Open Sourcing Sound

Free to listen, free to sample, free to redistribute music is HERE and it's name is Creative Commons. A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED flash animation from the Creative Commons people explains the details of the eight month old project and will have you ready for revolution by the end of the presentation.

Open source software is a concept that has taken huge strides in the last ten years and threatens many of the biggest software monopolies with extinction in the coming decades. It is also, in my opinion, the closest thing to a Christian model of enterprise.

Open Source and specifically Linux has been called 'a cancer' by Steve Balmer, Microsoft's CEO. 12 years after Linux was launched and free (as in speech) software can do just about anything you want (whether you're running Windows or Linux or whatever else), and now that cancer is spreading beyond the software industry.

A number of labels have popped up distributing free music. Following other labels using the less generous shareware model, such as Magnatune, open source labels such as, Loca Records, OpSound and some of the users of GarageBand.com. This is beginning to pierce the collective conciousness with reports such as the one from technology specialist Wired.

But this is not just music. It's happening with books, university course materials, photography, art, samples - even weblogs. The collective term is open content. The flash animation I mentioned uses the following sexy slogan

The rules have changed
and it's just the beginning...

Originally all this was supposed to happen by default when copyright expired. That was called Public Domain and was a big thing in the 80's before Disney stomped all over it to save their rights to Mickey Mouse. Of course if I had a say in it copyright would last 10 years from the time of authorship and then ideas would be open to the public and to hell with all this intellectual property robbery.

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