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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."
or allow themselves to to be screwed
This is exactly what's going to happen. Lets not kid ourselves here.. most people don't care about any of this. The few people who have any interest in this.. even enough to never pay for media again.. are just a tiny little insignificant blip.
What else would you expect from extortionists, that they play fair?
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.
Can't say that I blame them... it's their industry and they're advocating for it - big surprise.
Uh, they apparently want to lobby Congress to pass a law which will prevent 'artists' from giving away things they've created.
If true, that is so mind-bogglingly retarded that I really don't know what else to say. Surely even Congress will have to laugh them out of the building?
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.
-- Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)
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.
Are you trolling or seriously arguing on the side of ASCAP?
Who says that artists have God-given rights to their works for a start? I've personally done several years of Scriptural studies, can read and write in Biblical Greek and Hebrew and find nothing to support this strange idea of yours.
Let me use a parable to explain what ASCAP seems to be wanting to do. "At a large park there is a running track all the way around the public gardens. Many people use it every day, but when the weather is hot, they get really dehydrated and sometimes people even have heart attacks while running. An enterprising kid makes up a great drink with a mix of fruit juices and salts to sell to the runners. Some other youths set up a protection racket to make sure that the runners buy his product and take a large cut of money on the top for their 'services'. Meanwhile another kid also produces a good drink for the runners, but he really wants to just give it away. He sets up in another part of the park and starts to give away drinks on the hot days. The boys in the protection racket hear about him and come over to threaten him. When he doesn't seem likely to stop, they try and get the police to take him away."
That is what ASCAP is about. If I want to put a copyleft license on what I produce, what is that to them? If I want other people to enjoy what I've done, to use it and possibly copy it or improve on it, what is that to ASCAP? It doesn't mean that I want anyone elses work for free, it just means I want to share what I've enjoyed making with other people on my own terms. What is wrong with that?
sudo mount --milk --sugar
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.
Waiting for prostitutes to complain that there are people out there making love for free. o_O
the soviet system has about as much to do with communism as fred phelps does to christianity
Snowden and Manning are heroes.