GrindEFX

On February 16, 2009, The Prodigy released their nineteenth single, “Omen.” Less than a month later, Nic Stage, a contributor to the Freesound Project, a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds, noticed that one of the sounds used in “Omen” was remarkably similar to a sound he had uploaded to the site.

Nic Stage was honored that one of the bands that inspired him had made use of his song. And the CC-Sampling+ license that he released the sound under explicitly allows this type of use for his sounds. No prior permission is needed, and the sounds can be incorporated into a commercial work.

The license does, however, require attribution of the original creator, and after purchasing the single and reading the liner notes, Nic Stage found no such attribution. He wasn’t concerned with this so much as he was with the possibility that the song’s producer had gotten his sound from a third-party site who had stripped the sample of the CC license and was distributing or reselling the samples without the license.

He expressed these concerns in an email to the band’s manager, Mike Champion. Mike responded shortly afterward by email and later by phone (cf. Timbaland). As Nic Stage explains,

“He has asked me how I want the credit to appear in future artwork, and offered to send me copies of the latest album revision and “Omen” single to show the change. He’s even offered me tickets to a show near me.”

Kudos to Prodigy and its management for resolving this situation in such a classy way. Kudos to Nic Stage for taking the correct approach after discovering the sample use. And Kudos to Creative Commons for providing an easy-to-use licensing framework that enhances this type of creativity without having to get the lawyers involved.

This little anecdote raises a few interesting issues. The CC-sampling+ license is very liberal in the types of uses it allows. And these types of uses are exactly the types of uses Nic Stage envisions when he uploads his original audio samples to The Freesound Project. All that he asks for is credit. Outside the United States, this right to attribution is recognized by many countries already as an exclusive moral right of a copyright owner. And despite what one poster on the thread where this story was brought up claims, any producer with a little bit of organizational skills can easily make note of the origin of any material used in her work that was the result of someone else’s creativity.

Had Nic Stage been more adamant about The Prodigy adhering to the attribution requirement, and had The Prodigy been more Timbaland in its response to Nic Stage’s request for credit, there is a good chance he would have a legal leg to stand on in a lawsuit. The conditions of Creative Commons licenses have been upheld in several countries.

In the United States, the Federal Court of Appeals upheld the attribution conditions of the Artistic License (a public license used for software) last August in Jacobsen v. Katzer. While not exactly the same as a Creative Commons license, both licenses are public licenses that act in primarily the same way. Where the Artistic License is used for software and coding, the Creative Commons license is used for creative works — photos, music, writings, etc. They both, however, deal with subject matter that is protected under copyright.

The actual decision of Jacobsen v. Katzer is quite straight-forward and routine as far as contract and copyright cases go, but it is significant because it is the first time that this type of license has been at the center of a dispute that ended up in a U.S. court.

The result suggests that Creative Commons, rather than being an alternative to copyright as some opponents suggest, merely acts as any other copyright license. It grants certain rights in exchange for the licensee following certain conditions. If the licensee fails to follow these conditions, he is liable for copyright infringement.

And in Nic Stage’s case, the ease of use of the Creative Commons license functioned in a way to resolve a potential issue both amicably and quickly.

(Thanks to Poker Stick for bringing this to my attention.)