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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."
You seems to have forgotten your sarcasm detector, sir. Here, have mine.
ASCAP is already preventing coffee shops from hosting independent artists.
They probably are relying on or hoping to attain the same standing RIAA has gotten through SoundExchange to collect broadcast royalties even from non-members.
So there is clearly precedent that suggests ownership and membership are not sufficient concerns to these types of organizations. Unless it is their material or members that is!
So in this case they are either seeking statute authority to collect song composing royalties for members AND non-members, or they intend to behave that way anyway and defend it on the premise that the copyright office already delineated similar powers to SoundExchange and that since ASCAP is a similar group to SoundExchange they are entitled to a similar wide scope of authority (performance royalties -> SoundExchange vs composing royalties -> ASCAP)
I'd really like to see this blow up in their face and get both groups rights to even try this sort of thing revoked, but there are too many MAFIAA members in DoJ (and probably other parts of gov't) now and they have the administration's support (much to my dismay as I do generally otherwise support the administration). So this could get ugly and have bad consequences quickly.
I really hope the copyleft groups start gathering funds and resources in a way to respond to this head on. I'd support it.
About RIAA lawyers at DoJ:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/obama-taps-fift/
About RIAA/SoundExchange:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/24/141326/870
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/29/0335224.shtml
For the millionth time, copyright infringement and stealing are very different things. If anything, released works 'belong to' the public, and authors, and the authors are just 'borrowing' certain rights from the public, so the closest thing to 'theft' would be the Sonny Bono Act, which actually deprived the general public of its rights, with the retroactive parts presenting no gain for the public.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You're declaring up is down.
Copyright is a statutory construction. Unlike nearly any other form of 'property', intellectual property is purely a legal tradition created as an indulgence, basically in response to what we now call lobbying.
Theft, on the other hand, is a universally recognized and deterred thing. Our notions of theft are from common law, but the legal recognition of theft is as old as anything we can consider law.
The most important aspect of the definition of theft is that it is about the deprivation of a rival good. If I steal a car from you, you are deprived of that car. That's how the word works, that's how the law works.
Infringement is a different thing. In plain language, in law, and in simple intuitive sense, at least to most people, when they think about it. I can no more steal the informational payload of your book than I can steal your soul. I could steal a physical book from you, or a thumb drive with a copy of a book. That would be theft.
They are just different things. By all means, you can continue to be wrong - I fully support everyone's right to be wrong. But you then shouldn't be surprised when people want to correct you, and perhaps wonder why you are trying to smuggle a bit of an emotional appeal ('you're depriving me of money that is rightfully mine") to what is actually a factual discussion. Blue is not red, and copyright infringement is not theft.
If you want to change the world such that copyright does, in fact, equal theft, I suggest starting a law career and look for a way to get an invitation to join the American Law Institute - they produce the Model Penal Code, which drives a fair amount of criminal law. Get them to recommend a change, and you have a chance (not much of one, but you'll do better there than whining here about it).
I forget what 8 was for.