Why I put my work into the public domain

I put my Ghost Solos package, and most of my other recordings, into the public domain. Why?

One reason is compatibility. My primary goals include being used in soundtracks and mashups, so I needed licensing that allowed my work to be incorporated into as many other works as possible. Public domain is the only universal. The only license for creative works that is used widely enough to be considered a standard is a Creative Commons non-commercial license (like this one), but they are deliberately incompatible with many works.

Another reason is durability on the scale of decades and continents. On this time scale there will be very many individual licenses like Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. Even the most durable will be superceded and obsoleted again and again. Someday there may be a standard of licensing for free cultural works that is as durable as version 2 of the Gnu General Public License has been for software, but right now there isn’t. If my creative work eventually became part of the cultural ecosystem, which is unlikely enough to be grandiose, I would be happy. To accomplish this it helps to make legal arrangements for my work that don’t rely on my active intervention, whether because I am dead, far away, or separated by language barriers. The public domain is the same anywhere and any time.

Another reason is to communicate clearly. My political goal is to enrich the public domain. My creative work enriches the public domain by increasing attention paid to the mainly-forgotten source compositions that are now available for anybody to use just like I did, and to a lesser extent by having my recordings themselves be sources for new works. I dedicate copyrights on my recordings to the public domain to be clear about what I am saying. A share-alike clause or a non-commercial use clause would muddy the message. Sometimes non-commercial licenses are used to express anti-business politics, which I don’t share. Sometimes share-alike licenses are understood to express anti-business politics (whether they actually mean that or not), and this is not my point. I give to the public domain because I take from the public domain.

Creative Commons was still an important resource for my goals, in that I used the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication to put my work in the public domain. It takes due diligence to manage the business of a public domain dedication properly.

I used to use licenses with share-alike clauses like the Gnu Free Documentation License, which I like because it works to grow the public domain (by encouraging disarmament like mine only when mutual). But no such license has been adopted widely enough to satisfy my purposes.

I suppose that so far I have answered every question but the main one: why not retain exclusive rights on my recordings? Because this is a fool’s errand for someone in my position. There are people who can sell recordings at a scale big enough to matter, but I am not one. The amount of time and money I spent to make these recordings dwarfs anything I realistically stand to earn. It’s laughable to think I’ll benefit more by clutching the rights tightly than by letting them go their own way.

None of this stops me from selling the work. It is for sale at the iTunes store, at Amazon, etc. I doubt many of those who read this will pay for it, but I think some others will who come across it there instead of on my blog. The buyers are welcome to have the recordings without giving me money, it’s just that I have to charge money to get the recordings into these distribution points.

13 thoughts on “Why I put my work into the public domain

  1. gurdonark

    Good post.

    I like that you use the public domain license. It’s great to see this music made available for any use by anybody. I use the BY Creative Commons license, except when I am using a sample with a non-commercial restriction. I could see using PD as well, but I do like the attribution–if for no other reason that it helps me find uses of the songs via search engine.

    I also agree that I would release via a ‘commercial’ release not so much because I want to sell mp3s, but because some of the iTunes/amazon/emusic venues reach people I do not reach via netlabels and free releases. The first place I posted music was on eBay, and it was fun to sell–not for the cash, but for the distribution.

    I’m pleased that “Ghost Solos” has gotten such a great reception. My favorite remains “The Frog in the Well”.

    Reply
  2. Lucas Gonze Post author

    Frog in the Well is a surprise hit, Bob. I think it works because it has a feeling of stillness and peace but the notes are dynamic.

    How did you do the eBay release? That’s a cool idea. What was the product, a zip file of MP3s?

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  4. gurdonark

    Those “jig’ feel parts in the middle seem so contemporary and yet so of another era–that’s why i love Frog in the Well.

    Lucas, years ago, I made up a CD-R of some music I made with a friend using electric football fields. Because I enjoy writing absurd eBay ads, I posted them on eBay. I sold several–all to electric football fans who seemed to enjoy the novelty.

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  5. celestial elf

    Very cool to share via CC thank you so much, your gift facilitates and enables artists such as myself to create derivative works that would be bland without support of you and those like you 😀

    Heres my Yuletide blessings machinima film, made with CC music (not yours) and shared here by way of thanks !

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJLiLa7G5Ig

    Reply
  6. Lucas Gonze Post author

    I made up a CD-R of some music I made with a friend using electric football fields. Because I enjoy writing absurd eBay ads, I posted them on eBay. I sold several–all to electric football fans who seemed to enjoy the novelty.

    Genius! Bwhahahahahahahah!

    That’s inspiring. I think I’ll be on the lookout for ways to copy this project.

    Reply
  7. Andrius Kulikauskas

    I’m a great believer in the Public Domain, copyright-free, where all can share creatively, not required to track permissions, but using their own best judgement. Thank you for publishing your reasons!

    Reply
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  10. Niklas

    Do you recieve Bitcoins? (If you will acquire a bitcoin address in the future years, even if account creation will be delayed to 2019, send me an email. I was just thinking of doing a “flattr” of this webpage with 0.01 BTC. A Bitcoin address may look like this “15VjRaDX9zpbA8LVnbrCAFzrVzN7ixHNsC”. Now for my comments I share the “One reason is compatibility”. Nothing can be more compatible than the Public Domain when you release it in a way with the aim for it to be compatible worldwide, which I assume is your aim. One thing that I do lately is listening to classical music whose compositions have been written 120 or more years ago, but I don’t always go to that extreme, but also listen to music by authors who have deceased after 1918 like Claude-Achille Debussy.(there are still no recordings of Classical music that I’ve found to be released as CC0-1.0-Universal, although they have been released as “Public Domain” by a few rows of statements like “This is PD, please do whatever you want with it”, although I prefer waivers like the CC0 which also states intention and tries to waive as many rights as possible, “neighboring rights”, “related rights” etc.) Your music was interesting to listen to. To me it seemed like calm music and that’s one of the types of music I like.

    Reply

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