I apologize for taking so long to blog about this, but here’s some info about Florida Free Culture’s appearance at the Levin College of Law’s Music Law Conference 2005:

The night before the conference, I stayed up until 5 a.m. putting together our material — and it still came out looking like a sixth-grade science project, but I did my best, darn it.

I woke up and stumbled to the conference at 10 a.m. The director of the conference apologized for me not getting her response, explaining it was probably a flaw in their email system. I paid for our table and began setting up, making the finishing touches on our material.

Our presentation itself involved three elements: Creative Commons licenses, the Magnatune record label, and this flier from Downhill Battle. This was, after all, a conference aimed at unsigned musicians and music industry lawyers.

My thought with the Downhill Battle flier was to show that not only does Creative Commons licensing make sense in a “sustainable social and legal environment” way, but that the old guard of music publishing may not even be very beneficial financially to the artist. (How many musicians do you see on MTV lamenting that they didn’t see a dime of profit until they’d sold 250,000 units?) However, after a brief assessment of resources — it was just me, tired and unrehearsed — and the realization that musicians might actually take affront to criticism of the major labels, even if they were unsigned, I decided to hide the Downhill Battle flier and focus only on Creative Commons.

Further, I discovered that one of the discussion panels of the conference was actually on the stated subject of “Digital Music: The new era of Creative Commons and what it means for recording artists, copyright ownership, and the listening public.” Pretty exciting to think that one of the panels would center around what we wanted to educate people about! The discussion was moderated by Prof. Tom Cotter, director of the intellectual property program at the law school. The other panel members were Justin Kent, a developer of the original Napster and president of EJ Enterprises; Pete Knapp, president and CEO of Shut Eye Records & Agency; José Latour, singer/songwriter and former immigration attorney; and Carlos Linares, regional anti-piracy counsel for the RIAA. Unfortunately, it appeared that Cotter and Kent were the only panelists knowledgeable about Creative Commons; the conversation veered into a chat about distribution models and the fight against “piracy.” There was a brief question-and-answer period after the panel, but I didn’t get a chance to ask anything. I’m not sure whether that was fortunate or unfortunate; I really wanted to ask Linares whether society benefited when the RIAA sues 11-year-old girls.

In the afternoon, Eldo, our treasurer, arrived to help me out. We managed to talk to quite a few passerby about the Creative Commons licenses. One woman, after the panel, thanked us for being there, since the panel never really explained what Creative Commons was or why it mattered. On reflection, though, I think our material did a decent job of explaining what Creative Commons did, but not such a good job of explaining why anyone should care. I have to imagine at least a few people walking by must have looked at our homegrown board and thought, “Geez, they’re selling something and they can’t even afford to make some professional promo material.”

A few people had heard of Magnatune, and we got to tell a few others.

One visitor, a songwriter, noticed the Downhill Battle flier tucked away. In his experience, he said, $1 out of $16 isn’t that bad a deal for the artist. He has a point: the major record labels do offer resources that smaller labels, or going independent, just can’t. However, I feel like the point of the flier wasn’t to say, “The way major labels do business isn’t fair; they should stop.” Free culture folks believe in capitalism: if labels and musicians agree to those terms, that’s their choice. But 1. I think a lot of musicians don’t understand what effect those terms will have, and 2. I highly doubt most consumers realize how little of each record sale major labor artists make. If it was widely understood that musicians earned $1, or $.50, or less from each CD sold, people would feel differently when the labels say, “Support the artists, buy their CDs.” The flier was meant to raise awareness of the way major labels do business, not to decry them. However, I think it was right not to tackle that issue that day, since we weren’t well prepared to talk about it.

We briefly spoke, separately, with Linares and Tess Taylor, president of NARIP and keynote speaker for the conference. Both seemed intrigued by the Creative Commons licenses, but couldn’t quite wrap their heads around them. They seemed to try to understand them as some sweeping replacement for copyright, and could see how they could be of some economic benefit to musicians, but not much. Essentially, they saw that the exposure Creative Commons licensing can offer can benefit up-and-coming artists, but that’s it. Creative Commons licenses offer much more: for some, whether established and commercially-successful artists or hobbyists with no interest in exploiting their work professionally, it’s simply a means to share. Maybe they want to see other people’s input, like Chuck D and the Fine Arts Militia. Maybe they simply have no interest in locking down 100% of the control today’s copyright system offers, and understand that loosening their grip can be of real benefit to others without harming them. To look at Creative Commons licenses from a purely economic vista is like examining copyright itself from a solely economic perspective: there’s more to it than just dollars. Otherwise, musicians would license their music for any advertisement willing to pay them. Ever seen Radiohead’s music in a Cadillac ad? More than just earning money, copyright allows creators to control their image; more than just earning money, Creative Commons licensing allows creators to help build community, to join the give and take of sharing, within limits. Then again, maybe their lack of understanding just means we explained poorly. But I’m not convinced we could have sold the idea that creation is about more than just money to people who’ve been looking at only the money for so long.

I did, however, mention to both Taylor and Cotter the Copyright Office’s recent request for comment on the subject of orphan works. Both expressed interest, but neither have yet replied to my emails.

Kent was an interesting guy, and we chatted with him for a while. His new company seems pretty interesting: they sell hardware to retrofit turntables to interface with MIDI. Since MIDI is rather ubiquitous, that means you can scratch just about anything. But it’d be nice if they opened the source of their software; I can understand why they might want to keep the drivers proprietary, but I don’t see why they want to lock down the rest of their software, especially since they don’t sell it. He asked to subscribe to our mailing list

Coincidentally, his sister, Natalie, is a student here at UF. Even more coincidentally, she lives in Lake Mary, where I went to high school; she went to one of our rivals. She seemed pretty interested in the Creative Commons licenses and maybe using them for a film project she’s working on. So that’s cool. It’s always exciting me to see someone “get it” about Creative Commons licensing and the doors it opens.

As far our materials themselves, we had a science project-like tri-board with information about Creative Commons, including this comic. I printed out this one and this one as well, but didn’t have space for them on the board. We can use them in the future, though.

Other than the aforementioned Downhill Battle flier, I also drafted up a flier about Magnatune. You can see it in .pdf (Adobe Acrobat format), .sxw (Open Office format), or .txt.

Finally, here are some pictures of the board itself, followed by its text: (go to the next page)