Devachan Music - Mark Simos

Devachan Music: Data Rights and Information Sharing

Dear Friends:

You will see the above copyright phrase on every page on our site. (If you don't, we meant it to be there!) We ask you to be respectful of rights of authorship and content ownership, so that the Web continues to fulfill its role in speeding the flow of knowledge, ideas and perspectives on our little Planet.

The press is full these days of controversies about artists' and record companies' rights to content as opposed to the culture of MP3 downloads, Napster, freeware, shareware, etc. I feel the pull of both these forces from my own experience. I am both an artist and a technologist. In my technical work I have championed the cause of software reuse for close to two decades, and know the many issues and obstacles there, as well as the promise. I know full well that, as Steward Brand put it long ago, "Information wants to be free." I also know that "Musicians want to be paid." Somehow in the next few years we are all going to have to figure out how these unshakable needs will dance with, rather than collide with, these unstoppable forces.

Ahem! In the meantime ... I urge you to remember that:

I am not Metallica.

All of the ideas, essays, musings, and teaching material you will find on this site, not to mention clips of music and lyric fragments, were created or developed by me, or derived from other sources with my significant efforts.

I either have, or will, publish these things in some format at some point and will use them in workshops, lessons, etc. They are part of my livelihood.

I am putting them on this site to get them into the community as assets to be collaboratively evolved and co-developed. I'll look or creative ways to credit any and all who participate in their evolution. But I am not giving them away.

So I ask you to do the following whenever possible:

If you make use of ideas, exercises, techniques you find here, give credit of authorship whenever appropriate (just as you would hopefully announce the songwriter when playing the cover of a song).

Rather than copy material, link to it so that as it changes and evolves (hopefully with your participation) you are part of the flow rather than part of the eddy.

If you use it informally and gain some lessons learned, get in touch and let us know about your experience. (Part of being a "utilizer" and not just a "user"!)

If you incorporate this work directly into material or services you are making money from yourself (like on a record or in a book or magazine) you have now left the cozy world of informal sharing alluded to above, and are in the realm of copyright law. Until all this is sorted out by society far more elegantly than it is now, I will be attentive and proactive in maintaining my rights in their entirety.

Thank you for your continuing attention.

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