ESR argues that CC-NC is problematic because commercial activity is hard to define in strict terms. I agree with this premise, though CC licensing is hardly the only case where we're facing the problem of defining where commercial activity starts.
That said, for many authors the choice won't be between CC BY-NC and the more permissive CC BY, it's between CC BY-NC and a non-copyleft license. So we might just end up with less content under a free license. I'm not sure if conceptual purity is worth it.
I completely agree with you. When I'm not hacking, I'm a musician. I'm currently beginning work on an album and thought about putting it under a free license. However, this album will roughly be half a year of full-time work (yes, that kind of work can be horribly time consuming), since I'm doing everything myself, from start to finish. This is why I plan on selling it, most likely on a donation basis. The free license doesn't keep me from doing so while still providing all the niceties of copyleft licenses.
There's just one thing: I don't want others to profit from my work. Listeners can get the album from wherever they want, do whatever they want to it or with it, I don't care. I suspect that if they like it, they'll drop me some form of donation and if they can't afford it, I'm also happy with a simple "thank you". But I definitely don't want my works to end up as cash in someone elses pocket, so that's why would be choosing a CC-NC license. If that goes away, I'll have to come up with my own license, or just use a non-copyleft license, whatever is easier and cheaper for me.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for sharing. Music is meant to be shared. That's why I want to encourage people to give it to their friends, hence the free license.
There are quite a few similar use cases for a NC license, so we should rather look into the issue of where "commercial" starts, rather than removing the NC license and losing potential free works.
I assume that the problem isn't so much being played on the radio but rather not wanting "my works to end up as cash in someone elses pocket". For example, being broadcast by the not-for-profit and no-paid-advertising college radio station sounds like it will be okay.
I talked about this at one point with a band named Jim's Big Ego, which had released their album They're Everywhere on CC-BY-NC. On the one hand, you want to make the radio stations and the big movies and the studio compilation albums pay royalties; on the other hand you want to let bloggers publish the songs on ad-supported blogs, and you want to let independent artists cover and remix the songs, even if they post their remixes on ad-supported YouTube channels. The exact goal of the NC attribute is peculiar to our transitional stage: it is attempting to embrace the Old Media Model for the corporations that are stuck inside it, while being free to use in the New Media Model.
> The exact goal of the NC attribute is peculiar to our transitional stage: it is attempting to embrace the Old Media Model for the corporations that are stuck inside it, while being free to use in the New Media Model.
I can't agree with that. The exact goal of the NC attribute is to make money from others making money out of your work but to let people who don't make money out of your work not have to pay.
That has nothing to do with "old media" and "new media", and is orthogonal to them.
(1) The big problem I see with that characterization is that CC-BY-NC doesn't establish any price for commercial use; it rather forbids it totally.
(2) I don't know how something can be orthogonal when it correlates strongly. The reason you are using CC-BY-NC is because you want to enable noncommercial uses, which is a major chunk of the entire new-media model of use, and a miniscule grain in the old-media model's desert.
Just to explain, because I was a bit terse above: The point of NC is that use and distribution in the world of filesharing networks, mix tapes, podcasts, independent remixers, and public social events like flash mobs -- those are explicitly allowed, because they don't make anybody any money. The point which I had trouble explaining above was that there also some for-profit uses in this category which NC-using bands would not mind, like ad-supported bloggers. In that sense, my impression of those who select NC is that they really just want to embrace the newer ways that people interact with music, without allowing the older modes of interaction to exploit it.
> The big problem I see with that characterization is that CC-BY-NC doesn't establish any price for commercial use; it rather forbids it totally.
That is not a problem at all: believe it or not, a work can be available under multiple licenses. Here's how you establish a price for commercial use: you talk to the author and you ask him if he'd consider giving you a commercial license, the you discuss the price.
> I don't know how something can be orthogonal when it correlates strongly.
Because it only correlates due to medium and publication costs.
> The point which I had trouble explaining above was that there also some for-profit uses in this category which NC-using bands would not mind, like ad-supported bloggers.
Or so you believe, that doesn't actually mean it's the case. Furthermore, and as I noted above, this is a non-issue: the ad-supported blogger can send a request to the author and get a license directly.
> In that sense, my impression of those who select NC is that they really just want to embrace the newer ways that people interact with music, without allowing the older modes of interaction to exploit it.
I for one just don't understand what rights a CC-NC license grants me and am consequently forced to treat all those works as licenced under an non-free but still gratis licence anyway. No loss there if they were released under a license that actually says what it means instead.
That said, for many authors the choice won't be between CC BY-NC and the more permissive CC BY, it's between CC BY-NC and a non-copyleft license. So we might just end up with less content under a free license. I'm not sure if conceptual purity is worth it.