Reply To: Does this creative commons, free distribution thing mean “Buy the box set and set up a torrent”
Thank you, Eztli, for your comment. You hit things right on the head there. I'm in a similar boat to you (except I simply haven't been able to afford the box set yet on my limited income… I have bought TaW 1 and Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow, 'cause that was all he had with him when he came to town last fall).
Kerrin: "It seems that JoCo has inspired even the most hardcore music pirate to donate."
Yes. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I'm one of them.
And as for Mike Toole's comment "Music pirates make up crap about record labels and that money not going to the artist, but I always knew they were full of crap."
Actually, no, we're NOT full of crap. It's 110% true. Do some research into the issue and you'll see that the artists are getting as screwed over as the consumers by the RIAA and the record labels. Which is REALLY sad.
I wish there was a system like JoCo has for ALL artists. I feel talent and music should be rewarded and I would give money to even major artists if I knew the money was going towards them and not into some fat cat music executive's pocket.
As for "the CC license says that you have to credit the original artist, can this be done with bit torrent sufficently to meet the requirements?"
My guess would be as long as the MP3s in the box set are tagged properly w/ JoCo's name as the artist, that counts as sufficient credit. I believe the issue would come in at the point of "is the CC license being included with the music". 'Cause I think you have to make sure that the work is marked as CC.
My 2 cents on it all is this: JoCo willingly put his stuff up as CC. I *know* he had to know that people would use P2P and Bittorrent to share his stuff. If someone DLs the boxed set from BT, and they find that they like it, most likely they'll want to get to know more about JoCo. They'll stumble onto his website. And at that point, it's just like anyone else who got his music… will they give money? Will they not give money? People are going to DL music for free, whether or not it's legal. So you might as well just show them that you're ok with it and then encourage them to pay you for it. Harvey Danger did that with their most recent album. I'm FAR more likely to give money to an artist who does that than an artist that gets all pissy or huffy about illegal DLing. And I know I'm not the only one with that attitude.
Basically, P2P and BT are just distribution technology. Technology that people desperately want and will use. You can work against it, which I feel is futile, or work with it and make it work for you to your own benefit. JoCo is doing the latter, much to his credit. And it seems to be working.
For the record, when I share music on P2P, I only share the CC stuff, the stuff that can be legally traded. I feel it's my way of getting more people into these great artists, which, in the end, will get them more money.
I, for one, welcome the box set on BT. Easier distribution and greater access to his music means greater publicity for him, more fans, which, in the end, will mean more money.
(also, if I'm not mistaken, it's not the FULL TaW. He left out the mashups and covers. The only way to get the FULL TaW is to have DLed the podcast, which I did.)
(and M_Pony and Spiff, I also DLed a bunch of stuff before his site disallowed it. Hell, I even used some different browsers to get around the disallowing of it before he started using the flash interface that he's using today. I figured, if it's CC, then I can legally have it for free anyway.
Honestly, I frown upon him disallowing DLing most of his songs for free. I mean, if they're CC, they're already allowed to be shared with others for free. Yes, it's his music and he can do whatever the hell he wants to with it, but locking some songs down just seems to me like it's against part of the whole mindset of CC, not to mention it makes it much harder to obtain some of these songs which I already have the legal right to DL & share for free.)