Slashdot Mirror
ASCAP Declares War On Free Culture, EFF
Andorin writes "According to Drew Wilson at ZeroPaid and Cory Doctorow, the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), a US organization that aims to collect royalties for its members for the use of their copyrighted works, has begun soliciting donations to fight key organizations of the free culture movement, such as Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge. According to a letter received by ASCAP member Mike Rugnetta, 'Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote "Copyleft" in order to undermine our "Copyright." They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.' (Part 1 and part 2 of the letter.) The collecting agency is asking that its professional members donate to its Legislative Fund for the Arts, which appears to be a lobbying campaign meant to convince Congress that artists should not have the choice of licensing their works under a copyleft license."
Let them attack everything. Hell. I say let them even win. Once people can't do anything with any of the stuff they own they will wither get smart and take matters into their own hands, or allow themselves to to be screwed.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Don't get me wrong.. this is really bad because they probably have a good chance of succeeding. As absurd as this is, essentially making it illegal to give the stuff you produce away for free, the media industry has a metric ass tonne of money and influence, and most importantly your average guy on the street is not going to understand or care.
I am just happy to finally see what I would describe as inevitable happen. And I totally don't blame the media industry. It a logical approach:
problem: something is costing us money
solutions: make it illegal
Should be interesting to see how this all unfolds.
I sure don't remember a single one of those groups claiming all ASSCRAP's music should be free, just that the copyright terms should be of a not-fucking-absurd length, and that fines for downloading a song here and there shouldn't ruin someones life.
But then again, ASSCRAP is run entirely by shitheads, so no big surprise there.
I really wish people could understand that the only way people find out about new music is to hear it.
What would happen if they got their way and it was no longer possible for people to trade or share music? Their profits would plummet is what. Who would drop $15 on a CD just to see if it was god or not?
"According to a letter received by ASCAP member Mike Rugnetta, 'Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote "Copyleft" in order to undermine our "Copyright." I love how they play the age old political view, it's maybe a bit surprising that communism is not mentioned in connection with the "Copyleft". Luckily time is running out for this to work as effectively, the McCarthyist-generations is hopefully moving towards better commie-hunting grounds.
Formerly known as yogurt.
Can't say that I blame them... it's their industry and they're advocating for it - big surprise. That's how the system works: Both sides fight it out based on how important it is to them and the courts decide. If I'm a shareholder, I want them doing everything they can to make the value of my stock go up. That's why the courts are supposed to be there to make sure they're playing by the rules. It's the courts that screw us.
What else would you expect from extortionists, that they play fair?
ASCAP is asking its members to send donations to help out in a project against the free culture movement. They realize that no single organization alone can finance this 'war', and are trying to spread out the effort among their companies. They are using exactly the same strategy here that open source software like Linux uses - have large corporations that benefit from the project being successful all contribute to it, and allow the entire world to benefit from the result. If they lose, we win. If they win, they will have shown us that we can also win.
In a way this is great news. As long as people are ready to answer them with a good message, this will give great publicity. However, it's really important to point to new things that are produced by the free as in freedom movement. Out of copyright stuff and especially illegally copied stuff isn't stuff we have any right to claim and doesn't show the value of the new approach. Find good artists on Jamendo. Create your own stuff. Talk about how most new things in computing come out of the F/OSS movement.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Why is it so hard for them to understand that at one time, music was about artistic expression?
If nobody could ever make one penny from their music, I guarantee you that music would not die.
Dear Legislative Fund for the Arts,
I'm writing today to let you know that I completely agree with your position! We should be asking congress to change the copyright laws...
Sincerely,
"The Copyleft advocates"
The wonderful thing about copyleft is that we're beating them at their own game. Either we're allowed copyleft licenses under today's copyright or copyright laws start to restrict what owners and publishers can do with their work. I suspect this restriction will be too much for "casual" owners (e.g. bloggers) of works and so they'll start releasing under different laws (or public domain) thus marginalizing copyright and demonstrating to everyone that we need to fundamentally change how we view "the right to copy" a work
It seems that the ASCAP should be going after the RIAA so that artists can actually make money on music recordings again. Forget about free. People are willing to pay for music, but even when they do, how much do the artists actually get anyway? Not much, if anything.
Wow,
So not only do they want copyrights to last forever, but now they also want to take the copyright away from the creator of the content, because obviously the creator isn't capable of understanding what 'value' their property has if they want to release it under a copyleft license?
That continues to baffle me. Apparently you can't make money off of copylefted music, so where did all this acclaimed money come from? If they can have deep pockets as copyleft organizations, then why doesn't ASCAP become one themselves?
What a bunch of asshats.
If all they want to achieve by this is people saying "Screw them, I donate to EFF right now just to make them angry" they may actually succeed.
There is no light without darkness.
I want to see the proper letter, with letterhead, contact details etc. At the moment this looks like it can be fake.
If it's not fake then these people are insane and by not wanting to allow people to choose another type of licence, they are taking away rights that they do want for themselves (to choose their own licence).
Assuming for the moment the letter is real:
It's not about music. And in case of music, if it's 15 years old or more, I have no problem with copying without paying for it. It should have paid the author, if not, tough luck, that's life.
The long copyright duration (essentially unlimited) also means companies and individuals who don't allow free copying after say 15 years, are hogging our past. Want to see a film again for nostalgia, or some music? (That you probably paid for already, via cable networks, records) Then you have to pay for it again. It's a great business model, getting paid for nostalgia etc. [ Note: Cleaning up very old records etc. and making those available should be rewarded, but for most music there's very little cost, lots of profit, and still lots of whining. ]
And is there a list of these donating members so I can boycott their products...?
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
... to advance our agenda in Washington..."
Nothing like stating the obvious...
But actually the "letter" sounds a little too goofy..
"We all know what will happen next..."?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
These morons want to prevent ME from releasing MY OWN SONGS under the Creative Commons?
It's idiot moves like this that led to do exactly that. Here: http://theexperiments.com/ All my band's music for free under the Creative Commons.
They can pry the Creative Commons from my cold dead fingers.
Some street performers do fairly well from what I've seen and they don't charge for their public performance. I've also known more than a few people who work a full time job and go out to perform just because of their love of the music.
Man, don't you love letters like that? They are asking for money, but they don't list a single, specific point of how the law needs to change, or what specific philosophical claims for which they are in disagreement with EFF, CC, et. al.
They are asking you to write a check, but they haven't explained, AT ALL, what the money is going to be used for. They use very vague and nebulous statements that add up to nothing. What do they actually want to do?
Everybody with an agenda today needs a straw man demon. Look at US national politics. Obama demonized George Bush, then Wall Street, then the Banks, then the isurance companies, and now BP. He hasn't addressed any major topic without a straw man demon.
Like it or not, people in the USA evidently love to hate. An anti-demon campaign is more successful than one with a positive message, regardless of the topic.
generational change is a bit hard, yes?
Free culture movement?? They either don't understand what those organizations fight for or they know and are completely twisting everything around.
Organizations like the EFF are fighting for the consumer to be free to use what they PAID FOR in ways not dictated by multi-million dollar organizations. I have no interest in "stealing" copyrighted content, nor selling or giving it away to others. But when I pay for music, video, text, pictures, or whatever, I should be able to use it on any device I own, for as long as I like, in a manner that I choose. Most consumers are not anti-pay, or anti-copyright, or anti-arts. We just want to be able to obtain quality, reasonably priced media, and enjoy it on our stuff without some company dictating which program we must use, or which operating system, or which device.
And if creators of content want to release things under Creative Commons, or Copyleft, or Public Domain, or whatever, that has NOTHING to do with fighting against commercial companies wanting to make a profit on their materials. They should have that choice, and it should have the protection of law, just like traditional copyrights. What do they propose? To FORCE people to not license content how they choose? What's next? Legislation to block donations to the Red Cross because it might compete with big business? Amazing...
Grab your ankles, everyone -we're about to get fucked!
"They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music."
"...artists should not have the choice of licensing their works under a copyleft license."
wtf? Should or should not an artist have control over how his/her work is used?
I'm too lazy to RTFA, but if these really are valid quotes, then they have a terrible argument here. Sadly, Congress will probably be too stupid to see that.
Even if they win and oulawed 'copyleft', forcing everyone to use 'copyright', its still MY work, and i can choose to give it away if i want..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Rather than clinging to the old model, and try to intimidate people into using it, the industry needs to change figure alternative ways to get revenue for content.
Will it ultimately result in less money for the same amount of art (music/video/writing)? Probably, but in a day and age with our technology does it really make sense that publishers get billions of dollars (not going to the artists) for burning cd's and posting videos?
Last I checked, the Creative Commons licenses were applied to the music by the people who created the music... you know, the ones who actually have ownership of the music per current copyright laws.
Clearly ASCAP's problem is that they assume they should own everything and receive all the money from whatever automatic and inescapable royalties they can bribe Congress into assigning to them instead of to the actual musicians. Musicians being allowed to let other people play their music for free are cutting into their profits.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I've heard of some stupid shit from copyright lawyers, but this is record breaking - and it should be record making. Imagine if this had great songs written about it and compiled into a record.. The record has to be given away free, of course.
second option: I'd donate to a legal fund that does nothing but publicly out anyone mentally challenged enough to donate to an anti-1st-amendment fund.
More like ASSHAT! mirite?
"Real (artists|musicians) have a day job."
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
It's funny watching these media dinosaurs scurry like drowning rats, suing everything in sight.
FUTILE!
Yes, its terrible, its just like those "Free Software" people rampantly pirating Windows all over the place. Oh wait. The Free Software people are a group of individuals least likely to pirate Windows. Something is wrong here.
If I choose to release my work under a free license, what is it to them?
... the publisher's organization officially changes its acronym to ASSCAP.
Have gnu, will travel.
I do hope they word it that was to Congress, They would WIN with that statement.
Entities like ACAT can only blame themselves for the massive push back by the public regarding copyright. If copyright holders and managers had not gone out of there way to bri.. cough, give certain political entities rather large financial enticements to change copyright law so as the public are denied access to their own cultural heritage for an ever extended period of time then the push back by joe average they are experiencing now would not be happening, to put it simply, they (copyright holders) broke the original deal and now the public are saying stuff you. What I find amusing is that "all culture derives from prior works". For example I don't see bands paying chuck berries estate money for ripping of his guitar riffs but at the same time copyright lawyers are blocking all avenues or derivative works by the public even if it is satire.
These organisations ASK musicians, programmers etc. to give usage-rights to the people VOLUNTARILY. If you don't want to, then nobody is trying to force you!
god, how braindead do you have to be, to make such a fuss about a subject that you have nearly zero knowledge about? didn't these morons even read the friggin wikipedia article? or are they just too stupid or too far into their "internet=evil" fanaticism to understand it?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Most interesting is the fact that the media industry *does* give music and films for free. Radio and TV, for instance, have been largely ad-financed for decades. This does not mean the industry does not receive payment for it, but whatever they receive is orders of magnitudes less than what they claim their losses from unauthorized copies are.
I recently bought a Nokia "Comes With Music" phone. I bought that model for other reasons, it was only after I read the documentation that I learned it came with a licence to copy music from the Nokia site for one year after the purchase.
I paid about $200 for that phone, I don't know how much of that goes to the music industry, let's assume it's $20. If I copy twenty thousand songs during that first year, the media industry gets $0.001 for each song copied.
So, the true value the media industry gives to one copy of a song is about one tenth of one cent. Compare that with the $150,000 loss they claim they have for each song copied without authorization.
Or, wait, does this mean my phone is actually worth $3 billion? If so, then it's for sale at that price. Any takers?
What part of 'culture war' didn't you hippies understand?
We've got the laws, we own your judges and politicians -why did you naive fools ever believe that the outcome would be anything else?
We will not rest until the last filesharer is strangled with the intestines of the last programmer.
To see the result of this equation and the totally new mathematics that were behind creating and proving it, I must as per law charge you $10.
the lobby in discussion has not only recognized the rise of GPL/copyleft, but that
they have tacitly conceded it fosters competitive and worthwhile art and media with and empowers
creators and artists to supplant these lobby groups...sounds like we just realized bottled water was tap
water all along.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"The collecting agency is asking that its professional members donate to its Legislative Fund for the Arts, which appears to be a lobbying campaign meant to convince Congress that artists should not have the choice of licensing their works under a copyleft license."
Funny, I missed the part of the letter that said that artists should not be allowed to choose a copyleft licence.
As someone who got targeted by ASCAP for merely having links on my website to radio stations (story is here on slashdot), I hope that they're beaten senseless by EFF, etc. These are the same people who strongarmed the girl scouts into paying royalties for songs they sang around the campfire. Yes, it's true.
The collecting agency is asking that its professional members donate to its Legislative Fund for the Arts, which appears to be a lobbying campaign meant to convince Congress that artists should not have the choice of licensing their works under a copyleft license.
I'd like to see what their legal argument would be. Basically they're lobbying to make a particular kind of legal contract they disagree with illegal.
Ooo, no - that's not a slippery slope at all. I'm sure lawyers all over the continent will sit still for that! I can't see how that would cause a problem ever!! *hah*
Hell, even the bad lawyers would fight having that for a precedent. Harder than the good guys I'd guess - tricky contracts are where a good bit of their bread and butter comes from. If the law began placing restrictions on what sorts of contracts you could make...well, that would have a lot of other interesting implications.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Why a piece of land is "yours" or "your parents'"? Why doesn't it belong to other person?
It's a complicated discussion (for instance, why doesn't it belong to the native Indians? some guy even posits Indians are not Americans, even thousands of years being on this continent).
For now and the sake of simplicity, let me sidestep all this and say this is a granted right resulting from a human construct: Law.
Now, it's important to have in mind _why_ the Law grants this right.
What is the end a music or song might have? Is it right that someone own a song just to make sure nobody can sing it?
In my opinion, a lot of things aren't working as they should.
Software patents, no, patents in its wider sense were conceived to protect the inventor and make sure s/he can live on and keep on inventing. If they sell their inventions to companies which want to avoid innovation (so as not to disturb their cash cows), then such inventors really don't deserve any protection. Alas, they should receive said protection conditioned to the disclosure of their ideas. If not so, let other inventor -- with greater public spirit -- receive recognition instead.
In the present case, a music is to be heard according to the will of the listeners, not at the discretion of its rights holders -- because society granted then (through Law) such rights.
The Law cannot be an end on itself. Rather, it's a tool to make sure the society will prevails -- not some corporation will.
How things decayed these days... to think some weasel has the nerve to come in public and discuss openly the appropriation and control of aspects of society life. They make Uriah Heep look good... we need protection against them!
ASCAP is already preventing coffee shops from hosting independent artists.
It means we are making a difference. If you fight a tyrant, expect the tyrant to fight back. Let's hope for a good fight and may our champion slay the beast in the end.
The letter is incredibly stupid, but I suspect they are not actually trying to make the Creative Commons license or GPL illegal. I think instead the writer thinks the term "copyleft" means "ignoring copyrights".
Of course they may want to make copyleft illegal: they would certainly love it if you could not copyright protect your work without having the means and infrastructure to sell it. But I think the chances of that are very slim because even the general public will understand that it is unfair.
Or they are actively trying to get the term "copyleft" redefined in public perception so that these organizations can no longer use it, similar to "hacker".
But my main guess is that the letter writer has no idea what the term "copyleft" means and they have instead made themselves look either evil or stupid or both.
"THE NEW ENEMY"
soundexchange -> broadcast (internet radio)
ascap -> performance
typed in too much of a hurry sorry. This stuff just really pisses me off about these kind of groups.
I don't get it. What does a sound have anything to do with a sarcasm detection device? I would expect such a device to be silent, anyways.
I have a great idea: lets organize a big group of artists together, and have a single entity manage the "side tasks" required for making and distributing the art. Then the artists can focus on making better stuff! Oh, wait - that is exactly what the media industry has already done. They have probably gone too far in trying to control/exploit the art in some cases. However, don't demonize the idea of profiting from creativity.
Think about it this way: currently, "copyright" people have gone a little too far. In reaction, "copyleft" people are trying to drastically change the way things are done. "Copyright" people think the proposed changes would take things too far in the other direction, so they respond. The real problem is that no one is willing to shut up and think for a couple of seconds about what the other side actually wants. It becomes a tug of war where each side aims for more extreme goals. Just like an arms race, but with policy not weapons.
Of course, no one will listen to reason. How could they, when the only ones making any noise are greedy moneybags on one side and socialist pirates on the other?
Whoa its from the future! (article is dated June 26th)
That's some seriously scary stuff from these guys. Has EFF or any of the other groups issued a response to either of these pieces yet?
Is what the ASCAP doing "promoting the progress" ? If not, then burn them with fire.
Yeah, right.
They are just being idiots about how they are going about fixing things. Bottom line? No one wants to pay for music anymore. Around half my income is derived from ascap. In the last ten years, seismic changes have occurred in television and film having nothing to do with the internet.
First, broadcasters stopped paying royalties for movie trailer music. Next, networks on cable stopped paying fees for music knowing that we would get paid on the backend through their endlessly repeating show schedule. By and large, they were right to a certain degree. Basically, they wanted us to get paid by the broadcasters but now the broadcasters don't seem to want to pay either
Now though, hulu has emerged and it is nothing short of a land grab. you only get paid a performance royalty if there are commercials in the show. Well guess what? Hulu does not pay out royalties even though there are millions of performances daily on their website.
And let's not forget the shady music supervisor that fills in his own name instead of yours in the cue sheets and then he gets the back end that you were supposed to get. It happens.
At some point you have to stop and ask yourself, what is the value of your work on a whole when everyone and there mother is hell bent on not paying you a dime.
Creating music for television or film is no joke. It takes a lot of time, energy and skill to learn how to craft a score to picture. Underscore is a lot different but still, lots of work. I mean, if everyone is cool with hearing the same loops from GarageBand and logic than really, what the hell do I know?
However, if you agree that while the world is not fair, just like licensing code, use of music needs a mechanism of payment that is fair.
I like creative commons, ascap is just misguided.
And finally, before anyone tells me to play live and find alternative revenue streams, licensing is the alternative revenue stream. I give all my music away because licensing makes it so I don't have to worry about actually selling anything.
Shame it's Patent Pending.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
...than there ever has been.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/file-sharing-has-weakened-copyrightand-helped-society.ars
---
Pluck the duck, who have we got to lose?
More like ASS CAP.
Or equivalently, ASS HAT.
Free licenses, are in the first place, a measure, a WAY, of being able to publish stuff, for free, in the wild, and HOLD the rights of it ( i mean, not bein stealed and used commercially without your permission), or some sort of rights on it.
As opposed, of releasing work in the free wild, and NOT having any right on it, and not being able to stop someone else from using it commercially.
Also, the free licenses, allow artists to publish work ALONE, i mean, not tutored by any big firm, and still being able to hold some sort of rights on that work.
This is in the first place, because, if these licenses didnt exits, ALL CONTENT would be of the property of the commercial houses.
On the other hand, there is some sort of thing some idiots have been bitin on... which is, "having" the right to watch and listen copyrighted work without payiing for it (which is what MOST people does this days, i mean, download movies/songs, and listen/watch them, without paying for it as it should be).
Somehow, some idiots, must be confusing free culture movements with the second type of "free" stuff (of course, i believe this is intentionally a blind/wrong attack).
What I DONT agree on, is the furious persecution some "pirates" (file sharers) stand.
On the other hand, there are organized organizations (sigh), dedicated to mass-sell pirated (usually low quality) media.
This organizations are like... they spread the works of satan. I mean, their purpose is not to make revenue due to pirated goods sell, but more likelly, to spread the propaganda media (what is not propaganda this days), of the ruling tirany.
This "orgranizations" are not usually caught. And will NEVER be punished as its "organization" value. (which regime would persecute their own mass propaganda distributors??).
Even in the case, this organizations are supposed to make revenue out of this sales, they wont be prosecuted in a propper way a pirate organization should.
On the other hand, the millions of idiots that, selfishly download and watch ilegal content, (that is the majority of the public), CANT, and should not be prosecuted. Instead, they should be EDUCATED. to learn about these two worlds of free culture.
Finally, there ARE ways and initiatives that work with free licenses and independed artists to make revenue out of their work (i.e. dont give it for free).
So there IS and alternative to creative commons licenses (lol, actually , cc licenses are exactly the oposed to main stream).
This guys should have some talkings with the morons which want all the content to be freely distributed, and is possibly this morons are confusing free licenses with "everything is for free!!"
Lawmakers should spend more time protecting individuals (which are prosecuted by lucrative/obscure_objectives organizations).
(how does captcha know im talking about ilicit stuff, anyhow, my captcha was "ilicit").
I'll donate $0.02 but need my 30seconds to speak my mind in 2 words one will get filtered (4 chars) the second is "off"
ASCAP can go to hell. I guess I'll start donating whenever I can to the EFF so that at least I'm doing *something* Maybe this will turn out to be a good thing. Maybe we will actually win this one and set some precedents in favor of free software/culture/etc and the *AAs and ASCAP lawyers will go cry and hang themselves in their closets.
Sometimes I think groups such as ASCAP forget that copyright is about letting people copy things and defining how and when it should be done. It's goal is to encourage copying and development as a way of progressing science and art. The restrictions on copying is about convincing authors via the lure of money to develop something further.
But the restriction gets tighter and tighter... how is life-of-the-author plus 75 years (the term for individuals i.e. non-corporate authors) supposed to encourage an author to develop the something they created further? I'm pretty sure they can't create new material after they've died. Plus, progress often comes from combining other people's stuff together in new and novel ways, which copyright, an idea to promote progress, often blocks in its current form. Long ago copying was hard and temporarily limiting was no big deal to the public; today in the digital age, copying is so easy that it can happen by accident while sorting one's computer files.
Creative commons is about striking a balance between copyright and public domain-- to come to a place closer to what copyright originally was. ASCAP would now have me believe that an independent artist, who is not affiliated with them, choosing to utilize creative commons will somehow bankrupt them (or something similarly awful) and that this would... what? destroy culture? stop development? I don't know as they don't really explain why its bad-- just a vague 'trust us, it's bad for authors' answer. If they are really worried about their business, they need to evolve with the times or simply go under just like all other companies. They are no more special then any other company, nor should they be.
ASCAP say that the opposite side wants people to believe that music is free, and that they do not want to pay for it. First off, music is already free. The purpose of copyright is to barter away a tiny bit of its freedom for money to motivate creators to create. Second, I don't hear anyone saying that don't want to pay for music. I either hear people expressing they want a simple and affordable way to pay, or people expressing dismay over paying for the same thing the umpteenth time. Groups such as ASCAP are often against a simple affordable way of excepting people's money. It competes with their old dying way of doing business. Again, evolve or go under. They go and ask the government for help. The people are giving us less money, please force them to pay again. (Well, it's never gotten THAT simple.) When their market changes, they simply should not be going to the government and asking them to force the market to do something. It doesn't work. It never has... and it has the side-effect of creating headaches for everyone along the way.
*Sigh* My two cents,
David Romig, Jr.
Business owners are not there to 'fight the good fight' they are there to make money pure and simple. THIS should be the reason that our government gives in ignoring the ASCAP: the ASCAP is trying to inhibit small business owners from employing other small businesses (bands) to the benefit of both. Making arguments on the basis of the benefit to humanity or society isn't going to get us or the small business owner anywhere.
Yeah, people like that are "extremists" and "radicals" just like George Washington, Gutenburg and Martin Luther King Jr. were. I mean, how dare they challenge the status quo.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
Sounds like a good list for a new "Copyright Contract With America" - where's Newt when you need him?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It's about time someone stepped up to this so-called "free movement". Why can't people pay for everything? Nooo... These hippies have to be all co-operative and giving. Why, just a couple years ago one of my neighbors would blow out the sidewalk in front of my house, no charge! Frickin douche-bag. I'm supposed to PAY people for things like that, and he's giving it away for free! Doesn't he think about the snow removal industry when he does such things?
I even heard there's this whole organization that gives away free food to people in need! Douchebags! They're hurting the grocery stores when you do things like that! All you'll do is just encourage these people to think all food should just be free. Damn hippies and their Goodwill and Salvation Army thrift stores. Good red-blooded americans never give ANYTHING away. Me? I charge people a buck just to tell them what time it is. Directions cost them a fiver!
AccountKiller
I give $20 a month to EFF. How about you?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The irony is that all 10 of those positions are quite sensible.
It just shows how far out in right field these wackos are, that they can believe this is an "extremist, radical anti-copyright agenda". I don't know a single person under 25 who would think any of those points was extremist, and several of them are not ANTI-copyright at all. Anti-copyright-abuse, maybe.
Private music. Secret art. Hidden culture. Silence. Exclusivity.
The fast path to historical and cultural - human - extinction.
No more Enthusiasmos. Pathos. Tragedia.
No more colectivity.
Only dead and misformed hive cells.
Popular musicians around here are doing pretty well. They make money on live shows and appearances. And direct sales to fans. Not only media, but also all sorts of apparel and bric-a-brac. And sites. And pay to "phone-a-star" (recorded). And twitter flutter. Etc. And street vendors actually serve as up front marketing. Society lives. Life finds a way. Locking artists away is a crime.
They claim that we don't want to pay for music. And at the same time, their begging for donations tells us that THEY don't want to pay to litigate.
I can see Metallica lining up to support this immediately.
Geez, where do I sign up?? Those are all GREAT ideas!
Use the money to patronize artists.
Let the amount of pirating help define financial support.
There might be a way of pondering voluntary, or "mindful", downloading x bulk packratting compulsion.
Sometimes people give away things for free. It's great that as human beings we all have the opportunity to benefit from contributions that individuals or groups make. When something is given away for free, it drives those seeking to make a profit to create a better product at a more reasonable price - again great for the consumer. I'm a pretty hardcore capitalist, but I like the idea that there are free options to every facet of existance. Often, you get what you pay for - and you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find - you get what you need.
For the second screenshot, I verified the donation link works: https://members.ascap.com/ma/EwaWeb/pub/startOnlineDonation.do
This means it probably isn't a hoax.
MPEG-LA beat ASCAP to the punch.. ASCAP will just have to buy up a bunch of patents. That should cover their bases
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
They're songwriters. They want to something something night, something something light, something something else something feel so right.
If enough free culture is created, people eventually realize that they have enough good free stuff to never need to go back to overpriced, over-restricted material sold by over-priveleged monopolies ever again. That's their fear -- people who create and share their creations simply for the love of it. We can't have that! It's un-American! (Forgets how the US Constitution explicitly repudiated the eternal copyrights of Europe.)
There are already more free books and story sites on the web than any person could read in a lifetime. It used to be that the only way you could read out-of-copyright works was if someone reprinted it and sold it at a low enough price to not be undercut. Now you just download it and nobody profits from that download -- which is just WRONG to some people. And while you're reading your classic liteature, you're not paying for and consuming other overpriced content.
Are we better off for this? I would think so because we are a richer culture overall! How long, for example, before a radio station starts only playing out-of-copyright performances that you can play in your bar or restaurant without paying ASCAP, BMI, and all the rest of those money grubbers a single red cent? Would be great, provided that they can't kill it in the cradle. Let that happen and soon there may be music everywhere!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is a bit OT, but is about how copyright lawyers take stuff away from creative use.
Those Hitler YouTube parodies that were taken down by DMCA idiots. Why hasn't a group of performers with a video camera remade that scene under CopyLeft and posted it for everyone to reuse to the limit of their own creativity? This is how to respond to those morons who want to lock up the content.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Go to their donation site and donate 0.01 on your credit card. This will drain their funds because the processing fees will be much larger than the donation (processing fees are a percentage plus a transaction amount). Transaction amounts vary from 0.10 to 0.25, so anything less than a dime definitely results in a net loss.
....roll back the economy and all technology at least one dozen years.
Good luck with that.
Do they know a Founding member of the EFF was a songwriter/Lyricist and member of A.S.C.A.P.
are they that clueless? Or they do know that and since it was The Grateful Dead, which let their audiences trade concerts tapes in a methodical and fair minded way, they want to stop him once and for all. I know all this is generally known history, but just in case...
The Dead said don't copy and trade our albums. Tape the shows and trade to your hearts content.
They then allowed all the shows up on the I.A., then backed off on the soundboard recordings.
But they struck a balance, Stream the soundboards, download and trade the audience shows. Btree torrents are ok, but monitor any released versions of the soundboards- no trading there.
everyone is happy and everyone complies, and everyone polices everyone else for fear of killing the goose that laid the golden egg. It works.
'Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote "Copyleft" in order to undermine our "Copyright." They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.'
Yes, that's right, I don't want to pay for the use of that music... twenty years from now after its copyright period has ended. The groups listed above are waging war against groups that are trying to make copyright permanent.
Giving away stuff for free does not make you a Communist. What makes you a Communist is deciding that you *know* exactly what's best "for the public good" and prohibiting people from doing things differently, and also reviling them for wanting to be free to do things differently.
You will notice that ASCAP's position is closer to Communist than yours.
Under the Soviets, one would need to be a member of a Party-controlled Union of Writers, Composers, or Cinematographers to be considered one.
The American Society of Prostitutes has begun soliciting donations to fight key organizations of the free love movement, such as Marriage, Girlfriends and Fuck Buddies. According to a letter received by ASOP member Lisa Rugnetta, 'Many forces including the Marriage, Girlfriends and Fuck Buddies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote "Loveleft" in order to undermine our "Loveright." They say they are advocates of consumer love, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our services. Their mission is to spread the word that love should be free.'
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Most ASCAP members don't have health care. Think about that next time you are pontificating about freeing the culture. In the US, we don't even have free basic 911 services, so how can we have free music? An American with health care still dies younger than Europeans and Canadians, but without health care you lose 10-20 years. That's hundreds of lost songs per songwriter. The 2 pennies you may have to pay to a songwriter are not nearly the threat to culture as having no public health care system.
Only in America...
No. 7: They favor the elimination of the songwriter and publisher rights for server, cache and buffer copies.
That one's a joke. Isn't it? Because no one can be fucking stupid enough to believe that they should have rights to ephemeral cached or buffered copies.
Right? Please tell me that was sarcasm.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Boogey, man.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
This ASCAP has an EFF'ing problem.
he's a money grubbing ew, just look at his fucking name.
shove his ass in the oven
So which bands, which composers, which artists are members of such an organization?
I suspect that ASCAP is not going to ask congress to stop people giving away their work with no restrictions (hence allowjng other "artists" to make money from it), rather they will ask the lawmakers to remove copyright protection from works that people want to release under a Creative Commons or similar license.
In other words, it is an attack on the GPL and similar licenses.
Although the focus is on arists of media and music, the implications to the software industry are staggering. Imagine if GPL, CC, APL, and many other licenses were deemed to be invalid. All that work you and I have put into creating a free software ecosystem are for nought, because some some media execs want to get paid for performances by musicians who didn't sign with them.
I donated to Creative Commons, EFF, and FSF for the first time today. You might not care about the media aspects but our industry absolutely depends on copyleft licenses and creative freedom, so I encourage all of you to do the same.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Hypocrites!
"Do as I say, not as I do, seems to be the golden rule.
I should practice what I preach, but I'm a hypocritical sonofabitch.
I'm a Hypocrite!
Don't always know what I'm talking about;
I can't eat my words cuz I got my foot in my mouth-
I'm a Hypocrite! I'm a Hypocrite!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.
-Mahatma Gandhi
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Two years sounds good on paper until you write a super kick ass novel that XYZ Corp wants to turn into a movie. They'll write the scripts, shoot the film, create the special effects, print the reels, and at 12:01 AM exactly two years to the day the copyright was granted, ship the film out for a release date 2 Years + 5 days past the original copyright date. All perfectly legal since they did not, in any way, distribute your copyrighted work with anyone outside their company until after it had expired.
You, the author, will get absolutely nothing from this, XYZ Corp will rake in 60+ Million on opening weekend, over 150+ Million by summer's end, 200+ Million worldwide box office, and an additional 300+ Million after worldwide DVD sales are factored in.
A two year wait is nothing to an immortal legal entity with many of the same rights as an individual, two year copyrights are a joke. So are 90 years plus life of the author, anyone old enough to read this now will likely be dead before they can make any use of the ideas inspired by current copyrighted works. So much for progressing the useful sciences and arts!
A good compromise would be 25 years. Long enough to give an incentive for XYZ Corp to work with you, a popular novel being turned into a movie will be a money train for all involved and 25 years is a long time to gamble it will still be popular, while still being short enough that the inspiration to create new derivative works can be realized while you're still alive to do it; I've seen a few Star Wars fan-films that deserved the big-budget treatment and in a sane copyright world would have been allowed to.
[rant]
If I had the money I'd buy stock in "XYZ Corp", any large media company would work here, then sue their asses off for failure to maximize shareholder value through deliberate lobbying to extend the copyright term length. For example: When 20th Century Fox releases a Star Wars movie they earn 100+ Million in the box office; the worldwide box office, DVD, and broadcast rights will garner many times that value. Had Star Wars been allowed to pass into the public domain, which wasn't possible due to active lobbying by XYZ Corp, XYZ Corp could have also made its own Star Wars film and earn a comparable sum of money.
Yet through their successful lobbying of governments to extend copyright terms they have artificially impeded their ability to generate profit, an action which goes against the interests of shareholders. Consider the primary role of a corporation as defined by law, to legally maximize shareholder value to the exclusion of all other considerations. Maximizing copyright terms prevents the creation of a rich public domain, preventing the use of popular works that otherwise would have entered it. Through their actions to impede this process it negates their ability to create competing products using popular public domain franchises, in this case the creation of a competing Star Wars film, and creates a lost opportunity to maximize shareholder value.
[/rant]
I honestly think that all the recent attempts to reform copyright have been going about it the wrong way. Appealing to the loss of the public domain and the moral issues surrounding it, like the recent lawsuits to repeal the Micky Mouse Protection Act, wasn't going to work because the money side makes it look like we're trying to steal their stuff; even though they're ones who are stealing. You want to get copyright reduced to a sane time limit, you need to show that the actions of media companies to create ever longer copyrights impede the maximization of shareholder value.
All the flower power talk of morals and how it relates to the public domain will get you no where, show the courts that the actions of big media are hitting shareholders in the pocket book and we'll get the shorter terms we want!
And I want public funds to pay me to dash about telling all concerned that they have a real choice between copyleft and copyright. I'm certain that I need a large salary as well as a really good expense account.
And I also want to multi task as well. Since I am dashing about anyway I will need funding for my campaign against cancer in puppy dogs as well as my world class efforts to eliminate the Chinese SnakeHead fish in American waters. I need lots of fishing gear, boats and bait and the funds to maintain them in order to catch all those fish. I can also fight those carp that jump when startled as well. Just send me big bucks. Make the checks out to Reverend Dollars care of The Holy Jumping Coins ministry and consider it your ten percent tithe dues.
Great!
So which parts of
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/
http://screwattack.com/
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/
are wholly yours so I can borrow them BY-NC for Beer-Free?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Will ASCAP declare war on Red Cross?
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
My immediate thought is that whilst ASCAP may have deep pockets, they're not as deep as all the big tech companies out there that are large stakeholders in open source. There are many giant tech companies out there with extremely deep pockets that I think would happily fund the fight for free software; off the top of my head, Apple, IBM, HP, Intel, Google and several others all rely heavily on open source software.
If this actually got into the courts (and it can't really see it doing so, given that one of the most central things to American culture is the protection of free speech, which this seems to be totally against), then I expect some very interesting outcomes - and probably not any in the best interest of ASCAP.
"I'm sorry, Mr Hines, but you fail to understand your own situation. You see, it is ALREADY too late, and the only investigator coming by will be the one inquiring about the missing person's report filed on your behalf by your next of kin. Goodbye, Mr. Hines." (this followed by the sound of a shotgun discharging at extremely close range)
One advantage to living in BFE, the locals won't exactly roll over and piss on themselves when a lawyer comes to town.
ASCAP will use the money for murder and extortion.
They also need at some point some of the money to pay down their cocaine, gambling and prostitution debts.
"our music"
Deliberate misrepresentation of the "copyright" concept.
You (generic address) are mistaken to put ASCAP in the same category as the RIAA and the MPAA, as ASCAP isn't going after the file-sharing-type of piracy. ASCAP is a songwriter/composer/publisher organization that collects royalties for the songwriter/composer/publisher of a song when it has airplay or other similar usage. Every time you hear a song on the radio, or in a broadcasted movie, or commercial that you see, the broadcaster is paying royalties on the song. Technically, the broadcaster is licensed, and the fees they pay are divied-up between the number of times the song is played, but where the royalties go to the songwriter/composer/publisher of said song. They have nothing to do with collecting sales royalties for a band that has a tune recorded. What ASCAP is going-after, are those who might take a song and publish it as their own, assisting the copyrights of the songwriter/composer/publisher of the song. Same as if you posted a picture that you created, and someone else posted it as their own. If a band wished to record a song written by another songwriter, this is called licensing, and goes through a different process outside ASCAP. ASCAP royalties are entirely different than what the RIAA and MPAA do. By going after the Creative Commons, ASCAP is going after the persons who might publish a song as their own, that is really a copyright violation, where the person uses the Creative Commons (copyleft) to attempt to bypass the copyright of the work, and thus virally screwing the real-writer out of licensing agreements with those who wish to perform/record/use their songs (as listed above). If a songwriter/composer/publisher wish to put their works on a Creative Commons type of license, it is their right to do so, and are not the ones that ASCAP is going after. In such cases, the original songwriter still owns the copyright on the song, whichever way they choose to license their songs. What ASCAP wants, is for Creative Commons, ELF, Copyleft, to do the same thing that other websites are already doing, by looking at songs that someone wrote, or composed, or legally published, that someone else had taken and posted it as their own work, such as plagiarism, and not at all like one downloading mp3s. I hope this clears up the misconceptions about what is being attempted by ASCAP, as opposed to the dealings of RIAA and MPAA. Yep, I'm a member of ASCAP, and cannot stand the RIAA or the MPAA!
That is cynical... I wholeheartedly approve! If I had mod points, I'd drop one on that.
Since they are determined to engage in this fine example, would it be out of line to suggest setting an example of our own?
http://www.ascap.com/legislation/legislation-form.html
The above is the web addy for their advocacy page, I encourage any takers to feel free to drop them a line, explaining our feelings on the matter.
I, for one, would find it quite satisfying to send them a nice picture of GOATSE, but certainly others may have more...erm....CONSTRUCTIVE opinions to express?
This whole idea is so wrongheaded that it is unspeakable.
for it is how it is going to be. lets see how much donations will they collect, and how much donations will eff and others collect. im shelling out $5 right out of hand. its not much, its all i can give now, but im doing it. and, i dont even have any 'profits' to protect too.
Read radical news here
I have a better idea...
Have the donors give ME some money, $100,000 should do, and I'll stop listening (never-mind buying, downloading, etc) to any crap they claim is music these days.
Deal?
What? I think that's a totally reasonable idea.
Did no one have the heart to tell them that they named their company "asshat"?
Those scripts are trade secret not copyright. Just have a contract with the film company over that script and that NEVER dies unless the contract says so.
So your "problem" with a 2 year copyright is not actually a problem.
2 years is not long enough for books, mind. It still takes a lot of time to move books an after 2 years, there may still be some market untapped. However 5 years is DEFINITELY long enough to capture all people. So a copyright term of 2-5 years from date of publish becomes a case of pick your own. After 5 years the work may actually be WORTHLESS, therefore (unless someone does it off their own back for the lulz) no company will produce it. And that means that it effectively dies.
So, they are saying that I release open source software because I don't want to pay for music? Yeah, right, like that makes sense. In fact, people release stuff under open source licenses or creative commons for the reason they do everything else: either they get paid for it, or they do it for fun. Both are legitimate reasons in a free market.
No, the real problem the ASCAP has is that the production and distribution costs for their products are dropping through the floor so that what used to be enormously valuable on its own is now so cheap that it can't even be sold on its own and instead serves other commercial functions, like advertising.
ASCAP is being driven out of business by the free market; they aren't competitive anymore, and now they want government to prop up their uncompetitive and failing business.
If artists opt for copyleft over copyright then it is probably offering them something better than the ASCAP and the old way can. Let them have the freedom of choice and if more people go the free route then the ASCAP is probably doing something wrong and should consider changing rather than turning into a bunch backwards idiots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_v._International_Business_Machines_Corp._et_al.
"THE NEW ENEMY"
p2p isn't bootlegging because the sharer makes no profit.
That aside, the big companies that want to outlaw it are NOT doing it to prevent their own stuff from being shared.
They're doing it to keep their COMPETITION's stuff from being shared.
They know full well that p2p is very effective free global advertising and it's a level playing field where popularity is based on the MERITS of the product rather than on the size of the label's marketing budget.
Remember, this all started when a dj in Hawaii found an unknown guy named Shaggy on Napster and he went to #2 on the billboard charts.
The RIAA didn't try to have sharing of THEIR STUFF outlawed,
They tried to have SHARING ITSELF outlawed.
I personally could not count the great bands I've discovered through p2p and I've promoted all of them through word of mouth and sharing.
Through myself and others like me, previously struggling unknown artists have gained immensely greater sales of both their products and their show tickets.
THIS is what the disingenuous, monopolistic "artist associations" (and those they fool) really hate.
Their victimhood is a farce.
Perhaps the royalty scales with the size of the buffer.
"They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free."
No, the mission of advocates of "copyleft" is to make available a well-understood license that copyright holders can apply to THEIR OWN works, if they so CHOOSE. As in "I've made this stuff that automatically falls under copyright, but I personally don't want the terms for its use to be as restrictive as traditional copyright, so I'll put it under a Creative Commons License". Notice that these alternative licenses depend entirely upon the existence of copyright in order for people to be able to do that. It has nothing to do with imposing these alternative licenses unwillingly on others, although obviously people might try to encourage other people to do so if they want.
ASCAP is a bunch of paranoid and confused nitwits who apparently don't understand the point of artists being able to choose whatever license they wish for their works -- be it restrictive or more open. Now they want to start a legal effort to promote further confusion and restrict choices for artists. What a bunch of self-interested idiots.
"Two years sounds good on paper until you write a super kick ass novel that XYZ Corp wants to turn into a movie. They'll write the scripts, shoot the film, create the special effects, print the reels, and at 12:01 AM exactly two years to the day the copyright was granted, ship the film out for a release date 2 Years + 5 days past the original copyright date. All perfectly legal since they did not, in any way, distribute your copyrighted work with anyone outside their company until after it had expired."
VALID POINT
Why not take all things into consideration? IF copyright is say, 10 years and patents the same, then IF the work 'suddenly' becomes valuable, allow the holder of the copyright or patent, to get 10 percent of the gross earnings for the next 10 years? Simply waiting out the statutory limits would be considered theft. If there is any value, then there reasonably should always be value.
Just my 2 cents worth !!! Karma is overrated.
Why do you hate freedom, gig?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
> im shelling out $5 right out of hand.
Er, that's for the EFF, and not ASCAP, right? You didn't really make that totally clear, and I end up having to guess from the title of your post and the fact that you have been friended by NYCL.
I wonder how ASCAP feels about the US federal government work being public domain. That's *a lot* of material, all for free.
I love how people think that the things they create or discover is entirely from them and from no outside influence. No man is a island unto himself, we as individuals are really a collective of experiences both internal and external, we do not create anything we simply take something that is and make it slightly different, it is the evolution of a idea or a concept, a science or form of technology, music or a style of painting. We add to it but never do we create it entirely from nothing. How can one person claim the entirety of rights or ownership that is really the current culmination of ideas evolving over thousands of years.
Bill Gates did not discover the electron, nor did he develop the assembly programing, or even produce the c programming language, infect he didn't even create the original DOS, what he did was add his element to the growing pool of data that has become windows, but so did the thousands of other countless programmers who also contributed who receive absolutely no credit for there innovation and contribution.
All ideas belong to all people and sure it may not work in a capitalist system but then again a capitalist system has proven not to work all that well anyways.
Why do big corporations' and private citizens' interests necessarily have to be at odds here?
I think one helpful thing would be to separate the concept of a Copyrighted Work (i.e. book, movie, etc) from the Brands (i.e. specific characters, locations, etc) contained within the work. The Work would be treated under copyright law, and the Brands under something like trademark law.
The copyright term should be something short like 5-10 years, which would normally be a bit too short, except now the brand ownership would be perpetual--as long as it's maintained. This compromise would give both the public and media owners most of what they each want. The media companies would lose perpetual income from individual works, but they would retain perpetual brand ownership, and the fair copyright term would ensure entities have a fair chance to make a profit and a living from their works. There would also now be an incentive to continue producing new works instead of just cashing in on one goldmine at the expense of the public's interest.
For the owned brands, those who wish to sell or perform new works containing these as a significant, integral, or important part of the work will need to obtain licenses for the intended use. Licensing or permission should not be required for non-profit uses.
What do you think?
p2p isn't bootlegging because the sharer makes no profit.
That aside, the big companies that want to outlaw it are NOT doing it to prevent their own stuff from being shared.
They're doing it to keep their COMPETITION's stuff from being shared.
They know full well that p2p is very effective free global advertising and it's a level playing field where popularity is based on the MERITS of the product rather than on the size of the label's marketing budget.
Remember, this all started when a dj in Hawaii found an unknown guy named Shaggy on Napster and he went to #2 on the billboard charts.
The RIAA didn't try to have sharing of THEIR STUFF outlawed,
They tried to have SHARING ITSELF outlawed.
I personally could not count the great bands I've discovered through p2p and I've promoted all of them through word of mouth and sharing.
Through myself and others like me, previously struggling unknown artists have gained immensely greater sales of both their products and their show tickets.
THIS is what the disingenuous, monopolistic "artist associations" (and those they fool) really hate.
Their victimhood is a farce.
Funny, that's exactly what I thought when I read that list!
Then I read the link (and saw the source), nice of them to collect all of these sensible ideas in one place for me, and it makes me realize that ASCAP is further away from rationality than I thought.
If the EFF is fighting for this list, I need to make a contribution!
I hope somebody has already warned Mr Hopper to never allow any local artist to perform "happy birthday" in his shop, since this will probably cost him his whole business.
Why don't they just pass legislation to enforce signing papers when buying musical instruments, just like when buying guns? Guitar chords seem to be lethal weapons too.