To state the obvious: I don’t know jack about legal stuff.

But what I gather from Fox news and other such reliable outlets is that legal precedence is set in court. Not on blogs or mailing lists.

So for all the continued hand wringing going on about what is “commercial” and what isn’t I can’t help thinking that until the CC licenses are tested in court (that is, somebody, somewhere actually files a suit involving a CC license somewhere in the mix) it’s all a huge mound of hyperbolic hypothetical, which, I’m told can make for quite a rewarding career if not a social life.

My reading of the latest proposal (pdf) is what I was told it would be nine months ago: commercial means “money in exchange for art” and other obvious stuff like “music used to sell stuff.”

As far as I can tell there are two camps at war here: those without children who feel their lives are lacking meaning and use any excuse to busy up their existence and take the rest of us down with them, and those with children who are just trying to get out of this mortal coil thing with as little deep scar tissue and head shrinker bills as possible. Field commanders and parents have to make calls — everything else is just an unexploded IED, no need to approach it, leave alone touch it if all you’re trying to do is make that C24 transport that leaves in 20 minutes. Or, if you like, you can always consult a handy amicus curiae wiki page to help you through it.

CC has a very, very long way to go help sow the seeds of a fertile alternative eco-system in the music business — not the least of which includes gaining a track record of musicians who actually make a living with open music, preferably without a year spent on discussing what it means ‘to make a living’ in blogs and mailing lists.

Just for the record: if a Girl Scout troop wants to use a NC fourstones track in their cookie drive then I will sue their little brownie badges to hell and back.