Played with Adduce at Cologne Commons at their 2010 edition, in Gebäude 9. There’s a video of the Rip Curl available. The show was very late, about 4pm – I don’t recall when I last played so late. The same day in the afternoon I helped Mika Martini translating his panel presentation and discussion at the conference part of Cologne Commons 2010.

The conference concerned various aspects of the Creative Commons concept. Mika gave an interesting historical perspective on Pueblo Nuevo’s role for independent artists’ record publishing in Chile which I wasn’t aware of. The Creative Commons seem to get it justification mainly due to poor rights management by local authors’ rights societies. The situation in Chile made it effectively impossible for local artists to get funding for CD releases, and they did not have the resources to publish their material themselves. Free download under a Creative Commons license provided a solution in that they could publish and distribute on-line.

In principle authors are the owners of all rights to publish and distribute. If you do not transfer the management of your rights to a society, you hold the rights yourself and are free to do what you please in terms of free distribution, download and use. Any commercial use such as film or other must be cleared with you prior to use. This made me wonder what the Creative Commons provide for musicians and composers, and it does not seem that they provide anything which isn’t already theirs. Using the Creative Commons label makes therefore no difference, except possibly sends the signal that the works in question are not managed by a traditional rights management society.

Oh, by the way – is there a Creative Commons license that regulates use of the Creative Commons logo? Sorry, just kidding…