Categories
Free Culture

The NonCommercial Fallacy Revisited

How to make money off of CC-NC music:

1. Record the song under a statutory license and charge for your cover version.

2. Run a p2p or Internet Service Provider company that allows NC music to be moved across your network.

3. Manufacture MP3 players or blank CDs that can hold NC music.

4. Be a nonprofit organisation and argue that you charging for NC content isn’t “commercial”.

5. Be a musical instrument or software manufacturer who sells equipment to NC musicians.

Any more?

IANAL, but musicians don’t need to NC their music. They can SA the recording and then re-record it proprietary later. NC-ing is either cynical and self-defeating, as described above, or idealistic and self-defeating, failing to provide an alternative to capitalism/globalism/whatever.

NC may be CC’s most popular license module, but it is time for CC to put NC into maintenance mode and start building a real cultural commons rather than the cultural allotments of NC.

Technorati Tags: