Thanks for the post and insights. I should point out that we are not assuming that the format will be adopted by microformats.org. That will be Tantek’s and the rest of the community’s call. Not being within physical proximity of the people working on microformats in the Valley is challenging. So , we thought we would narrowly focus our collaboration and exploration on content reuse on a site a bit less intimidating to the average content creator. Hence, playtheweb.org. However, we are hopeful that the results will be useful to and possibly integrated into the microformats initiative.

Rob Linton is proposing adopting your stacking solution, but always maintaining the original node (source?) attribution.

Thoughts?

Au contraire, it is far better.

Only Creative Commons introduces the notion that copyright is a means of empowering the author to require attribution, govern commercial use, and dictate whether derivatives are permissible. All that is an illusion. Copyright licenses grant the author no greater power than copyright, and that is no power at all. Copyright is only a grant of power to wealthy publishing corporations, and licenses are at best, a restoration of the liberties to the public that copyright has suspended.

The simplest way of promoting the distribution and use of ones work is to culturally liberate the public to do so, to liberate them completely, i.e. via a copyleft license that ensures that one’s work and its derivatives are free of all constraint.

The GPL is a copyleft license. CC-SA is the closest CC has come up with, but it still falls short in terms of requiring attribution. It is also a tad lax when it comes to combined works.

Attribution should never be a legal obligation, only that any attribution is truthful (including attribution implicit from context, if no explicit attribution is given). One should never be tempted to wield the unethical power provided by copyright to compel respect. The power should be neutralised and any respect earned.

In other words, you should not expect attribution or your work used if you threaten to prosecute your audience and potential users with copyright infringement if they fail to give you credit.

Naturally, those who fail to give credit where credit is due will lose respect from their own audiences. Moreover, those who go so far as to commit misattribution, aka plagiarism, will suffer considerable opprobrium, which should suffice as a disincentive until such time as any legislation may be required to deal with the most nefarious cases.

Hope springs eternal, so I’m going to go back to the original thread as if nothing had happened, because the main point is about a trend rather than an example of the trend.

My thought here is something along the lines that stephensings is an intrinsic part of the value that Merritt is offering his fans. Singing the song for yourself isn’t an act of devotion to the star, it’s an act of self-sufficiency that the star helped provide for.

In Jay’s terms, it’s “a more intricate relationship” where the star is a leader in shared creative activity.

“For performers to encourage avocational musicians to learn to play the music for themselves is a sea change in publishing.”

But, I would disagree if you’re suggesting that selling (in the past) vs give-away (now) is inherently coupled to a musician not-maximizing vs maximizing their fans involvement with their music.

I’d just say that it’s a more intricate relationship, in general–and, especially if we are factoring in “cost of goods” in the past (20+ years), when there was real expense in distributing (physical) sheet music or lesson tapes.

So, as a case: imagine someone who wanted to do exactly what Stephen Merritt is doing now, except that it’s 1981. I think there were people like that in 1981, and I don’t think they were acting like an extension of the sheet music industry, even when there was some $$ exchanged.

But then again, I was in LA / Hollywood in 1981, and a major DIY revolution in music was happening–so my perspective is skewed!