Pearl Jam Releases Video Under Creative Commons

minitrue writes "Pearl Jam released their first music video in quite a while under a Creative Commons license allowing anyone to "legally copy, distribute and share the clip" for noncommercial purposes. Creative Commons thinks this may be the first video produced by a major label ever to be CC-licensed. So although the file is only available as a free download via Google Video through May 24, fans can continue sharing it online themselves in perpetuity."

Kudos to Pearl Jam

[sheehaje]

These are guys who've been in the arena trying to fight unfairness with Ticketmaster and the bigger Music Houses. While they might not be everyones flavour musically, they are definately on of the bands trying to break molds with how their music is distributed. Maybe this is a little bittersweet, but damn good to see someone trying to get paid without ripping half the world off.

Re:well now

[VirionNW]

Actually, I just remembered, this could have been so much better if they opened up the licensing to allow remixing and editing, didn't NIN do that and give out Garage Band files of the work too? Maybe they'll open it up by hosting it past the 24th, even torrent it, that'd at least add some credibility and promote the "share" aspect they seem to be pushing, at least one would hope.

Ahhh!! My ears!!

[hereschenes]

Did you LISTEN to that monstrosity, or just watch it with the volume muted? Surely Eddie V could have invested in an auto-tune plugin for his sequencer, at least...

It may not be perfect, but it's a good move.

[Marcos Eliziario]

In essence, video clips are just advertising, and based on that, this move would not qualify too much on the revolutionary side of things. But, if you think about it as a political statement, it's a very good thing to do in dark times like these. Think about how many folks are going to see such a license for the first time on their lifes. Think about all the fan-kids out there with garage bands that will start seeing open licenses as something cool. Think about how many media droids are going to need to educate themselves on the "open" movement to be able to write a comment on that. Of course, none of this could happen, but how can we know?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ahhh!! My ears!!

[idugcoal]

I disagree wholeheartedly. That unfamiliar, not-exactly-in-tune-to-the-cent pitch you hear from Eddie's voice (and at some point throughout the song, from every other harmonic instrument, as well), is something missing in today's soulless and sterile music enviornment. Call it "blue notes" (actually bluer "regions" around notes), emotion, angst, feeling; even call it "out of tune," if you want. I'll take it every day over whichever plastic, overcompressed "prostitute with a thug posse"s the labels (albeit, the same bastard labels) give us as options. Auto-Tune (and the like) do have their uses, but this is NOT one of them. There are other places to go if that's the sound you prefer.

Re:Harvey Danger

[lysergic.acid]

shouldn't the quotes be around "advertized"?

I don't get why people complain about IP and anti-piracy laws, but when artists actually start embracing the whole music-sharing rhetoric people get upset that it gets reported and accuse the artists of pulling a publicity stunt.

I mean, are we trying to convince artists that we don't want them to let people download/share music for free? What is the problem here? What does it take for people to stop complaining about the music industry?

Re:Bettermen

[lysergic.acid]

"Another band that releases shit for the sake of money just because they can"

What is that supposed to mean?

They produced a music video, as musicians sometimes do.
They released it under a Creative Commons license, which is rare.
This allows people to do rare things with a mainstream artist's creative content, like download it/enjoy it/distribute it for free.
Most artists would have prohibited the above mentioned activities in their license.
Thus, what Pearl Jam has done is interesting news for most of us, and it would benefit fans if other artists followed Pearl Jam's lead.

So what is there for you to possibly complain about? That they haven't sold many CDs at your store? What does that have to do with anything?

Do you have a coherent point to make, or did you just want to post incoherent ramblings?

lumping them together

[theantix]

I know some people don't like RMS, but he nailed this one for sure. Just look at the Slashdot headline for this article "Pearl Jam Releases Video Under Creative Commons"... lumping them all together just as RMS suggested people would. "Creative Commons" without describing the varient doesn't mean anything at all, yet that is the message the headline gives and a real problem with the suite of CC licenses. Certainly, people can specifiy which CC license you are talking about (as the body text of the slashdot article does), but it's still overly confusing.

Consider the analogous slashdot heading "Company Releases Program Under GPL" -- the GPL is a title that unlike CC has a specific meaning, if it's GPL you know what to expect whether you like that license or not. The problem with CC is really worse than the similarily vaguely defined label "open source" because some of the CC licenses are really quite restrictive.

I do understand what the people behind CC are trying to do, and I respect that. I just wish that they had put more effort into promoting the use of individual specific licenses instead of the CC 'brand'. GNU does this well, they have GPL, GFDL, LGPL as their own separate brand instead of just calling it a "GNU license" which doesn't convey the specificness those different concepts represent.

Re:yeah, great idea!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Except music videos aren't advertisements; how does adding a cinematic dimension to the musical content reduce it to advertising?

People don't buy videos. They buy albums and singles. And don't get all pedantic on me about how some people do buy videos, its a teeny-tiny minority of sales, and would not be financially viable if the videos were not already made for some other reason, like say, advertising.

just because you can't make money off of the video or create derivative works from it doesn't mean it's not free anymore.

The simplest thing with the most utility that someone might do is rip the audio out of the video and make it into an mp3. But that would be a derivative work and is thus prohibited.

So yeah, this is a rather useless bit of fluff advertising, nothing more.

Re:Ahhh!! My ears!!

[idugcoal]

I think that Eddie probably had a couple of better takes left in him, and I agree that "natural and raw" are two important elements (especially re: rock music) that have practically been edited out of the music industry, in general. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that PJ left this song, their current video-supported single, less-than-perfect as a reaction to all of the so-perfect-it's-unlistenable drivel we've all been bombarded with of late. Kudos to the band for, over the years, flippin the bird at the status quo, whether it be ticket surcharges with Ticketmaster, providing high-quality yet affordable recordings of live performances and encouraging trade among fans, or this most recent step, confidently asserting that they aren't perfect and they don't care if you know.

Besides, I GOTTA give it up to anyone with something to lose who is willing to risk loss to fight the RIAA. (And by "something to lose," I don't mean "500 GB of pirated mp3's.")

unwarranted hostility misses the point

[mbius]

Correct, you can download Audioslave's video. And if you send it to your grandmother, no one will know. However: you say "videos are available to view for free a million places on the web." Most of these sites (from Youtube to ebaum) would be in violation of copyright to host that video, and will comply with a cease-and-desist rather than face legal action. "Guerilla hosting" is not reliable, as witnessed by the fact that, for every music video you can find surreptitiously hosted, there are fifty you can't.

The other aspect of GPL you've glossed over is "commercial use and derivatives." You can't wish copyright law out of existence; without this protection, General Dynamics gets to use Pearl Jam to sell nuclear warheads, maybe copyrighting its own rework of the lyrics en route. That would be disgusting.

From the horse's mouth: That is somewhat of a misunderstanding--we cannot "ban DRM". What we can do is prevent GPL-covered software from being corrupted into an instrument for implementing DRM. --Richard Stallman

As soon as you say any form of copyright is a good idea, your technical argument ("viewing creates a copy! bits and bytes!") becomes justification for the DMCA. Fair use and common sense become casualties of digital media.

Don't be a dweeb. Free Software are still the good guys.

Re:Hah. Some license.

[shark72]

You raise some interesting points. As background, what sort of artistic works have you produced, and how have you licensed them? Have you ever undertook something as big and costly as a music video, and then released it with less restrictive terms? In particular, has it been something related to your livelihood?

It's easy for us, as consumers, to state that creators should give away their stuff for free and unrestricted; and when they don't, it's also easy for us to rationalize ignoring others' copyrights. Kudos to you if you've created major works of art and given them away restriction-free -- and if you have, you know it's a pretty big and scary step.

Re:lumping them together

[brsmith4]

Oh, give me a break! 99% of the people out there are completely unfamiliar with content licenses and will only know that 'Pearl Jam released the video for free'. Add to that the fact that, if you were truly interested in the details, determining which Creative Commons license was used to release that video is a trivial task, it becomes obvious that RMS's and your subsequent rantings are completely misplaced. RMS has an interest in content and software licensing that adheres to some philosophical model that he espouses and that is quite fine by me. However, he should not and nor should you expect everyone or anyone, for that matter, to really give a flying fuck as to the extent or degree these various licenses are explicated and differentiated for the masses. Consumers care not for licenses, their by-laws, subsections or philosophical underpinnings. For the consumer, getting the 'gist' is sufficient and in this case, Google provides a link to the basic details of the license which is quite sufficient for the purposes of said consumer.

And I reiterate: So what? /. said the video was released under "Creative Commons". Sure, it's like saying the Operating System I run is "Microsoft" without a distinction between the various brand names and product lines they produce for such a purpose, but so what? Why do we feel that consumers should be knowledgable with respect to these things? I cannot, for the life of me, see any benefit and would probably laugh histerically at the first iPod trend-setter crowd I caught wind of pedantically arguing the merits of various CC flavors and why Pearl Jam or T-Bone chose to use some specific variant. Honestly, there are better things to worry about (even if those things include mindless drama or drawing hype for some new whiz-bang consumer gizmo that everyone just "needs" to have; licensing is truly a boring subject IMHO).