually contact them about it

if the artist says "no", don't use it

if the artist says "yes", you have confirmation directly from the artist

officernarc: i know what you mean and i am all pro contacting artists personally. but this process is like stoneage. besides what (legal) value has a confirmation that can be manipulated in a minute?

that process you describe, about asking the artist directly, is what a licence is supposed to simplify, or did i get something wrong?

let me guess, this is all about what you have been posting on your podcast. am i right?

if you mean that my podcast is the result of some of the weaknesses of the free licence system you are right.

in the beginning with this podcast i tried to just make free licensed music more popular by selecting and posting cool free licenced songs. i thought people would like some of the songs and think "he free music is cool, lets forget about commercial music."
but soon i realized that the licences some songs are under get changed all the time which can bring people into real trouble. for example it could happen, that one song that was cc-by was changed to cc-by-nc-sa or the free licence was taken away from the song and the song was suddenly under copyright, which leaves people with no prove that they are not criminals who publish/copy/remix copyrighted music.

so with my blog/podcast I try to catch artists that publish music under free licences in the act. to make clear to them that what they are doing matters to others. besides it can be seen as a licence-review that prooves that this and that song has really been under this and that licence.

officernarc wrote: let me guess, this is all about what you have been posting on your podcast. am i right?

Actually, I am the one who brought it up, not torsten.

In some countries these days, you can go to prison for serious amounts of time for seemingly small "violations" of copyright so this is not light matter.

Surely, Jamendo is here not only for itself, but for the artists and also for the listeners. The proper things to do would be to keep a license history for each album (and / or track if jamendo (ever) allows per track licenses) and allow for multiple "current" licenses as well.

If a track needs to get pulled because of "license violations" on the part of the submitter, a record of the situation should still be kept for the benefit of those who "made use" of the work under the license offered. (Not sure that is worded right.)

You can see from what sylvinus wrote in this thread that the situation I reported should not have existed. However, as torsten pointed out, the procedure sylvinus says jamendo should follow can still get people in trouble. Rather than replace the license in the metadata, the new license should be added to the metadata. Replace the license info on the album page and link to a license history for the album.

Does anyone have a better idea to propose?

all the best,

drew

Thanks for pointing me here zotz via http://identi.ca/notice/4096246 ...

I agree it is important that if you're going to publish metadata that it match up with other published license notice, so good to see that sylvinus is treating the mismatch as a bug.

Just because CC licenses are irrevocable (as are any good public licenses) doesn't mean the licensor is constrained to advertise previous offerings. Consider the case where there is no intermediary (eg self-publishing on an artist's blog) -- they change the license, and there's no record -- unless someone had noticed and accepted the old license. If you offer a license in the forest and nobody accepts it, it didn't happen. :-)

In the case where there is an intermediary like Jamendo (or Flickr) it isn't 100% certain what the best practice should be. The ideal is probably to keep a record of all license changes, and note to the copyright holder that changing to a more restrictive license doesn't really accomplish anything (note in this specific case it seems the artist moved to a more permissive license, which is great -- BY-NC-SA to BY-SA, though due to incompatibility between those licenses, someone who had relied on the former to combine with other works/release under BY-NC-SA might be flummoxed), or even only allow changing to a more permissive license that is fully compatible with the previous license. However, this is no magic bullet, as the copyright holder can always delete their account and publish on another platform under whatever terms they choose.

On the user side, depending on how careful you want to be, you can create a trail demonstrating that the work was offered under whatever license it was under at the time you encountered it, eg with a third party service like webcitation.org.

Sorry there's no magic bullet and thanks for zotz for pointing out and syvinus/Jamendo for fixing and all of Jamendo!

Mike

p.s. I work for CC but am not a lawyer and the above isn't legal advice.

Mike:

"However, this is no magic bullet, as the copyright holder can always delete their account and publish on another platform under whatever terms they choose."

A site like jamendo does not "have" to allow for the deletion of Free CC licensed works unless they are relying for extra permissions over and above the license permissions from the copyright holder to do what they do. This is another reason why I think it is important to establish a best practice in the Free cc world for people to operate on the license rights alone and not on extra grants of rights.

all the best,

drew