John Buckman

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John Buckman

John Buckman is founder of Magnatune, a Berkeley, California-based record label he founded in 2003^[1] and which is known for its commercial application of Creative Commons licensing and overtly artist-friendly business practices. Buckman's methods include forming non-exclusive agreements with musicians, sharing profits equally with them, and allowing them to retain full rights to their own music. This approach is sometimes referred to as "fair trade music." An accomplished software programmer, Buckman is also thought to be the first to use the term open music ^[2], a term derived from the open source software community, in which he has been active. It refers to music that is shareable, available in "source code" form (individual tracks), permits certain forms of derivative works (i.e. remixes), and is made available at no cost for non-commercial use. Since founding Magnatune, Buckman has signed more than 250 recording artists across multiple genres.

In August 2006, he launched the non-profit BookMooch, an online community for the exchange of used books, which—in combination with his work with Magnatune—has established Buckman as a prominent figure in the Free Culture movement. In February 2007, he was elected to the board of advisors of the Open Rights Group. In September 2007, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation^[3].

In 1994, Buckman and his wife Jan Hanford founded Lyris Technologies. Buckman was CEO and primary programmer of Lyris' product line: Lyris ListServer, MailShield, and MailEngine. He sold the company in June 2005.

Buckman has been profiled by Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and The Economist. Buckman is the co-author of an article in SysAdmin Magazine entitled "Which OS is Fastest for High-Performance Network Applications?" ^[4] and the author of an article in Linux Journal entitled "Magnatune, an Open Music Experiment." ^[5]

[edit] John Buckman's Use of Creative Commons Licensing

Buckman's use of Creative Commons licensing on the Magnatune site is thought to be, in part, a response to the Recording Industry Association of America's growing record of litigiousness toward Internet music sites and individual consumers. Believing such lawsuits to represent an outmoded response to the relatively new medium of digital music and to have a detrimental effect on the cultural landscape as a whole, Buckman employs Creative Commons licensing to support an explicitly customer friendly and pro-Internet stance. This stance includes providing full album previews online (versus snippets) to web site visitors—something that Creative Commons licensing facilitates without subjecting visitors to a set of complex terms and conditions. The full album previews also assist independent recording artists with gaining exposure for their work in a crowded marketplace. This strategy has been adopted by other independent record labels including the New York City based label Team Love. Creative Commons licensing also facilitates Magnatune policies such as allowing customers to share three copies of their purchases at no charge, and giving podcasters free access to the entire Magnatune catalog. Buckman has also taken a vocal position against DRM.

The complete data feed ^[6] at BookMooch is under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license. This represents an unusual amount of transparency, as the feed includes the entire database, with all books and user data intact, except for a few fields not displayed for privacy reasons.