Re: [Callers] Dances licensed with CC or similar

On 09/13/2013 02:10 PM, Perry Shafran wrote: I personally don't think so (as you said, that's the point of writing dances for most folks, not to make money, but to distribute them as widely as possible and make sure people can enjoy them). And that's exactly why you should use a copyleft license. Traditional copyright law is designed to protect the author from having their works (and revenue stream) stolen. The modern copyleft (not a legalterm) trend is designed to take copyright law, and turn it into a way to allow others to use those works in an appropriate manner. In other words, it's not about protecting you (the author), it's about making sure people know that you don't mind it if they use your works. In other words it's about giving others legal rights, not about protecting yourself. Also, just to clarify, you don't have to `copyright' your dances. They are automatically copyrighted the moment you write them (in the USA; might not be the same elsewhere); you and you alone own the copyright by default. Licensing them is just a way to use copyright law and release some of the rights that you have under the law. It means your dances can be freely (and legally) shared in more ways than they could before. In some cases it also allows others to make derivative works based on your work, and sometimes requires that any derivative works also follow a similar license (lots of GNU licenses work this way). Another way to explain it is that, when you tell someone that they can call your work at a dance, you've just made it free as in beer (gratis) whereas if you license them using a CC, GNU, etc. license, you've made them free as in freedom (libre). For a good discussion of the differences between gratis and libre, see this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_vs._libre —Sam P.S. Don Veino's thread `Norms/Ethics of Dance Choreography Sharing' might be a better place for this sort of discussion. -- Sam Whited pub 4096R/EC2C9934 https://samwhited.com/contact