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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."
People are willing to pay for music, but even when they do, how much do the artists actually get anyway? Not much, if anything.
This is true.
I work in the music industry. I won't say who my clients are but they have a combined 24 gold albums and 14 double platinum.
The reason they get paid little on royalties is that the record label pays for the production costs and marketing. Thus they own the recording.
There are four main types of royalties.
Mechanical - This is CDs / Vinyl / Cassette and digital sales
Publishers - This is associated with the royalties for license on broadcast / Sync / Master use / Covers etc.
Performance - This is for a rebroadcast of a live performance or live presentation
Writers - This is for covers and everything else that the song is used by the songwriter. (For example a lot of artists (main stream major label) don't write their own songs. They are written by someone else.
Their are also other types for mobile and what not.
Now here's the thing ASCAP handles writers and publishers royalties only.
Mechanical is paid direct by the labels
Performance sometimes is typically paid by who repeat broadcasts the works.
Now I have seen ASCAP checks drop to like nothing since the "digital revolution" and when your clients depend on those checks for their way of life it can be heart breaking to give them a check that typically was $30,000 a quarter to $1300.00 a quarter.
Really I applaud them for going after these companies as ASCAP isn't after the EFF or CC license for artists who sign up for that... They are against people taking works from their artists and registering them under CC and using the EFF for protection... Specifically DJ's and Mashup artists.
They are trying to publish works that ASCAP should get paid for under an new license as a safe harbor... This is not good, and should be stopped.
Basically artists should decide what is done with their work, but other artists full of hackery and no talent are taking the work and throwing some stuff on it and calling it their own while banking on the popularity of whose art they ripped off.
If they just made their own mix/beats with their own stuff and did it with CC and EFF that would be ABSOLUTELY FINE, but they aren't. They are taking other people's stuff remixing it and putting it under CC and EFF and that is wrong.
So really what it comes down to is you are absolutely free to create and make whatever you want, but don't take ASCAP's members stuff and do it without paying like everyone else.