What is free music?
Free music is the attempt to transfer the principles of free software to new areas: first of all musical compositions, including lyrics, secondly music recordings, and thirdly music videos. There are two ways how to answer what free music, namely –
- a) with a clear definition based on legal issues, and
- b) by naming things typical of the free software culture.
Contents
Definition
The term is closely based on the GNU Free Software Definition (short: FSD) and the Debian Free Software Guidelines (short: DFSG). The initiative freedomdefined.org has generalized the concept of free software to be applied to all areas and speaks of “free cultural goods”.
- Examples of free software include well known software products such as GNU/Linux, Apache, MySQL, Gimp, and Firefox.
- Examples of free cultural goods include cultural enrichments like Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap.
In this sense, free music is music that everybody has the right
- to use for any purpose,
- to study,
- to improve, and
- to pass around.
Implementation
Under the copyright laws, the author of a work owns the “exclusive rights” to a work. Basicly, this means that only he is allowed to copy, distribute, perform and change the work. This makes the music non-free for other people. However, there are two ways in which music can still be free:
- a) by not being “protected” anymore, or
- b) if the copyright holder gives permission to everybody.
Public Domain
→ Read the Wikipedia article on Public Domain
Public Domain means that a work is not ‘protected’ by copyright. This is generally the case, if the author of the work has died more than 70 years ago (in Mexico it's 100 years).
Also, governmental institutions of some states do not claim copyright to works created in that facility.
Thirdly, individuals might want to release their rights and dedicate their work to the Public Domain. The legal validity of such dedication has been questioned however, i.e. it is not clear if such a dedication would hold up in court, in any place of the world. Therefore it might be a good idea to combine such dedication with a short public license. Creative Commons Zero is a protocol that combines both.
In this wiki, currently the following templates are defined to mark works:
-
{{PD-old}}– copyright expired -
{{CC0}}– Creative Commons Zero
Public License
Another approach is to keep the copyright, and to allow everybody to use the work in all necessary ways. Such an allowance is called a license, and as it is offered to everybody, this particular kind of license is called a public license. Such licenses can set up requirements (similar to a payment in a regular contract), so for instance, individuals might give proper attribution in order to exercise the rights.
A copyleft license requires individuals to free their derived works, too. Unfortunately, this is not the default.
FIXME…
Differentiation
A piece of music is not free music, if the license does not allow changes to the work, because by definition, everybody is allowed to improve free music and to change it for his needs. Music is also not free, if its license forbids commercial use, as such a restriction would prevent the music from being used for any purpose. If a license only partially fulfills all the requirements, works under it are called “semi-free music”.
If a piece of music is neither in the Public Domain nor under a free or semi-free music license, it is completely non-free.
Attention must be given to make sure that all the songs on this wiki get proper licensing information attached to them. It should become clear to other users, why this particular work is free – under what license it is or which year the author died. Pieces with no such indication and pieces under Creative Commons Non-Commercial (NC) or No-derivative (ND) or other semi-free or non-free licenses will be deleted.
A common misunderstanding is that the ‘free’ in ‘free music’ means ‘gratis’, just like in free beer. That's not quite right. For example, copies of free music can be sold. But contrary to non-free music, everybody can sell copies of free music – or give them away for free. This keeps the price low, if there is a price at all.
Free software culture
This part is about FS culture, and how it might swap to free music.
Differentiation
Software is primarily a useful tool, while music is a form of art. It is impossible to replace one piece of music with a ‘compatible clone’. It might be even difficult to do a ‘clean room implementation’ in order to work around non-free parts. This has several implications.
