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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."
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.
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.
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();
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?
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.
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.
It might not die, but there would be a whole lot less.
I don't think so. One of the problems most live musicians face is that they don't have to compete with their neighbors; they have to compete with the best in the world. Why listen to some guy who's just "good" at the guitar when you can listen to Jimmy Hendrix? If there was a whole load less recorded music, that would definitely be good for actual live music.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
"THE NEW ENEMY"
Based on that logic, surely ASCAP, et al, would not object to paying a license fee in case they might use my software. Perhaps I should just send them a bill now.
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.
> Why listen to some guy who's just "good" at the guitar when you can listen
> to Jimmy Hendrix?
For the same reason that in college I watched my friends play intramural hockey but never bothered to attend a varsity game: the intramural players were people I knew and liked who were playing because they enjoyed it while the varsity players were arrogant jerks and assholes in it for fame and fortune.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
This is not an uncommon occurrence at all. I used to enjoy playing and going to shows at this local cafe/venue that was all independent musicians playing their own songs. Then they were essentially forced to shut down because they were tiny and couldn't afford the overhead with the licensing for things that weren't even. And yes, they have agents that go around to small places like this, check if music is being played and then cross reference if they don't have a license. It's like a Mafia protection racket. You are forced to pay them when they don't even provide a service to them, lest you be sued out of existence.
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?
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!