Canadian Band “The Craft Economy” hates Bill C-61

Toronto indie band The Craft Economy has gotten active in its dislike towards Canadian copyright bill C-61 by taking some of its latest tracks, putting them together on a CD as a single and B-side, and distributing them around the city attached to light poles for people to pick up at their leisure. For free.

At least one of the songs on the disc is released under the Creative Commons licence, an action becoming more and more popular, it would seem. Folk artist Johnathan Coulton, who gave up his day job to write his own tongue-in-cheek style of music and is especially familiar to Half Life players as the author of the song “Still Alive“, releases his music under the Creative Commons licence, allowing people to pick up the tunes and create mash-em-ups like this one with no fear of legal action.

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range  of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright licenses known as Creative Commons Licenses. These licenses allow creators to easily communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of other creators. (Wiki)

The Craft Economy’s so-called “Kill Bill C61 CD” distribution stunt took place on July 27 and was limited to a run of 150 discs, but was  so popular that that band has decided to post the songs for free on their site.

Each disc included this written message:

 Hi! Thanks for grabbing this CD. It contains a demo track of ‘Menergy’ (you’re one of the only 150 people to have a physical copy! AMAZING!), and one of our most downloaded songs, ‘The Crash, The Wagons, The Dying Horses’. We have a new EP coming out in late August, and a final mix of Menergy will be on it. So will a bunch of other new songs. We hope you will like them.

But we’ve got something else we’d like you to think about:Bill C-61 is going to change the way you get to listen and watch the videos and music you pay for.

It will make it illegal for you:- to backup your DVDs- to circumvent any ‘digital locks’ on media you pay for- to retain recorded programs for an extended time- to record / retain shows broadcast with a ‘no recording’ flag- and that’s not all. Here’s something that’s simple: This law is *fucked*. You need to fight it. This is far and beyond and more bizarre than the heavily criticized DMCA in the USA. Copyright should protect the rights of artists and producers of creative content, but it should not suppress creative and artistic expression. The Craft Economy has licensed our music, including this CD, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 license. This license gives you the freedom to share our music with your friends and enemies, and remix and use it in new and creative ways, provided you attribute the work back to us, and you don’t make money off our work. It’s fair for you and us. This is the way art should work.Please do more reading on C-61 at the following links. A fair and civil future relies upon us, and our action.

The Bill: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3570473&Mode=1&Language=E&File=39

Brendon Wilson breaks it down: http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2008/06/16/talking-points-to-defeat-bill-c-61/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_C-61

Michael Geist’s Blog: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php

Fair Copyright for Canada News Aggregation: http://friendfeed.com/faircopyright4canada

The Craft Economy is Scott Birke, Andrew Bray, John Britton, Konstantine Kurelias, Linda McKenney, Christina Pilz. Contact us at: theband@thecrafteconomy.com. Our website is http://thecrafteconomy.com. Special thanks to Jake Janzen for his last minute help putting this together – http://purpleshagstudios.com/, and Kim Statham for buying and printing all these CDs for us.

This text and the CD it came with are all licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ca/.

Check out The Craft Economy’s site here.

More info on Bill C-61 here and here.