2 soup

Today i made soup. i put a heap of veggies, spices, fridge bits and cooked. I got bored stirring the pot, i start to wonder if the soup was going to be ok. Especially as i had no soup cubes and normally i always use soup cubes. I had this idea, well i can put the body of the soup in the blender and have the rest with dinner. it worked out ok and I still have more soup.

Buma Stemra and Creative Commons

this is about Buma Stemra creative commons. if you do a web search you’ll find some info on it. my blog is probably slightly confusing, yes it is.

If Buma/Stemra treat a commercial use for a musical work licensed with a creative commons license the same way that they treat a work not licensed with a creative commons license, how does that effect non-profit organizations that want to use audio works licensed with a creative commons license in holland or outside ?

Do Buma/Stemra see any difference between a commercial use of a work licensed with a creative commons license and one that is not ? If the collection society did, this would encourage non-profit organizations to use works licensed with a creative commons license. This in turn would decrease the amount of revenue that is collected. Consider how the board works within these organizations.

In Australia: for every 500 dollars that an artist or publisher collects the artist or publisher gets an extra vote. The same system applies to all collection societies, as far as i understand. The board members of these organizations create conditions in favor of the shareholders they represent. Consider this when looking at the Buma/Stemra project.

iarts launched

Solutions to problems around us can be found by sharing and communicating ideas.

Reform APRA. Getting music artists in Australia to put pressure on APRA (collection society) to create a one member one vote system. Currently voting rights are structured so that for every 500 dollars that an artist or publisher collects, the artist or publisher gets one extra vote. With new technologies it makes sense to have equal voting rights for all members. Consider that the conditions that the board of APRA create, effect the way that members and non members deal with commercial and non-commercial spaces . APRA members are not able to use a creative commons license and remain within the terms of the agreement that the board of APRA maintain. Websitemyspace

Hungry Artists Feed Hungry People. Artists giving up commercial rights for the use of their content to a charity of choice. HAFHPmyspace icommonsOpenbusiness

Artist Press Kit. Creating a press kit (media station) for artists, where the media comes to the artist rather than the artist going to the media. openbusinessicommons

Create Incentives For Artists to be Artists. Create an organization that would collect
and distribute works that would be used in commercial streams.
Encourage artists to license works allowing commercial use. Create
incentives for artists. icommons

Titanic Radio. Why
not bring Wiki, Creative Commons, Public Domain content together and
make it available for broadcast through a wireless network to a device
with unlimited channels ?
Decentralized “broadcasting” network.website icommons

Explain creative commons licenses to Artists. The objective of this project is to give
balanced advice to artists on the advantages, disadvantages, risks and
rewards that their use of Creative Commons licenses may involve. Icommonswikifacebook

any feedback is much appreciated. jam@iarts.CC

WWW.IARTS.CC

unearthed radio

I would like to see Australian artists able to upload content to the JJJ unearthed website using a creative commons non-commercial license. Why is this a good idea ? This would create a stream of content that could be broadcast to non-profit organizations. This would lower costs for non-profits and give needed exposure to the art and ideas.

The ABC/JJJ is a non-profit organization that provides entertainment to the youth of Australia. Part of the ABC/JJJ’s mission is to connect art from within your community of listeners to your listeners. When considering this idea: APRA maintain a system that provides exposure to published works, not self published works. Self published non-professional artists are not encouraged to join APRA by APRA. With the net and new technologies the amount of content available for use has increased, yet the cost of content via the rights organizations has increased. With the price of content increasing there is little incentive to use self published works.

rough draft from train trip swiss

Over the last weeks i have been on travel mode. What I’m starting to notice more than ever is how centralized this place is; media, places to get media, railway stations. The whole gig. People get lazy, small systems get eaten up by big systems. A monopoly evolves, then an anti monopoly, then the anti monopoly becomes a monopoly and gets eaten by the monopoly. Then the government regulates that monopoly. Then the government sells the rights to regulate the monopoly. It can start out with biscuits and move to railway company’s. Then a car company buys the railway company and in Phoenix a man uses a million dollars of his own money to stop a light rail train system from being built. Reason: he doesn’t want people from that side of town being able to catch a train to his side of town.

Europe:
The environment in Europe has improved. Thanks to nuclear power plants and an end to the cold war. Industry has shut down in the eastern block; containers arrive full from asia and return empty. EU regulation has cleaned up the river system of the eastern block, people can fish in the streams again. No more acid rain. At the same time in the Swiss alps they are putting special covers over their glacier’s to make sure they don’t melt.

Drive the car you have for 10 years or buy an environmental hi-brid car, your global foot-print is bigger in your environmental car.

In the 1920’s a silent film called “metropolis”: people beneath the city rising up. Today, a protest in Paris, people are angry as working conditions get worse. In Bangladesh women are paid less in a month than what it costs to ride one stop on a Swiss train. None of the clothing that the protesters are wearing was made in their country. The leaders of the protest wearing cloths designed in their country.

book of hope

i read something today that kind of clicked with me

“you never changes things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model look obsolete.”

Buckminster Fuller.

buma/stemra creative commons

thoughts on Buma/stemra

Buma/stemra get in the way of the artist directly dealing with venue and media. example: if i do a show and publisize that show. i have to pay 7 percent of what is taken on the door, regardless of weather i’m with Buma/stemra or not. i have no way of getting that money back (unless i join). consider that the show is 100 percent original (this means none of the content belongs to a publisher, its all work i created). this is like putting a tax on someone for talking in a bar.

buma stemra have said they want to adapt the creative commons license to their system. yet from what i understand Buma/stemra see a commercial use the same for art that is licensed with a creative commons license and one that is not.

article in progress/free culture spaces without free culture

In the last weeks i have been performing tunes around Europe. In my down time I visited some non-profit places/spaces to look for more shows. What i found interesting was this: more than most of the content performed in these venues is owned by publishers & most of the revenue comes directly from the government to keep these spaces open. I found it slightly ironic that the public is paying to keep a venue open that is promoting published acts.

Most large towns and cities in central europe have free-culture spaces ( non-profit organizations that provide subsidized entertainment to the public). From what I understand the better ones work this way: they have a board of directors that is made up mostly by leaders within the community. These leaders decide what projects get approved and what ones don’t. Some of the spaces are old theaters that have been updated to bar/cafe/venue-theater. Here are some links to non-profit spaces I visited. http://www.spielboden.at http://www.palace.sg http://www.denhopsack.be http://www.stadel.at

These spaces want to stay open and competitive within the community, almost all the acts/productions that they promote

none of the music/art i heard/saw in these spaces is licensed with a creative commons license. M

article in progress “Some reasons why artists don’t use CC license”.

Most artists when they get started on their path mostly seem interested in distribution of ideas, rather than revenue. I spoke to a blues guitar player recently, when talking about money and music. “The music is free, what your paying for is the strings, the amp, the petrol and all the rest of it; but the music its free”. Its not easy for some artists to license their art with a CC license, Creative Commons is difficult to explain to an artists having a hard time. The void within the publishing system creates a magnet to almost every idea, creative commons is the only . I’m convinced that CC creates a better flow of culture within culture, yet getting that message through is not easy.

License:
The most effective distribution tool (i reckon) is an open license, yet for a commercial organization to use an open license can create problems. Recently virgin mobile in Australia used images, licensed with an open license without a model release. This resulted in legal action against virgin mobile and creative commons by the person that licensed their image using a creative commons open license. If the person using a license can sue the organization that creates the license, what is the future of that license ?

Publishing:
The publishers have created difficult circumstances for “self publishing” artist with new ideas. As publishing industries grow smaller, exploitation of the “self published artist” grows. Organization have sprung up all over the net that offer artists the opportunity to get through the wall at a cost. Its easy for an artist with little understanding of the publishing industry to be sucked into this system. Even when artists create ideas compatible with contemporary ideas, unless publishing industries have nurtured these ideas the ability to distribute the idea is not easy. One of my favourite artists “beck”, was related to the business when he started out. Publishing good ideas has less to do with the idea and more to do with who you know, even with