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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."
I'm pretty sure that protecting your God-given rights to the works you've created precludes anyone else from releasing works under a free license. People who are releasing their works under a Creative Commons are stealing from the real artists, who work so hard to earn a living. They just want to get stuff for free. Good to see ASCAP has understood this simple fact.
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
They can pry the Creative Commons from my cold dead fingers
"Your proposal is acceptable."
-FBI Copyright Enforcement Special Weapons & Tactics Division
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Sarcasm detector...that's a useful invention
It does a good job of detecting an absence of sarcasm, giving a zero in such situations, but the sarcasm readout indicator gets sarcastic itself, giving a sarcastic zero when there is sarcasm. I'm beginning to think it may actually be just a "zero" sticker.