The large diffusion of the net more and more near to domestic use and file-sharing have rendered necessary the use of an instrument more flexible than copyright, in such way that every net-user can know what the author have reserved or not reserved, if his work has been downloaded.

In this contest the Creative Commons Licenses were born, is a legal instrument made by a group of american lawyers who belong to a non-profit association. They were inspired by the same sensibility that given life to G.P.L. (General Public License) created by Richard Stallman, the father of the open source software.

Kokoradio was born about 3 weeks ago to promote the Creative Commons Licenses like a real alternative to the copyright.

You can custom these Licenses in many different ways but maybe the importance is in the fact that you can formulate them specifying the possibility of full use of the work (sampling, sharing, broad/webcasting) on condition that the attribution of the work remains to the original author and a commercial use isn't possilbe without the permission of the author.

Nowadays the project involves the jurisdiction of few countries, but an european norm is going to take place. In my country, Creative Commons Italia presented his Licenses in December 2004 but there are still several controversies to face with the lobby of the lobbies: S.I.A.E […it's similar to american R.I.I.A.]. Hope that this wall gonna fall down soon so the possibility to have open public files banks can always become more and more an usual thing.

So, Kokoradio is also born to prevent the prejudices that can give birth to critics about the quality of the “copyright music” against what is the “open music”, demonstrating that there isn’t difference between the two, if not, in the second solution a more strong passion and will-power to give emotions. A classic example it’s the affirmation of Bill Gates, who clams that the retributive develop of a "close-source" software is better than develop of "open source" software in a community. Everyone knows how things are going.

If you agree with what I’ve just said before and you want to support the free exchange of ideas, why don’t you go to the Creative Commons website and suggest some “open MP3s”? That gonna be add on the Kokoradio playlist.

6 April 2005

Alfonso – Kokoradio staff

Many thanks to Sabina for english translation.