Comment by VariousPrograms
2 days ago
The intro video makes it sound multiple times like he wants creatives to use the music with absolutely no strings or restrictions, but the most basic uses like a Youtube video or indie film would require manually applying for a license where half the revenue goes to Mobygratis let alone the restrictions based on Moby’s political and dietary preferences.
He’s certainly free to license his music however he wants but he’s really overselling how permissive it is.
I’m not sure about the rev share aspect, but I’m a bit disappointed that, despite his message of “go ahead and do your thing, worry about edge cases later” (paraphrasing), the legalese further introduces the concept of commercial and non-commercial nature of different tracks.
I genuinely hoped for a MIT/BSD-like license that would allow people to express themselves freely with his content. However, I am now less inclined to do so.
Update: All said, still grateful to him for doing something. That’s already way more than most artists to do give back.
The articulated restrictions could be defined as a creative commons license too. With cc-by-nc-nd (attribition-noncommercial-noderivative), people would be free to use the songs for any non-commercial purpose and would have to aquire a license for everything beyond. The fact that moby is rolling out (and enforcing?) his own thing makes it untrustworthy.
It's very possible he doesn't know about cc-by-nc-ld not everyone hangs out on techie websites and consumes open source.