ReadWriteWeb

If I see another screencast using the iMovie default songs, I'm going to go nuts. Music sets the tone for how you want others to perceive your company and choosing a generic soundtrack is like branding yourself boring. In the past, videographers were forced to work with lawyers to gain appropriate licenses for samples. Thanks to the Free Music Archive and a number of other services, we're free to use original songs while still maintaining the rights to attribution. This morning's launch of the Free Music Archive's guest curation series further expands on this environment of collaboration.

Five years ago Lee LeFever was an online community manager for a B2B healthcare company called Solucient. Today, his voice has been heard by millions of people around the world, making strange new applications feel easy to use and offering some of the clearest explanations of how the Internet is changing.

LeFever is the founder of Common Craft and his story is an inspiring one.

Sarah Perez's post on Friday had my number: I'm one of those people who click right past the user agreement whenever I install software or sign up for a new web app, without even a passing glance at what rights I'm surrendering. I'm pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg is allowed to claim one of my kidneys on demand.

Part of the problem is that EULAs have only two options: Accept or Cancel, also known as take it or leave it.

Five years ago Lee LeFever was an online community manager for a B2B healthcare company called Solucient. Today, his voice has been heard by millions of people around the world, making strange new applications feel easy to use and offering some of the clearest explanations of how the internet is changing.

LeFever is the founder of Common Craft and his story is an inspiring one. He's gone from social media consulting to co-producing the wildly popular "...In Plain English" video series. Common Craft's videos have been translated into scores of other languages and landed the company big jobs making custom videos for companies like Google, LinkedIn and MeetUp. Now Lee and his wife Sachi LeFever are making another major work transition. They've stopped producing custom videos for clients and have found an interesting new business model.

GumGum is a new license management solution for content owners that its founders say solves a serious problem with online content distribution. "Offline, content is licensed for a finite period of time to a predictable audience. These parameters enable content-owners and publishers to come up with reasonably good pricing arrangements," writes GumGum's founders, Ophir Tanz and Ari Mir, on the company blog. "On the Internet, however, content lives forever and usage is unknown. And herein lies the problem: How do you fairly price a license when circulation is unknowable?" The pair say that GumGum provides the solution via per usage licensing agreements.