2008-02-19

Sabam digs Creative Commons


Update (and now it's becoming more clear):
In a reaction Sabam states that there is nothing new under the sun: members always have been able to reject some parts of their rights management. New is the fact that one can reject the online management by Sabam, i.e. one can manage his music online, both downloads and streaming. The best way to do this is with a Creative Commons license.
Note: if you reject this service, it is applied to the whole of works, not for individual works. But this does not mean that you have to put your whole catalogue on the web.
Conclusion: i interprete this that you can release a CD under Sabam and let them earn moneyfor you, and in the mean time you can also put this release online with a Creative Commons license. This is a big step forward, but some questions remain like: what about a non-profit party where i play the downloaded songs, instead of the CD, do i have to pay or not?

Old version:
According to the popular portal for popmusicians "Poppunt" the Belgian collecting society Sabam will tolerate that her members use the Creative Commons license for their creative products. What I understand is that a member needs to revoke his Sabam membership for a certain part of his copyright management. This applies to the whole of artist's work. The artist can for example choose to manage his music online, and let his work free in pubs, shops, dj-sets, movies. The rest of the article is too confusing for me, so any help/comment is welcome.
More info at Poppunt (dutch) + contact at popadvies
No info at all at the Sabam website (!?), but there is one contact: Dirk Vervenne, the guy from our debate "Is er muziek na Sabam?".

At least, without being pretentious, I think we can be proud of ourselves to have stimulated and influenced the discussion on this high level, thanks to our debates "Is er muziek na Sabam?" & "Studiedag: auteursrechten en de kleine organisator" and reporting about CC in Belgium.