The mission statement at Loca Records resonates with our concerns about copyrights. In an attempt to address these issues, they are using a licensing structure called the Creative Commons, which similar in spirit to the GNU Public License, the license frequently applied to Open Source Software. Loca's plan is intriguing, as they will offer the music as downloadable CD images, which the user can burn to disc at home. They want to sell not only the music, but the samples used to create the music as well.
Read on for more discussion of the Creative Commons license...
One sticking point which always comes up in open-style licenses like Creative Commons is the fear of the artists' loss of revenues due to unauthorized commercial use of their creations. Presumably, the "Share Alike" part of the contract's forcing of the second artist to then open up their product to public usage would discourage any major monetary imbalances, as the later product would be free for anyone to copy and distribute. This would then imply the original artist would be able to take the second artist's final product, copy it, and redistribute it themselves.
Usage in soundtracks to movies or other potentially lucrative endeavors seems like a worrisome situation, as movie ticket sales can make up fairly significant revenue. It is hard to imagine, though, any movie likely to gross a large amount being willing to leave itself open to the legitimate piracy issues of this open licensing. Fortunately, the terms of the license allow it to be waived by the original author if desired, which allows for more traditional transactions in these kinds of scenarios.