License information

[Flutterwhat 14]

first of all, I don't like that you arn't making it clear if these licenses are based on the creative commons license or not. On all other sites on which my music has been uploaded, I've been able to use Creative commons. The fact that I cannot do that here is offputting as an artist. I also dislike that the "open" option is always green; this is a bad design choice as it makes me feel like it is always selected. I also dislike that this is the recommended, as the artist should make a firm choice as to what they feel is the right license for their hard work.

 

It is also NOT CLEAR AT ALL which option disallows COMMERCIAL USE. THIS IS IMPORTANT. THESE TERMS MUST BE CLEAR.

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,520]

The license options were originally conceived to serve the following purposes:

• allow a track to be hosted by and promoted on Pony.fm
• allow Pony.fm to sublicense a track to future affiliates (such as radio stations)
• explicitly license a track for open distribution by anyone (ie. radio stations that Pony.fm is not affiliated with, third-party music archival projects, etc.)
• explicitly allow a track to be modified and remixed

Licenses are something I intend to revisit and adapt appropriately very soon, as the texts and options you see now were meant to be placeholders for a more complete licensing structure. Creative Commons can and should have a place in the options, and the exact nature of the "Broadcast" license (or whatever replaces it) could be clearer.

 

I'll openly confess that I'm not a lawyer, and legal code is a bit more foreign to me than computer code. As Pony.fm is a non-commercial site at this time, I'm leaning toward replacing the "open" and "remix" licenses with their Creative Commons equivalents, removing the "Broadcast" license in favour of a simpler "allow Pony.fm to share this track with affiliates"-type checkbox. The "personal" license in its current form may be removed entirely, so you end up with a form that looks something like this:

• Pony.fm affiliates may redistribute this track?
• Use a Creative Commons license? (grants affiliate permission automatically; provides options to choose a specific CC license)

Noncommercial licenses would be encouraged, if not enforced, seeing how closely Hasbro's intellectual property is intertwined with pony fan music. While I think it would be wonderful if Pony.fm could be commercialized, commercial fan music is simply a legal can of worms that I don't want to open yet.

 

Of course, that leaves the scenario of someone not choosing to license their music under CC, which would most likely mean they get a proprietary Pony.fm license. This license would, at the bare minimum, grant Pony.fm all necessary rights to store, distribute, and promote a track non-commercially, without taking away the artist's ability to remove it from the site. The terms of such a license may need to be written up in legalese, although a fair few content hosting platforms seem to do well enough without a formal licensing agreement between the site and its users.

 

If CC licenses and an explicit option for granting Pony.fm affiliates access to the track are added, will there still be a need for a fully documented "Pony.fm license"?

 

 

I also dislike that the "open" option is always green; this is a bad design choice as it makes me feel like it is always selected. I also dislike that this is the recommended, as the artist should make a firm choice as to what they feel is the right license for their hard work.

 

These design choices are meant for users who may be newer to music production and may not really care about their license. With that said, now that you bring it up, if someone doesn't care about their licensing, they ought to learn to care. Combined with the ideas I suggested above for reforming the license system, I think we could throw out the licensing options in their current state entirely in favour of something that gives artists a much better idea of exactly what rights they're granting.