May 06, 2005
I am a musician...
and I support filesharing.
I am embarking on a quest to collect the voices of musicians across the world who believe that filesharing can be beneficial to musicians and can help to break the lethal hold that the major labels have on the progress and promotion of music today. I have enlisted the assistance of Downhill Battle, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting filesharing and alternative ways of helping musicians survive in the unfriendly world of big-label music.
Musicians, come out and say you support filesharing!
Please visit my site dedicated to this cause:
Speak Out: Musicians Must Unite to Keep Culture Free
If you are a musician and believe in this cause, please donate your voice, and if you know musicians who might be interested, please forward this along to them. The more voices, the more compelling the message.
Please continue reading for the email message from me that Downhill Battle sent out to their mailing lists.
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Musician's voices needed for pro-filesharing music. Let your voice be heard!
What I do:
My name is Halsey Burgund and I write music based in large part on voice recordings that I collect in the field. They might be specific readings, poetry, narration, opinions etc, but in each case, the resulting song has a specific intent. I am now collecting recordings for a new song about the benefits of filesharing, specifically that it can be good for musicians. Therefore, I am collecting recordings of musicians making pro-filesharing statements which I will use in forthcoming music.
How you can help:
Please go to the following url (http://www.aevidence.com/filesharing.html) and record the text contained therein. Essentially, I want musicians saying "I am a musician and I support filesharing", but I also want your reasons and opinions on the topic.
Why you might want to participate:
Clearly you are a Downhill Battle supporter or you would not be on this mailing list. Clearly you think the current day monopolies in the music industry are not good for the future of music in our society. This is a way to help spread the word about filesharing and express your opinion in a different fashion. I will be letting Downhill Battle use the resulting music as they see fit, so you will be supporting this group's efforts at the same time.
Thank you very much for your consideration and the assistance in fighting the good fight. We, as musicians, must come together and speak out if we want to effect any change. And the more creatively we do this, the better.
Collectively, our voice will be heard.
Posted by halsey at May 6, 2005 09:02 AMMaybe I missed this but I didn't notice anywhere that your filesharing "campaign" says what you intend to do with this piece what's you've compiled the audio of musicians supporting filesharing. Your instruction page has a note on giving all rights for the contribution to you, but does not say you whether or not you will be selling it or releasing it under a CC or similar license.
What do you intend to do with it?
This is a very good question, and I should probably have been more clear about this in the post. I do say:
"I will be letting Downhill Battle use the resulting music as they see fit, so you will be supporting this group's efforts at the same time."
and I mean this in every sense. I have not thought through the entire strategy, but I will certainly be licensing the song with a CC license for starters. I am considering very strongly licensing all the source material as well for musicians all over the place to make their own versions of a song with musicians speaking their minds on this issue. I would love to have other creative minds run with this idea to the extent they want.
I do not intend for anything to be proprietary, though I understand that my insistence on the legal language might give this impression. I am mainly concerned that the contributors are comfortable letting me use their voices in the spirit of Creative Commons. I considered making reference to this in my legal language, but thought it might have made things too complicated. Perhaps I should reconsider.
Thanks very much for the response.
Posted by: halsey at May 10, 2005 04:55 PM