NC General Public License

Recommended notice:
© 2000 NC General Public License, “Free Use” Permitted. (www.nocompromise.global)

More descriptive notice:
© 2000 NC General Public License, "Free Use" permitted. This created work may be freely used, sung, modified, translated, printed, distributed, & recorded, without the permission of its author under the terms of the NC General Public License as published by No Compromise (www.nocompromise.global), version 1 or later.

Preamble                   

This General Public License is designed to release musical, video, and literary works to be freely used, copied, modified, translated, printed, projected, distributed and recorded without the direct permission of their creators, and without payment to their creators, as long as that same liberty is preserved for future users of these works or versions of these works.     

It is our desire with this License to recreate some of the freedom of musical, and literary exchange that  the United States Founding Fathers intended when they created our original Copyright and Public Domain system. Lost in our nation’s history is our Founding Father's desire that written works and inventions only be copyrighted or patented for 14 years, at which time they were to enter the Public Domain allowing the general public free access to them. They believed that indefinite ownership of such works was not fitting for a free society and many of them even opted not to use the available 14-year period of copyright and patent protection.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, who did not patent any of his many inventions, "That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously." 

One type of musical work that over the years has benefited highly from the Public Domain system were songs written for religious use. The Public Domain has provided a free flow of lyrics and music that are widely available for anyone to use or modify. New songs have been created by combining the lyrics of a song with new music, or by combining music of a song with new lyrics. Old verses have been modified and new verses have been added to existing songs. Also, spontaneous variations to these works can freely occur in the course of a religious service.

It was originally our desire to create a system for the free use of musical, video and literary works that included as little paperwork as possible.           

Unfortunately, because there is no current precedent in the music, video or literary world for what this License provides, and because the Public Domain system is no longer a viable system for the free exchange of 21st Century music, video and literary works, this General Public License was created. This type of License is already in use to enhance the development of computer software. These similarly licensed works are being released under such terms as "free software" and "copyleft software".

This License may be used by any other parties and was not exclusively designed for the music, videos and written works of its author or of those works found in the nocompromise.global website.

Terms and Conditions for Using, Modifying, and Distributing Musical, Video and Literary Works.

0. This License applies to any musical, video, literary or other work, which contains a notice placed the copyright holder, saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The work “work”, “Works” or “Original Work”, below, refers to any musical, video or literary Work, and a “work based on the Original Work” means any derivative work under copyright law; that is to say, a work containing the musical, video or literary Work or a portion of it, wither verbatim or with modifications and /or translated into another language. Each licensee is addressed as “you”.

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the musical, video or literary Work as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy a proper copyright notice. (See examples of appropriate notices at the end of this document.) Again, this notice is not there to restrict your use, but to notify future users of their ability to freely use these Works without having to do further research of their own and will refer them to the www.nocomp.org website containing this license in order to answer any additional questions they might have.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the musical, video or literary Work or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Work, and copy and distribute such modifications of the Original Work under the terms of Section 1 above. You may also include on the modified work a notice stating that you changed the Original Work and the date of any change. You must cause any derivative work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Original Work or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. Licensing the work is as simple as posting an appropriate notice on each work referencing this License.

 These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Original Work and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Original Work, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

 Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Original Work.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Original Work with the Original Work on a volume of publication or distribution medium does not bring the other works under the scope of this License.

3. You are free to translate the Original Work or derivative works into any language without the direct permission of the author. The original author and appropriate copyright information must still be included in distributions and recordings of the Original Work or derivative works, for the reference of future users. It is also recommended, though not required, that you include the date of translation and the name of the translator for future reference.

 4. This License does not restrict your ability to recoup your costs from printing, recording or distributing the Original Work or derivative works and allows you to decide what is reasonable in such cases. Keep in mind that the parties licensing their works under this General Public License have forgone their usual rights and rewards under typical copyright and royalty systems. Therefore, it is left up to your conscience, not the rule of law, to what extent you would attempt to make a profit from the Works which they have released for free general public use.

5. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Work except as expressly provided under this License. By the very act of modifying or distributing the Work, or any work based on the Original Work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Original Work or works based on it. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Work is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.

 6. Each time you redistribute the Original Work, or any work based on the Original Work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Work subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.

7. If an appropriate copyright notice is unintentionally left off of distributed copies of a Work and the distributor was not trying to intentionally subvert this license, the distributor will not be held responsible. This section was included to protect those who desire to use a Work, but by nature of their circumstances do not understand the laws of the United States, particularly citizens of foreign nations.

8. No Compromise is not responsible to enforce the general public's compliance to this License. It is the responsibility of the holder of the copyright of an Original Work or modified work to enforce the general public's compliance to this License.

9. No Compromise may publish revised and/or new versions of the NC General Public License. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version but may differ in detail to address other issues that may arise. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Work specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by No Compromise. If the Work does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by No Compromise.

End of Terms and Conditions