Berklee Encourages Peer to Peer Music Trading

Yo Maing writes "According to this article at Wired magazine, students at the Berklee College of Music are being encouraged to share their audio and video works over p2p networks. The program is called Berklee Shares, and offers free music lessons for download. The downloads are licensed under the Creative Commons license, which has varying restrictions based their license builder page. Is this the music industry equivalent of the GPL?"

Hot damn!

[Kethinov]

I'd transfer there if I was going into music as a profession! But alas, I have no musical skills so I suppose I'm damned to the colleges where P2P is piracy *sniff* :(

Re:Hot damn!

[brendan_orr]

I would be going there... if I could afford the tuition! !$30,000+ a year is too steep for me, even with financial aid :\ Though I did audition to replace a bassist who was offered $20,000 to go there, lucky stiff.

No

[Tuxinatorium]

It's not the music industry equivalent of the GPL, because it's not "viral" as the GPL is. e.g., in CC, derivative works aren't automatically forced into a CC license regardless of the wishes of the author.

It depends

[Quattro Vezina]

If you go to the License Builder link at the top, you'll see that there are various options you can choose, one option set governing derivative works. There are 3 options in that set:

1) Derivative works allowed with no restriction
2) No derivative works allowed
3) Derivative works allowed as long as they are licensed under the same license (i.e. GPL-style)

Re:No

[John Hasler]

You consider completely forbidding the creation of derivative works less restrictive than requiring that they carry the same license as the original as the GPL does?

oh, that berklee

[rritterson]

At first I was like- No we aren't- the college of music doesn't support that at all... then- ohhh- berklee not berkeley

Good to hear my homophonic sister school is doing something progressive

One important thing...

[PurdueGraphicsMan]

This post doesn't say anything about sharing copywritten music. If you knew what this school was like this wouldn't be that big-a-deal. Their students are all top-notch performers and thus any works/music they create are highly sought-after by other musicians. The students are trading their works with eachother, not copywritten materials.

Re:One important thing...

[tiled_rainbows]

But surely it is copyrighted, it's just that the copyright is owned by the students - the univeristy is just enocuraging the copyright holders to share.

Wouldn't it be nice if some of these students later become famous mega-popstars, and, after having had such a positive introduction to P2P filesharing by their alma mater, decide to give all their music away free and bring the RIAA et al to thier knees?

Yeah, I know, but it would be cool.

Clarification

[kefoo]

At least so far, berkleeshares.com doesn't distribute student works. It's a repository of small self contained music lessons excerpted from Berklee College of Music's [berklee.edu] courses, text books, and videos, made available for free.

They also have an online school [berkleemusic.com] where you can take courses taught by their professors.