Say what now…… !?!
I can’t be sure, but I think I have spent the last year living under a rock.
I have no idea how, but I have somehow managed to miss Nine Inch Nails releasing two albums under a Creative Commons license. You can get the lowdown in this blog post on Jamendo – a legal download site which offers Creative Commmons licensed music.
I have to admit a kind of personal shame here, I have been a follower of Nine Inch Nails and their music since the mid-nineties, and considered myself a fan. I vaguely remember hearing about Ghosts I-IV, but must have let it flow out of my other ear.
So why all the sudden interest now?
Well, I can certainly say that it is not about getting something for nothing.
I have been following, or at least trying to follow the progress, of Creative Commons since it first came to my attention two years or so ago. The idea that a work could be easily marked, not only with the rights that the creator(s) have reserved for themselves, but also with the freedoms that the rest of us have with regard to that work. Whether that is sharing, remixing or reusing (as allowed by the choosen licence) the work in question.
I have chosen to use a ‘By Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives’ license for my posts on this blog. As mentioned a few post back, the template used for this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
The whole eco-system seems to have enjoyed a fair degree of success, with little CC license buttons popping up all over the web. How much of an in-road has been made into the mainstream consciousness, is perhaps a discussion for another time.
Progress is being made all the time, however, and the backing of such a high profile player in the music business* can help to get the message out further.
*As the blog post mentions, Radiohead apparently followed a similar route with their self-released ‘In Rainbows’ album in 2007.
The Say what now…… !?! by apatheticlife.com, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.