--- In "David Kuhn"
<> wrote:
>
> An issue that is often on my mind--protecting IP (that is, in
> legalese, "Intellectual Property") from un-authorized and
> uncompensated use. Indeed there is much time and expense involved
in
> collecting the raw material for this work that we love--sharing it,
> raising awareness of what is out there in the natural world.
You might want to check out the Creative Commons stuff:
http://creativecommons.org/
Here you can license your work in a number of ways. For example, you
can allow others to access and use it for free provided they are not
making commercial use of it. If their use is for commercial purposes,
they need to contact you first and arrange something.
This is good for nature recordists, phonographers and others who wish
to disseminate their work for promotional purposes and/or for others
to appreciate and/or appropriate. It allows the work to be
disseminatd freely and widely, while retaining some kind of
protection for situations where compensation is required.
I am often asked by musicians and DJs if they can use some of my
ethnic music recordings in their own compositions. It's always been
difficult to decide how to work it out - a musician in an
alternative/indie band is living in a very different economy to a DJ
who is currently topping the local dance music charts, but those
musicians just might get lucky and I want to make sure I get a part
of that luck.
Nowadays, I'm thinking of a contract built around the Creative
Commons license. I'm also thinking of building in something that
means if someone has got a commercial deal going with any of my
recordings, then they can pay a bit extra to ensure that no-else will
be allowed to use that particular recording for a certain time
thereafter (otherwise it would devalue the recording and might get
messy in terms of who is paying what).
I'm not sure if that's the answer, but it's looking very attractive
to me...
- Greg Simmons
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