Dear SongFight Forum Members,
Thank you for your interest and comments regarding MyVirtualBand.com. Part of the purpose of the current beta testing phase is to get members' feedback regarding licensing issues, as well as general issues such as uploading files, etc. We would like to take the time to address some of the concerns discussed in this thread:
the sober irishman: We are both new to running a website with forums. We are currently using Phorum, which we find suits our needs rather nicely. What exactly don't you like about our Phorum or our forum page in general? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. You can email us directly at contact (at) myvirtualband (dot) com.
tonetripper: Thanks for your support by registering on our site. What issues have you had signing in? Is your login and password not working? A few days ago we did experience a hiccup with our forum login page and it seems to be working now. Please try again soon. If you have any more problems, please let us know. You can email us directly at contact (at) myvirtualband (dot) com.
bzl: In the spirit of "open source" and as allowable by the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license, we (MyVirtualBand.com) can distribute CDs, etc. for a profit, but so can any of the other registered members or non-registered users of MyVirtualBand.com. (Think of Red Had, for instance. Red Hat packages and sells Linux, an open source operating system, for a profit. But they are not the only ones, just the biggest and most popular. Anybody and everybody is allowed to package and distribute Linux for a profit under the Gnu General Public License.) Therefore, we don't have any more rights in this regard than anyone else; however, because we are the administrators of the website, we felt that it was necessary to state this in the Terms of Use. We do mention that others can do this as well, but perhaps we should make this a little more clear.
As far as MyVirtualBand.com being the Original Author, it is not our intention to pretend that we are the authors of the music. In fact, whenever possible, we will give all musicians credit who contributed to a particular song. The "MyVirtualBand.com as Original Author" clause came about because we were concerned that it may not be possible to give everyone individual credit due to the nature of the song creation process on MVB. In particular, we were concerned that forum threads would not provide a rigorous account of those who collaborate on a given song. Furthermore, we don't have members' real names, only their usernames. At a minimum, the "MyVirtualBand.com as Original Author" clause ensures that a song will always remain associated with MyVirtualBand.com in the sense that listeners will know how the song was created.
From the beta testing thus far, however, it appears that it may be easier than we initially thought to give everyone credit. In the future, as we refine our site, we hope to guarantee individual credit. In the meantime, we will consider re-wording this portion of the Terms of Use to make our intentions more clear.
In general, if an artist makes it easy for us to give them credit, they will receive credit.
15-16 puzzle: Thanks for your support by registering on our site. You hit the nail right on the head! When one really--and we mean really--thinks about it, there are a TON of issues relating to copyright ownership, music licensing, and author attribution that are unique to MVB because we are promoting the writing and recording of original songs on an individual track basis. The licensing of the music on MVB was the most difficult thing for us to "hash out" in creating our website because of the issues that you've raised here. We delayed the launch of MVB for nearly two months while we deliberated our music licensing agreement. At one point, we considered writing our own music license--as some musicians and organizations have done--but ultimately decided we liked the idea of supporting Creative Commons.
Currently all music on MyVirtualBand.com is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License, as it is the most flexible. As our community grows, we hope to offer additional licensing options. We even hope to get Creative Commons directly involved. Until, then we like having the MyVirtualband.com Community credited as the Original Author, at the very least.
Also, regarding your comment about "two-chord jams," please feel free to start new MVB Projects yourself! We along with some friends of ours "seeded" the site with a few songs to get things rolling, but ALL members are encouraged to start new projects, not just contribute to existing ones. (In fact, that is the whole point!) We're glad you thought it was fun to contribute and hope you continue to participate in the future. Hopefully there will be many more new projects after the holidays.
roymond: It sounds like you're interested in our site. We hope that you sign up so that we can collaborate with you!
Seasons greetings to all!
Regards,
MVB Administrators
http://www.MyVirtualBand.com