[PD-ot] Art: To GPL or not to GPL?

[Claudius Maximus]

>> If you want attribution as well, there are ways to ensure this,

>> in the CC Attribution license this is made very clear, but I guess,

>> this is possible with GPL'd work as well.

>

>No, the GPL specifically does not have an attribution clause because of

>the problems that such a clause caused with the BSD license.  RMS is in

>fact opposed to attribution clauses, and I agree totally for software

>projects.  For software, attribution clauses give a minor benefit to

>the authors, but with major problems.  Imagine if RedHat had to give

>credit in all of their materials (books, software boxes, ads, etc.) to

>every person who has contributed to RedHat GNU/Linux? It would be

>totally unmanagable.  Also, if they left someone out, they could be

>sued for damages.

>

>But with parts of art projects that are not 'tools' (i.e. the score,

>etc.), the reasons for attribution clauses might be compelling enough

>to warrant their use.  But you could take the example of music built

>with samples to be a similar case as with RedHat.  Looking say 20 years

>into the future, where art is made from samples of samples of

>samples..., then the attribution list is going to be in the thousands,

>if not more.  This is the problem with attribution clauses that makes

>them almost as bad as regular copyrights in the long run; you would

>have to spend so much time/money to make sure you are giving all of the

>correct attributions.


The creative commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 
(and I'm sure the others too) includes the line:

"Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above."

I would view sampling of parts of the work (for example, up to a couple 
of bars) as fair use and thus not requiring attribution, this to me is 
the common sense approach.


Claude