Re: [microsound] Microsound TWiki + open source content

[derek holzer <derek@xxxxxxx>]

Dear list,


I am quite excited to see .microsound moving in the direction towards 
open and collaborative content, as I feel the romanticized myth of the 
modernist genius labouring in digital solitude is in serious need of 
puncturing.

As to the specifics, I am also happy to see some good discussion going 
on about it. My two bits follow...

> > > - should we adopt the Creative Commons License for our content?

At the soon-to-be-launched weblabel section of Umatic.nl, we had quite a 
few discussions about licenses. These discussions came together with 
ideas about the "integral identity" of a work and whether it is or is 
not part of a larger [anti-]aesthetic tradition, artistic movement, 
social milleu, technological system, etc.

We talked about issues like:

How much does the use of technology dictatate a work? Is the work really 
*yours alone* if you use NATO or Auvi, for example, to make a video 
patch and then you lose your software license later on, preventing you 
from ever making that work again? Additionally, is the work really 
*yours alone* if it is a product of someone else's artwork, by this I 
mean the code that makes up the software that you used to produce it or 
the design of the hardware which makes your work possible? Or is that 
work also in part an "instance" of something, whether an aesthetic trend 
or a set of possibilities provided by the tools? Finally, can a work of 
art, which I consider to be more of a process between people than a 
product in the larger scale of things, ever be frozen in time and 
considered "finished", independent of both its previous influences and 
its subsequent reception?

All of these questions are implicit in choosing a license. They are the 
"libre" in "free speech", and not just the permission to copy and 
redistribute someone else's content, and the terms of the license you 
choose should reflect your own ideas about the questions above.

For Umatic.nl, we found that the Design Science License, which is a 
particular version of the Gnu Public License written especially for 
non-software, was particularly suited to our goals. We defined these 
goals as the fluidity and transformation of audio-visual data from one 
form and location to another as easily as possible, so long as the 
original form of that data is either provided directly or linked to, 
that the original creator of that data is attributed, and that any 
subsequent form of that data is redistributed under the same conditions.

Under this license, we felt that the widest range of both collaboration 
and redistribution is possible. If one of us wants to release something 
with a different set of goals and therefore with a more restrictive 
license [for example, a video for festival exhibition which would 
collect royalties], this is possible as well, but in a different 
"section" of the label.

Full text of the DSL is here:

http://www.dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt

Happy new year,
D.
--
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl
---Oblique Strategy # 154:
"The most easily forgotten thing is the most important"


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