To survive the onslaught of peer-to-peer file sharing of music, record labels and artists need to change fast and come up with innovative, legal ways to earn money from listeners. Part of the problem with ‘legal’ download stores such as iTunes and Napster has been restrictive DRM, which doesn’t allow end-users the level of freedom they want. Kerchoonz is a startup which wants to change this. Kerchoonz is a two-pronged offering – it has something for both listenser and artists. The basic philosophy behind the site is that end-users / listeners can listen to music for free, and still ensure that artists get paid.
For listeners, Kerchoonz allows to to listen to music via streaming (Flash needed), or even download the music file to your PC (if the artist has enabled that). You can browse through artist profiles, see video updates, read blog posts from your favorite artists, connect with like-minded members…basically everything that a social networking site offers with the addition that your usage of the site actually supports an artist financially.
Kerchoonz’s business model is advertising-supported. Every time you listen to song stream or you download a file, Kerchoonz pays a cut of its advertising revenue to the artist. Kerchoonz is an opt-in system for artists, i.e., you shouldn’t expect big-gig bands there. Artists sign up on the site and upload their music, choose whether they want to allow their creations to be streamed / downloaded / both, and maintain profiles. An active community of listeners which is specifically seeking for new music makes Kerchoonz an invaluable springboard for upcoming artists to spread their music to a larger audience at practically nil costs – and even get paid for it! However, if as an artist choose not to give your music away for free, you can still choose to sell your songs online and provide links to an online shop.
Community interaction is one of the high points of Kerchoonz. You can interact directly with the artists you like and follow news updates about them. You can discover similar artists and people with similar music tastes through the forums / classifieds. And if you have your own blog / website then you can even share the music you listen to with other using Kwidgets. There are many different choices for the widgets you want to embed – simply choose one from the list, paste the supplied code and you’re good to go!
What about the music? Well, it’s definitely for the more adventurous music aficionados. A lot of the artists on the artists on the site (at least from my experience so far) are from electronic / techno / indie / alternative rock genres. But really, there’s a lot of great stuff that you can listen to and discover on Kerchoonz.
You should check out Jamendo. They have a very similar model to Kerchoonz (provide music for free and pay artists through advertising revenue and donations), but they provide even more freedom to users than Kerchoonz. All music on Jamendo is licensed under a Creative Commons license so users are free to re-host it, copy it, and share it with their friends.
From what I can see of Kerchoonz, the artist retains full copyright on their songs so you can’t legally share the music with others; they have to get it directly from Kerchoonz themselves. While it’s better than pay-for DRMed songs, it could be even more free. Jamendo offers exactly that type of freedom, with all the benefits of Kerchoonz (as far as I can tell).
Jamendo certainly is a viable alternative to DRM-ed songs available on mainstream networks. I use Jamendo too and it has some great music. However, certain artists may not be comfortable with licensing their works under a Creative Commons license. Licensing under CC is desirable, however, there can be other restrictions which crop up. For instance, here in India the legal validity of a CC license has never been tested in a court of law – and legal experts widely reckon that under the ambit of Indian law a CC-license may not be recognized as valid. No dispute has yet come up to set a legal precedent. (Yes, an Indian-ported version of the CC exists, but it has never been tested in an actual dispute.) I’m sure this may be the case with some other countries too. It’s the reason why I haven’t licensed my blog content under Creative Commons, until some case comes along settles the matter for certain.
In such cases where the legalities are not clear, artists may want to retain rights using ‘full’ copyright rather than license content. Kerchoonz seems to be a good option for that, apart from offering music from artists who have chosen the copyright path.
So your argument is “I’m not sure CC would give as many freedoms as I would like it to in my jurisdiction, so instead I’ll give no freedoms at all?”
Seems like granting the freedoms in some way (CC or otherwise) is the better way to go, unless your gov’t has said you *may not* give up some right (I believe most commonwealth and former countries do not allow one to give up attribution, for example). If the person using your work thinks it is unsafe, they are free not to use it (or to ask for more explicit permission). As it is, no one can use the content at all, which does not seem to achieve the purpose.
See, under Indian law, simply placing a license, term & conditions or a disclaimer does not automatically imply acceptance. So for example even if you’re signing up on a website and you have a checkbox next to ‘I agree to terms and conditions’ it will NOT be accepted in an Indian court. Under Indian cyber law, ‘proper acceptance’ of a license / ToS online is only when the full legal text is presented, the user scrolls from top to bottom, and then clicks an agreement button / link. Timestamp and IP address must be recorded. By simply stating in my footer ‘I license this under such-and-such CC license’ doesn’t mean – at least in India – that my users have agreed to it. Short of giving an annoying full-screen layer to cover my content and force people to read and agree to CC-license each time they come to my blog, there’s no way I can enforce the license.
So to clarify my point, it isn’t exactly about the license ONLY. It’s true that a CC related court case has never come up to set a precedent. If you can prove someone agreed to the license, they will probably back the content author. But Indian courts have been unequivocally clear on HOW a license may be accepted. Now it’s another issue that not many webmasters in India are aware of these legalities.
Under such a situation I am compelled to stick to deal with copyright requests on a case-by-case basis. It saddens me, but I don’t have any other alternative.
CC licenses are *copyright* licenses, which are very different from ToS.
Users *never* “agree” to the CC license under *any* jurisdiction. The CC license only binds *you*. If someone uses your content in a way that is allowed by the CC license *you* cannot sue them because *you* have promised not to.
If they use the content in ways not allowed by the CC license, then you *can* sue them. Not because of the CC license, but just under plain old copyright law.
CC licenses don’t restrict what a user can do *at all*. Copyright law does that. CC licenses are only an unambiguously legally worded promise from *you* not to sue people.
I’m very much aware of the fact CC is a license to *my* content that *I* am giving. What I was talking of different. Let’s take a quote from CC-BY 2.5 India jurisdiction license:
It is this bit that Indian legal experts say you might have a problem enforcing in court. Such an implicit acceptance of the license just by using a work – and note that this bit of text I quote is for the end-user, not the licensor (mentioned as “You” in the above lines; “You” is defined in the license as “means an individual/s and/or entity exercising rights under this License…”) – is what can be potentially troublesome to implement (for the author) in an Indian court. I know a ToS is different from a license, but Indian courts have on previous occasions stated that for online works, any kind of such ‘implicit’ acceptance of ToS or license or disclaimer is not valid. I’d love to cite a reference for this, but I can’t find any right now online. Nevertheless, what I’m saying is not speculation but what lawyers specializing in intellectual property related disputes and cyber law said at a blogger conference in New Delhi.
Coming back to your point, let’s say I license the content on my blog under CC-BY-NC. I someone uses my work for commercial purposes, I can, of course, sue him under copyright laws. But – and this is a big but – if some guy uses it for non-commercial purposes but doesn’t give attribution, then I can’t go to an court and say “Look, this is the license I gave but so-and-so chap is not following that”. I can sue people for copyright infringement but not for non-enforcement of license terms.
That just brings me back to square one. Since I can only sue for copyright infringement – whether I use a ‘plain old copyright’ or a CC-license – I don’t see any reason to shift to the latter.
If he uses it for non-commercial purposes and doesn’t attribute, you can still sue, because copyright gives you the right to be attributed. Unless it doesn’t in your country.
Basically, you can sue him for any violation of your ARR rights, and he can only use the CC as a legal defense. If he says he didn’t agree to the CC license, or if the CC license for some other reason is deemed to not apply, then the work is effectively ARR and he loses.
Exactly. CC will simply be reduced tool to threaten someone into submission, saying that I can sue him under violation of ARR if he does not comply with my license terms. If I want to enforce license terms itself through a court order, I can’t do that. I can’t get a court to direct him to, say, follow share-alike in CC-BY-SA. And I don’t want to sue for copyright infringement; I’d want to sue – if such a case happens – for getting my license conditions implemented. It’s not the failure of Creative Commons, it’s the failure of the Indian courts to be sensible about this issue. By applying a CC license, I’ll simply get any potential case dragged on and on, with the possibility of appeal to higher courts on the validity of such a license. Since I anyway have to sue for ARR, keeping ‘plain copyright’ gives me a clear-cut victory in case of infringement. I don’t want to be the guinea pig on whom such a case is tried out. I’ll wait for some case to come along which sets a precedent, and then act accordingly if it’s favorable to me applying a CC license.
“I can’t get a court to direct him to, say, follow share-alike in CC-BY-SA”
It is my understanding that you cannot do that under any juristiction. If he does comply you could drop the case, but otherwise he has still violated your copyright and you’re entitled to a normal copyright suit, which AFAIK is all you’re ever entitled to.
Indeed.
(Though I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice.)
Is that so? Hmm, I didn’t know that. Hmm, I think I will go in for a CC-license, if that is the case.
On a related note, what version would you suggest to use – the India-specific version or the Unported one?
Would recommend the India port if that’s where you think a dispute is most likely (ie where you’re publishing from and/or have most readers). All of the licenses are designed to be enforceable worldwide, so it isn’t incredibly critical that you choose one or the other.
Mike
This is what I don’t get. You say the ‘license are enforceable’, while Stephen says that the rights mentioned in CC themselves aren’t enforceable, but you can instead sue for ‘All Rights Reserved’ violation.
I think by “enforcable” he means under copyright law.
It is unfortunate that copyright law, and contract law, both use the word “license” and that some copyright-related licenses (such as the AGPL) mix the two in one set of terms.
Hmm. OK, you have me convinced. Licensing under CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported now.
I like this idea of Kerchoonz. The creative commons license isn’t always a good option for artists who may want to give their music for streaming but also sell their music in the shops or for artists who have a record label supporting them. Kerchoonz leaves a broader option for the artists because if you have licensed your music under the creative commons, you can join kerchoonz and have the benefits of being paid when people listen. If you are on a record deal, you can use kerchoonz too. It works for everyone and i think that since you can share with these widgets, it’s good too and it’s enough if you want to share the music you can send a link or put the embed code on your sites. I think it’s a good site. I like it that it have more than only music, it has videos, games, forums, news like digg,
Not to completely disagree with you, but you seem to be implying that libre content cannot be sold… which is patently untrue.
True. Commercial licensing of work can still be done when using a Creative Commons license. That said, Kerchoonz’s business model is innovative and a good alternative for those who do not yet feel comfortable with Creative Commons.
Fair enough.