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Creative Commons Responds To ASCAP Letter
An anonymous reader writes "Drew Wilson at ZeroPaid has a followup to the story about ASCAP telling its members that organizations like EFF and Creative Commons are undermining copyright. A spokesperson from Creative Commons said, 'It's very sad that ASCAP is falsely claiming that Creative Commons works to undermine copyright. Creative Commons licenses are copyright licenses — plain and simple, without copyright, these tools don't even work.' He also said, 'Many tens of thousands of musicians, including acts like Nine Inch Nails, the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Radiohead, and Snoop Dogg, have used Creative Commons licenses to share with the public.' Many ASCAP members are already expressing their disappointment with the ASCAP letter over at Mind the Gap. Sounds like ASCAP will be in damage control for a while."
Although the focus is on arists of media and music, the implications to the software industry are staggering. Imagine if GPL, CC, APL, and many other licenses were deemed to be invalid as a result of ASCAP and similar lobbying. All that work you and I have put into creating a free software ecosystem are for nought, because some some media execs want to get paid for performances by musicians who didn't sign with them.
I donated to Creative Commons, EFF, and FSF for the first time today. You might not care about the media aspects but our industry absolutely depends on copyleft licenses and creative freedom, so I encourage all of you to do the same.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
The death throws of an obsolete industry are amusing and sad. The lazy abusers of other people's talents do not like to see their revenue stream cease as those who perform all the hard labor find alternate methods of representation and distribution. Claims that they represent the viewpoints, and wish to protect the interests, of their sheep, fall upon unsympathetic ears. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be on Youtube, under CC.
Dear ASCAP,
Please don't spread lies. The people behind EFF, CC, PK et alia, are smarter than you, and easily ruffled by people getting the facts wrong.
You're in for a schooling.
http
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
As the New Deal, the War on Poverty/Great Society, War on Drugs (and some may also argue the War on Terror) have shown us, the government cure to what ails society is usually far worse than the disease.
Just one point: don't confuse bad governance with government. The reason ACTA is being passed is because the public at large is failing to do anything meaningful about it. Yeah, the media is shilling for corporate interests. But you decided to play a video game instead of doing anything about it. Instead of organizing your government, you went shopping or watched another hour of tv.
Piss and moan all you want, but anyone living in a democracy needs only a mirror to see who to blame.
After they change it to a profit-oriented | public domain dichotomy, they will work to co-opt the public domain. This is easily accomplished by doing compilations, revisions, or other transformation to a public domain work. Then they will attempt to ensure that any version that remains in the public domain becomes unavailable or that its source is sufficiently unpopular/unrecognized. At the same time, they will lobby for laws which will undermine any public domain repositories. They are already lobbying to have facts themselves copyrighted (as opposed to compilations of facts, which are currently copyrightable). The public domain is easy for them to undermine, while free culture licenses are next to impossible to undermine under the laws they have already succeeded in securing.
This strategy could be combated by setting up non-profit public domain repositories which take the same strategy of re-copyrighting works from the public domain, while refusing to license the works to for-profit ventures and making them available to the public freely or if that won't work through a membership mechanism, or some other strategy. This counter-strategy will inevitably fragment and require new strategies, etc, etc.
How about this instead:
Hey, ASCAP, why do you think you should have the right to do what you want with your stuff but we shouldn't have the right to do what we want with ours? If you don't like Creative Commons licenses, don't use them. Don't tell us what licenses to use for our works. They're our works, not yours. That's what copyright means.
ASCAP's aim in the original letter was to stop people releasing their own works under copyleft licences. This would effectively ban Wikipedia, the entire text of which is CC-by-sa. Does ASCAP really want that particular fight? (I've already suggested on foundation-l that WMF respond to this issue.)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The big problem with your argument is that you don't have a model for creators to be paid. If creators can't get paid (or get paid insufficiently), then you undermine the production part of the equation. If you don't like the system, then you should promote alternate ways for creators to get paid for their work that actually work well. For example, if tax dollars went to pay creators, then creators would get paid and society copy their work all they want because the creator already got paid. (Unfortunately, this undermines the need for creators to create something truly useful for society. At least copyright forces creators to create something that society wants to buy.) Or, perhaps a shorter copyright so that people can eventually copy it all they want (after the copyright has expired), but the creator still has an exclusive period where he can get paid (although, even that would be a compromise according to your thinking).
The EFF is slightly more moderate, although they do employ Doctorow, and seem to have a habit of doing what they can to prevent any enforcement of copyright.
Cory Doctorow hasn't been employed by the EFF in the last 5 years. He's been a full-time writer since January 2006.
Can we assume that your other claims are of similar accuracy?
Do realize that 2,000 sq ft is less even a 45 x 45 feet? The company I work for has a warehouse that big, which is about half our total size. We're a pretty small business, with usually about a dozen employees (or less). And 6 speaker? That's not hard to reach... Some PCs have more than that these days.
I'm not sure if it's your understanding of the word "only" or the measure of "2,000 sq ft" that is faulty here.
The part where no money is taken/received, apparently. The people in charge of this mess are scrooges. They subscribe to a very bad form of morals:
1. If it results in profit, it is moral.
2. If it does not result in profit or loss, it is pointless (or immoral)
3. If it results in loss, it is immoral
I forget the name of this system, but it's a real system that sociologists study. I think you could substitute profit for gain, as profit is a subset of gain.
Honestly, I wish such people would wise up or die in a fire.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Music doesn't become popular because it's free to use or anything like that. It becomes popular because it's "catchy".
Catchy music is a dime a dozen. Music doesn't become popular because it's catchy (although not being catchy can hinder its popularity). Music becomes popular because it's promoted, normally by large companies with plenty of money to throw around, who promote it in return for a (generally obscenely large) share of the profit.
Releasing (some of) your music for free is a form of promotion! It may be a lot less effective than a massive media blitz and payola, but if you can't persuade (or don't want) the big companies to buy your soul in return for some more traditional promotion, it may be one of the most effective forms of self-promotion available to you. So yes, copyleft could become a competitive advantage. Not only does it increase your exposure by providing a broader potential audience, it also increases good will, making it more likely that people will think you're the kind of artist they want to support.
Here's an exercise for you: two bands, both play fairly similar music, so they're competing for the same audience. Both have a modest audience that likes them about equally. Then one begins releasing some of its music for free. Which one is likely to start growing its audience?
Here's another exercise. Two musicians who refuse to leave their parent's basement. One posts his music on the Internet, the other one is only ever heard by his parents and his cat. Which one is likely to find some fans?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go serenade the cat. :)