How Creative Commons can help Artists to Create Collaborative Quality Content [Case Study]
I've been using the Creative Commons License since years, and here I would like to illustrate how it helped my own musical band to gain good visibility on the internet. with the additional result of promoting another video-making artist.
The Dharma Fire videoclip, was created taking some extracts from the full-lenght, Creative Commons movie called "Sita sings the Blues" by Nina Paley (link to the movie project)
Vishnu with his wife Lakshmi - extract from the Madhar sound clip
The cartoon movie is about the Ramayana indian epic poem, so I took some extracts from this, to create our "Madhar" videoclip song, synching music with video and creating a beautiful, 10 minutes' music clip.
Brahma four-headed god
Why it was a success story
In the Dharma Fire band I play indian sitar, so we needed an indian themed video to support the music.
We found it on the internet and we didn't need to ask for permission or copyright to use it, we didn't even need to contact the author, the Creative Commons license already gave us the right to use it for non-commercial purposes.
The video gained more than 44,000 views on Youtube, also promoting the "Sitar sings the Blues" project.
this is me playing indian Sitar - from an previous Steemit post
What Creative Commons is
- It's the best tool for the internet era, allowing artists and creatives to release their contents for free and choosing different license types, without the need to use very restrictive, old paradigm copyright protection.
- It helps creatives to promote their own work (when a Creative Commons content is used, normally requires to mention the original creator's website)
- It still can give some profits, when a non-commercial license is used: the commercial use of it will still need a payment
- Protects at an international level the created contents at no cost
Dancing Shiva - extract from the Dharma Fire music clip
Why the Copyright law is obsolete
Total restriction of creative contents is obsolete, because relies on an old paradigm, not allowing the free circulation of ideas and arts. In the world wide web environment, we need a more versatile tool, to protect creatives' work without making it totally unusable by other users.
Sita emerging from the waters like Venus
Open Source Software, but also open source Arts!
We accept the idea of Open Source software as fair and useful for the whole developers' community.
But we also need to learn more and support the Open Source Arts and Contents, and the best available tool we currently have is the Creative Commons license. It helps to protect authorship without preventing the free circulation of ideas and knowledge. It can be used to protect movies, pictures, photography, ebooks and every other creative content.
The Dharma Fire full music video
Certification of this work: look at the youtube video description and you'll find a link to my Steemit blog
Some related weblinks:
Please leave your feedback and follow me @andrew0
Yes, copyright is not good for the progress of humanity. It restrict and prevents information from being used and shared. Open source everything is the way to go. Good points. Take care. Peace.
Thank you and congratulation for all your quality contents!
fantastic article !!
Thank you so much!
I tried to mix the copyright issue with some artistic (music and video) elements.
I agree with you, that copyright laws need to be updated. Still the foundation of copyright is old, dating back to the eighteen century, and without this basic paradigm: that something immaterial created can be assigned the creator as his property automatic and for free, none of the above really matters. Without this foundation, no license CC, GPL, BSD etc. would be possible, because you can not put a licence on something that you do not own.
I have posted quite a few things as CC-by (look at my steemit-blog most of it is CC) but I am still very much a supporter of copyright as it is actually the foundation of a free art. The problem is that today the laws favours the artistic corporations and publishing more than it favours the artist.
I am glad that you are on bandcamp which seems to be one of the good new solutions to help getting the most money to the creators, but I am not impressed with all this free promotion on Youtube, the new publishing-vampire, that earns money on big data-collection of it's users and authors.
Don't take this as criticism, I am well aware of the reality of artists these days, and know that you have to make do with what is there, but the real solution to our problem is not Creative Commons - but more like tolls as Bandcamp, Patreon, Kickstarter. They are not perfect (I prefer Bandcamp of this lot) but at least they are a step in the right direction.
I have a Bandcamp profile and will check out your music - sounds interesting :)
Bandcamp can also have Creative Commons licensed music (if you decide to set it up): your music will be free to download but with non-commercial, share-alike license.
Don't know if Creative Commons is the right solution, but, as far as I know, it's the only current popular alternative to old-fashioned copyright.
Bandcamp, Patreon and Kickstarter are music selling, crowdfounding platforms and not copyright alternatives, that's why I didn't mention them.
Thank you for your feedback, I will also check your Bandcamp!
I was just trying to look at the whole picture of how artist can earn some money when working full time. It is true that CC is a good way to share and cooperate between artists (look at my profile @katharsisdrill and my social media blog I have posted a lot of CC-by artwork), but we can not live by promotion, and while software developers can have lucrative jobs that is not always true for artists. That was why I mentioned the crowd-funding possibilities. I license my work when there is no use for it, only because i like to share.
Also nice music - you are very good at playing sitar - I will buy your album... to support :)
I am very happy you liked my music and thank you if you will buy the EP!
I checked your links and I am following you here on Steemit, very cool illustration and artworks, and checked your website too.
About CC license, you are right, we can not only live by promotion, but this license doesn't prevent from selling one's works.
For example, having a free for non-commercial use artwork doesn't mean you can not accept money for its commercial use (or for a higher quality version).
If you are a visual artist, you may have a CC license on the digital copy but still charge money for the physical one, etc
Still the problem of being an artist and not receiving the right economical reward is a very old and common problem (in the past centuries also very important artists had it): now we have some new opportunities with social media and crowdfounding, but still is not easy!
Thanks again for your kind words and support :)
Definitely something to look into- going to links now. Thank you!
Glad that you liked it, let me know what you think of the Dharma Fire music, I actually got three musical projects and I'm going to post some more in the future.
I'm still watching the video- mesmerising!
Thank you! If you enjoyed it, take some time to also check the Dharma Fire bandcamp page for more free to listen music :)
Great video ~ Loved the graphics, colour and music and especially Brahma the four-headed god ~ Like a cross between Indian and Australian indigenous art. Would be good to see on screen at a film festival.
I'm interested in finding out more about using Creative Commons in preference to copyright protection too. Only today I came across a site where someone had used one of my photographs as a header for their article, with no attribution.
I've no desire to contest violation of copyright ~ But where the image contributes to the success of the article, it seems only fair that the artist should get a mention.
Creative Commons gives you protection for you works for free and on international basis.
You just need to put a link from your work to the license, and contact people using it without mentioning you letting them know they're violating such license.
For more infos you can check the creative commons link at the bottom of my post.
Thank you for your feedback and let me know!
Very good this article @andrew0! (;
Thank you my friend!
Is the mention of the artist website sufficient enough for creative commons?
You need to choose one of the possible Creative Commons licenses and just say (on your website or other social media website) that the work is released under that creative commons license (with link to the license).
There are CC licenses that make the content available for free use and diffusion only for non commercial use, others also allow commercial use, and you can decide if you want to have mention of your official site when content used or not, additionally you can decide if the content can be manipulated/altered/mixed by others or not.
For more info check the CC official website (link at the bottom of this post).
I'm loving the music, so calming!
Thank you so much man!
You can listen to more Dharma Fire music following the link at the bottom of the post
I just might have to subscribe! :D
For all those interested, the Dharma Fire song Madhar is also on radiosteem and you can upvote it to make it broadcast more ofter here
https://steemit.com/music/@radiosteem/madhar-by-dharma-fire