When a comunity member unpublishes a work, the attribution goes away. This seems fundamentally at odds with the BY requirements of every CC license. A related concern is that uploaders never receive notice that a source file was removed or hidden, thus depriving them of the opportunity to correct the license violation at the earliest opportunity (when they might still remember the samples used or have the work files/notes still available).

I understand that this is not the easiest issue to remedy, for a variety of reasons. However, I believe it is an extremely important one. Everey mix that is missing attribution due to this issue (that does not correct the issue by attributing the missing source(s) in the description) is a violation of the CC license terms. (Besides the fact that it’s copyright violation, this should especially be of major concern given the fundamental CC nature of the site.)

I know it should be the responsibility of uploaders to ensure that license terms are not violated, but a lot of people depend on the site’s built-in system to keep track of source attribution. Additionally, it is difficult to bear this responsibility when there is no way to tell that the attribution has vanished except to notice that sources are missing from the mix (usually well after the fact).

*meow*

P.S. Sorry if I’m being a license-vio Negative Nancy in my last couple of posts, but respecting the terms of CC licenses terms (really, IP licenses and contracts in general) is a huge issue for me. Feel free to tell me to remove the stick! :)

Many of us have taken to using the “featuring” field to mention the name of the remixed artist.

If my memory serves me right, we started doing this to make the artists of the source stems visible in the ccM generated mp3 file meta-tags.

In theory (probably subject to character maximums) this also allows attribution of 2 or more generations of sources (e.g. the stuff that is now in the “Remix History Chart”).

I think doing that preserves at least some attribution in the scenario you described.

That being said things can get a little messy when originals quoted in a CC-BY disappear from the attributed place, not only at ccM, but really in any place on the web (e.g. someone deleting their Flickr account, or a page disappearing from some other site that was the target of the attribution.)

Or what if I decided to abandon my “spinmeister” name and wipe out all web presences associated with that name? There’s very little that people who have attributed to me could do about that. Heck, their remix of my stuff could long be on a bunch of other people’s mp3 players referencing my now outdated persona.

Again, I’m not saying the following as a general legal opinion, but I will say it on my own behalf:

If I destroy the actual or implied original attribution link, it’s my problem - not the problem of the people who have remixed me, or the site who hosts those remixes, or the music fan who makes a copy of such a remix for a friend.