NIN goes CC

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Lessig

Amazingly great CC news: Nine Inch Nails’ latest album has been released under a Creative Commons license.

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12 Responses to NIN goes CC

  1. Peter Rock says:
    March 3, 2008 at 10:20 am

    NIN “Ghosts I- IV” == free speech
    Radiohead “In Rainbows” == free beer

  2. Rick Rushing says:
    March 3, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    Cool. (Oops. I’m informed that the current equivalent utterance is “word”.) OK.
    Word.
    I’ve been encouraging my teenage son and his band to cut a few tunes and release them online under CC instead of pursuing the conventional “rock star” approach. Maybe this will help convince them that the old man isn’t such an idiot after all.
    (chuckle…) Probably not.

  3. Jardinero1 says:
    March 3, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    If someone gives me a copy with an “Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States” . How can I be sure the CC license is authentic? What if I can’t find the creator to check the facts? What if he/she is dead and I can’t contact his/her estate or heirs or maybe the heirs want to revoke the CC license?

  4. Chris says:
    March 3, 2008 at 6:39 pm

    The funny thing? There site got too much traffic and they can’t handle it, so the downloads don’t work. Or, in other words, they should have used BitTorrent or some distributed system, and since they haven’t, people will just get it through the usual means.

  5. M. David Peterson says:
    March 3, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    @Chris,

    They seem to have fixed at least some of the problems, as after experiencing a plethora of errors — from “You have downloaded this file too many times” when I hadn’t even downloaded it once to “The secure code you entered was incorrect. Please try again.” when in fact it was w/o a doubt correct and everywhere in between — I was able to gain access to my download at about 4am Mountain time this morning.

    While it’s obvious the system(s) of free distribution and (re)use need some work, I don’t think this should be seen anything other than a learning process on the road to a truly Free Culture-based entertainment industry (and beyond!)

    A *BIG* PHAT thank you to Trent Reznor for stepping up to the plate and taking on the challenge of beginning the transformation from a culture of “criminals” to a culture of law abiding consumers & creators!

  6. M. David Peterson says:
    March 3, 2008 at 9:45 pm

    s/free distribution/free (re)distribution

  7. Camille Harang says:
    March 4, 2008 at 1:03 am

    A request from somebody with your stature Professor could convice them the join the iSummit 2008!

  8. Markku says:
    March 4, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    @Chris

    NIN actually used BitTorrent spreading the record, they uploaded the first part of the Ghosts to Pirate Bay themselves:
    http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4059158/Nine_Inch_Nails_-_Ghosts_I_(2008)

  9. Ben Bildstein says:
    March 5, 2008 at 5:51 am

    I just wanted to point out to the Internet community that only Ghosts I seems to be available for free download (anywhere I can find, at least), but the FAQ (linked by this blog post) says that “Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license”, I.e. the whole thing is licensed for redistribution. I.e. if anyone can get their hands on a copy of the whole thing (i.e. by paying $5), they can legally share it with everyone else.

    That’s not legal advice, it’s just the way I see it.

    And there seems to be at least one “Ghosts I-IV” torrent on pirate bay. Maybe once I download it I’ll mirror it for download by non-torrenters.

  10. Mike Cohen says:
    March 5, 2008 at 3:56 pm

    @M. David Peterson:

    After purchasing the $5 download, I was never able to download it. Several attempts timed out & quit after less than a minute until I finally got the “download limit exceeded” error. [email protected] still hasn’t replied to my emails. I ended up downloading the whole thing from a torrent.

  12. bituur esztreym says:
    March 6, 2008 at 7:19 am

    hi Lawrence, hi all! cheers from France (from Mexico too where i live by now)!

    hey yes this is good news. some times reznor did have some strong says on music industry system and its failure(s), then Saul Williams Niggy Stardust, and now: this great news, Ghosts CCed!

    one more musician joining the hundred of thousands already using free licenses. one more achievement since the beginnings. and yet much more to come. let’s keep the good work, vibe and sense!

    blogged it too http://blog.dogmazic.net/2008/03/nin-publie-ghosts-i-iv-en-cc-by-nc-sa (fr. & eng. below)

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