Collaborative Community

Creative Commons Tutorial

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Making music is a lot of fun, but it's even more fun if you can do it with other people - and this is where the OpenSounds comes in.

Collaboration in OpenSoundS

OpenSounds allows you to produce music in collaboration with other people through the Internet. To do this you will not need any special software, everything you need is at your disposal on this website. The only thing you really need is yourself and a willingness to cooperate with others!

Normally when you work alone on your own piece of music you do not have to worry about anything other than delivering the end result of your production to someone who will listen and then decide what they think about it. When you work with OpenSounds you can really do a lot more. You don't necessarily need to finish your music on your own, you can also create a single part of the song and then make it available to others for help. Or, alternatively, you can help others to finish the song they started.

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Although OpenSounds makes this job very simple, there are some important things to keep in mind to make things work well. A key thing to remember when using OpenSounds is that even if you are dealing with software, you are working with real people. And, unlike software, people have feelings and emotions just like you! So it is important to interact with people with the utmost respect and the utmost care, treating them just as you want them to treat you. All this is called "netiquette" (short for "Internet etiquette").

A good collaboration on the Internet, as well as in any other situation, is based on mutual respect and tolerance. If you are going to produce music with other people, do not say anything disrespectful to them or they are unlikely to be happy to work with you again! Do not criticize mistakes made by others - remember that we all make mistakes, and we all need to learn in certain cases. When someone has done a good job, we recommend that you always have a word of encouragement in order to continue a fruitful collaboration. Try to keep a positive attitude!

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Issues related to Copyright

It is possible that more nonsense has been written about copyright than anything else! Here are the basic things to know:

  • Copyright means the right to copy
  • Virtually all creative works of the last 50 years are protected by copyright
  • You do not need to do anything special to apply copyright to a song - when you make a track, the copyright belongs to you automatically
  • You may not copy or use any part of a song, unless the copyright owner has given specific permission

How does this apply to your work in OpenSounds? Well, when you make a piece of music, the copyright belongs to you. If you want to share music with other people, you need to give them permission (in the form of license) to copy and use your music, as well as to work on music made by others.

OpenSounds allows you to provide a license to the songs you make and want to share with others using the Creative Commons license. When you consent to one of the CC licenses you give permission to others to have certain rights to use and copy of your music. In addition, when they upload music, they will themselves agree to one of these licenses.

The majority of commercial music available on CD or purchased from websites such as iTunes does not have a Creative Commons license. In legal terms you normally have no right to do anything with this kind of music, you can never copy or use in your projects. If you upload music of this type to the OpenSounds collaborative system you are breaking the law! So just do not do it! Always use your own original music or music created under a Creative Commons license.

The Creative Commons License

The Creative Commons License is the name of several copyright licenses issued on or after December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S. non-profit corporation founded in 2001.

With the Creative Commons license a user is free to reproduce, distribute, communicate to the public, publicly display, perform, and perform licensed works.

Currently there are six Creative Commons licenses, of which three are in use on the Open Sounds Collaborative system:

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• Attribution - NonCommercial - Share Alike 3.0 : This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

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• Attribution - NonCommercial 3.0 : This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

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• Attribution - Share Alike 3.0 : This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

To learn more, you can find out more detailed information here:

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Creative Commons Site