As is mentioned elsewhere on this site, we have broadened the scope of music to be available in Bittunes. We have been working with independent music industry leaders to integrate all the key compliance aspects required to allow Bittunes to represent both signed and unsigned Artists. Details about this new development will be available in the near future.
We will also continue to use the Creative commons licensing system for unsigned Artists. We recognize and support the aims of the Creative Commons movement and are particularly excited by the flexibility it potentially offers for the remixing and altering of musical works that is so needed in today’s internet context, but in a way that can be supported commercially by the bittunes system. So, it is crucial that we work towards a new system that helps ‘music makers’ and ‘music movers’ to trade and distribute music in new ways, to allow us all to begin to revolutionize music distribution on the internet.
The bittunes application will utilize variations of the Creative Commons license to incorporate many of the important and progressive attributes of the CC rights system but also aims to allow appropriate flexibility for Artists to choose different options when specifying usage conditions.
To facilitate the planned bittunes trading method, the chosen Creative Commons license will default to what is known as the ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND‘. This is commonly recognized as the most restrictive of the six main CC licenses. It is intended allow others to download your works and share them with others as long as the copyright holder is credited, but they cannot change the work in any way or use it commercially. However, there is an inherent provision within the legal deed of this license to allow for any of its conditions to be waived if permission is gained from the copyright holder. So, we are working toward augmenting this license with an easy and dedicated method to enable the copyright holder to facilitate the trading of the song on the bittunes network by specifically enacting this waiver condition.
We have some work to do to refine this and other aspects of rights attribution within the bittunes system, and we will consult openly with the Creative Commons community and legal experts as we move toward the implementation of the system. ~ All inquiries by those interested in being involved in this discussion of these aspects can contact us at: admin @ bittunes dot org