[Licenses] Proposal for new "Commercial" clause

[Heather Morrison]

This is an interesting idea, however may I suggest (whether this fits with
CC or new organizations are needed) that it might be more helpful to
facilitate individual creators actually selling their own works, at a price
that they choose with no more than a modest admin fee?

To understand where I am coming from and how I see this helping for free
culture in the copyfight:

Currently in Canada we have many collective societies (such as SOCAN for
music) that collect tariffs and distribute funds to artists and publishers.
I meet artists who are frustrated by how little money they receive from
such collectives and think the problem is piracy. My perspective is that
this model has passed its prime and it would be in the best interests of
artists to abandon these in favour of new collectives to help them market
their own works and control the administration to ensure that the bulk of
revenues goes to artists rather than intermediaries.

There are many self-publishing outlets that operate in this fashion, such
as Smashwords, however the revenue split strikes me as reflecting the old
model with an outsized share going to intermediaries.

Rights link is already operational for published works, this should be
looked at as a cautionary example as it facilitates per-item sales and
strengthens the power of the publishing industry, not authors.

The key to this working for creators is bulk of revenue going to creators.
A single example of such sales based on a modest admin fee (what it takes
to process the financial transaction plus a modest profit) would be helpful
to point to. Does anyone know of one?

The financial bit is why I am not sure CC would take this on, although a
license to fit would help. % of downstream commercial revenue would make
sense to me, but creators should be able to directly sell and to set their
own rules such as sliding scale pricing based on income (personal, country,
or organization) or specific uses (listen to music, perform for free,
perform for pay).

Best,

Heather Morrison

On Sep 19, 2016 10:51 AM, "Martin Doucha" <next_ghost at quick.cz> wrote:

> Hello,
> I'd like to propose a new alternative to the non-commercial clause that
> will both fit within the definition of Free Culture License and ensure
> remuneration from commercial use by third parties.
>
> The clause would set only one requirement for commercial use: payment of
> fee calculated as a percentage of commercial user's revenue to the
> author. The author would be free to set the percentage as high or low as
> they want (between 1% and 99%, obviously). The short license name could
> be written as e.g. CC BY-C05 for 5% fee or CC BY-C25 for 25% fee.
>
> The non-commercial clause is often interpreted by the public (and even
> intentionally used by some authors) as an anti-commercial statement
> rather than invitation to ask for a separate commercial license. The new
> "Commercial" clause could clear that confusion and bring open licenses
> to the more traditional parts of creative market.
>
> Regards,
> Martin Doucha
>
>
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