Creative Commons makes my life better

I must confess I’m amazed. At this time and age, there are still quite some theoretically influential folks that are convinced that “CC is not even an option” nowadays. I’m not going to point fingers here, but I guess you’ll understand that shit happens  if you live in Spain, like I do.

After all, this is the country where the Government has just spent almost 750K€ as a covert gift to SGAE, our equivalent to RIAA, also known as ladrones. Beware, no copy-left music there. It is shameful in so many ways that I better not get started.

Saying Creative Commons is not an option is outrageous. Not just because I’ve always been a FLOSS advocate and CC simply fits in my mindset. I believe these kind of options simply make the World a better place.

Take this as an example. My friend Álvaro had a CC song playing today. It is called Code Monkey. Not only did I love it, being a geek and all. Knowing it was CC, I googled about the author, and it turns out Jonathan Coulton releases his work under CC. He used to be one of us (and forever will be), but he switched fields from IT to music, and he seems to be doing pretty well. Kudos to you, sir! I love your work.

I’m pretty sure he would have had a hard time trying to live from his art through mainstream media (yes, Mu$ic Indu$try, I’m talking about you).

Not only does he succeed and has made my day a lot more fun. I also found out his work has been used in award winning works, which is something permitted by the licensing used. This music-clip won several Anime contests back in 2007. I’m not saying it is like winning a Nobel prize. But Madonna is not going to win one either. And quite frankly, seeing that Henry Kissinger once won the Peace Nobel prize, this shouldn’t even be considered as a dignifying example.

Check out the videoclip. I for one had a warm fuzzy feeling listening to Jonathan Coulton‘s work. You can buy all his pieces at really really inexpensive prices.