Jo Totland wrote:
> So, if you don't want Pepsi to use your song in a tv-commercial, you'd
> better use some other license then GPL, because Pepsi could simply
> make their ad GPL'd (which probably suites them fine, nobody wants
> to restrict distribution of an ad!), and use your music to their hearts
> contents.
I've been giving this more thought, and there does seem an advantage
to GPL in this regard. It goes back to what I previously posted about
the advertised company "putting a trademark at risk."
What should bother the GPL artist is not that this company is exploiting
the song to make money. Bletcherous as that may be in principle, this
is not to be confused with screwage such as discovering it used on that
commercial after you've been persuaded to sell your license dirt cheap
because your tune wasn't marketable when the record company neglected
to pay independent promoters to provide radio programming directors with
cocaine and escort girls on your behalf. GPL--they aren't *stealing* it.
More to your concern is that your composition could be instantly reduced
to singing the praises of tennis shoes, propagating that association in the
public mind, impacting your reputation as an artist, when you were trying
so valiantly to be cool...
However. That commercial is compelled to go GPL to do this, and open
to, um, did we say "modification"? Try, for instance, "conversion into
a public service message detailing the labor conditions that this tennis
shoe company practices in Third World nations." Not only do you get
to rewrite the lyrics to the song the public now associates with this
product, as you would were it PD, you get the bonus of legally wreaking
havoc upon the video footage that accompanied it as well.
Whereas satire of copyrighted material can be argued fair use, you may
still have to go to court to argue it. That commercial goes GPL, you don't
need pay a lawyer to prove your retaliation to be satire, much less fair use.
Indeed, it can be *unfair* use. "Ouch, they used my song on that candy bar
commercial...what's Larry Flynt's email address? That thing's GPL!"
A GPL song might be used in a commercial; it might not happen twice.
