On 09/13/2013 01:16 PM, Don Veino wrote: > I'm interested in others' perspectives on this topic integral to our > passion. I've had a few very brief interactions with other callers on this > topic but would appreciate a wider view with an eye towards commonly agreed > acceptable practice. We live in a world that has the dichotomy of very > strong legal concepts of "ownership" and yet at the same time the dance > community carries on a more open heredity of sharing and the folk process > in order to benefit us all.
Don: Thanks for this post! Very well phrased and thought out. My unstated-system is a bit looser than yours, I think. I will more or less always allow people to copy dances from me (not that I have many to copy; I don't actually do any calling, but I like to keep a collection on hand anyways), and I will quite often ask to copy dances I like. I assume that callers by publishing their dances (be it online, in a book, etc.) are putting them out their for the purpose of being called. I've never heard of a caller who attempted to license dances in the sense that you had to pay them some fee before calling them (though technically they could do this). I will not, however, allow people to copy/photocopy books that I own; a book to me feels like a much more commercially driven venture, so I encourage people to go out and buy the book. This is a bit of a fine distinction (especially because if I have the book, I probably have the dances written down on a card as well), but it's how my own internal code of ethics works. As I mentioned, I like to be clear and just license all of my dances under a Creative Commons NonCommercial license. This way people can call them (I always specifically state that calling falls outside the non-commercial clause), copy them, make derivative works, etc. to their hearts content (but they can't, for instance, publish one in a commercial-venture such as a book without asking me first). I should also clarify that, while I think it's fine to post someone elses dance on a list like this one, publish a list of their compositions (assuming it's not making you any money and isn't copying dances from eg. a book that's making them money), etc. I will never do so without giving credit to the author. I think it goes without saying that not giving attribution (or even worse, claiming authorship yourself) is not okay. When it comes down to it, I really just take things like this on a case by case basis. It's hard to quantify a set of rules that I always feel works for any given situation. —Sam -- Sam Whited pub 4096R/EC2C9934 https://samwhited.com/contact
