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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
With ACTA looming and governments already planning how to implement it, it seems that unless something else completely disruptive occurs there will be a battle over two competing rights models: individual rights versus copyrights (and other intellectual property rights). I respect intellectual property - to an extent. I believe in copyrights that help spur creativity in arts and sciences, but the original plan for copyrights as endorsed by the US Constitution was for them to grant limited time monopolies to creators. That model has been rejected because of the special interest corruption from multi-national corporations, and now the media cartels are working to make the federal government their handmaiden and servant on the Internet. If you haven't read it yet, the current draft of ACTA calls for action against copyright offenders at the inchoate stage, before the infringement has even been committed. It calls for the creation of an "impending infringer" task-force with a broad mandate to prevent copyright infringement that hasn't even taken place yet. Media reports are claiming that under ACTA it may become illegal to search for the keywords "Metallica album download," even if no infringing material is downloaded. If true, it would destroy the Internet as we know it, and we also know that once government gets its "nose under the tent" that will be just the beginning of its regulatory and enforcement regime. So, as I said before, while I have limited respect for intellectual property and believe it is morally wrong to enjoy another's work by copying it without approval, I believe in individual rights over copyrights. And moreover, I believe in maintaining a relatively free Internet with a certain level of copyright infringement going on if the alternative is clamping down on freedom online in a draconian way to discourage infringement. 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.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
While the spokesperson for creative commons may or may not be right, I would like to know that tens of thousands is an accurate number and where he got it from. I hope he is right but I am skeptical that this is a real figure. I know all the artists he mentioned have used creative commons ("including acts like Nine Inch Nails, the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Radiohead, and Snoop Dogg"). In fact Nine Inch Nails is my favorite band and I was excited when Trent Reznor made that decision for Nine Inch Nails and it's being followed through with his new band How To Destroy Angels (lead by his wife Mariqueen Maandig). I felt these were strong acts in supporting Creative Commons which has served me and many others very well in our business and personal lives. None the less, can someone please point me to a site, registry, document or anything that says tens of thousands of musicians in a reputable manner as the spokesperson has claimed?
When will people take a few minutes to get some reading comprehension and realize that's ASCAP's point. CC is, in ASCAP's point of view, corrupting copyright. You can't say something's being corrupted if it's not being used. ASCAP doesn't want people using copyright in such a fashion as to be giving stuff away. Copyright must be exercised to make a profit, contributing freely to society is to be abhorred and derided as unnatural.
This is why ASCAP is so dangerous. They want to make it so that any and every project must be either profit-oriented, or public domain, with no middle ground. And if you can't afford to monetize something, then you're stuck either keeping it under wraps, or losing complete control of it.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
ASCAP is (almost) correct. While copyleft doesn't undermine copyright, it does undermine the copyright cartel. If artists begin to license worthwhile, popular, and (monetarily) successful works under copyleft -- if artists succeed while granting people more rights than they, strictly, have to -- then consumers might begin to wonder why more artists -- and big companies -- don't do that. Using copyleft could become a competitive advantage. And then how will Big Music justify restricting users?
If the sheep wake up, the whole industry -- as currently organized -- falls apart. And that's what ASCAP is worried about.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Boycott ASCAP members. Email your favorite ASCAP artist and let them know why.
1 copyLEFT needs copyRIGHT to actually "work" (you go on the hook for copyright violations if you break a copyleft license)
2 This "Brilliant" act by ASCAP gives the Copyleft folks something they can always use
A COMMON ENEMY
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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 big problem with your argument is that you don't have a model for creators to be paid.
First, not all authors need to be paid. For example, no one is paying for you to write posts on Slashdot, which are perfectly valid creative works, and presently protected by copyright; you're choosing to do so yourself. So we could probably abolish copyrights for works where the author would have created and published the work if he couldn't get a copyright. (Lacking the ability to read minds, probably the best way to do this is to require authors to register and pay a nominal fee to get copyrights; authors who don't care probably won't bother, while authors who do care probably will.)
Second, copyright as we know it only dates back to the early 18th century, and didn't become widespread until well into the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet there have been plenty of authors, all around the world, through recorded history. While some of them would've done their work at a loss, it seems likely that there were plenty of them who would only work if they could make a living at it. How then, in the absence of copyright, did they get paid?
Well, there are several means. Authors could have a patron, who pays them to create works that he likes, or could have a collective of patrons, who pays for works that they would collectively like. E.g. if 1,000 hard-core fans of a particular author each chip in $20 for a new work, the author can gross $20,000 right there, plus whatever else he could exploit the work for. Authors could sell specific works, as opposed to mass-reproduced copies of that work, on the basis that not all copies are equal, even if they communicate the work equally. This is how most fine artists make money, even today, with copyrights; an original Van Gogh painting is worth millions, but a postcard of a the same painting is worth almost nothing. Authors can sell their labor, rather than copies of their works, just as many people sell their labor, rather than the fruits of their labor. For example, a wedding party might hire a band to play music.
There are other ways as well; I don't want to get into an exhaustive list.
Personally, I think that a carefully designed copyright system can provide a greater benefit to society than the harm it causes. But copyright only adds one additional means for authors to make money; it doesn't detract from any of the others, and it may not even be the most important or best way of encouraging the creation and publication of art. Certainly it is at best useful, but is not at all necessary.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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.
It has nothing to do with copyright principles or any clever agenda.
Copyleft cuts ASCAP style enforcers out of the money loop. Plain and simple, it hits them where it hurts: the business model. The letter is just FUD to scare up lobby money - though anything they could accomplish that would effectively halt copyleft licensing would be damaging to the US IT industry.
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...
Uh, No ASCAP, RIAA, MPAAA, and BSA. If you read the Constitution of the United States of America, you will instantly recognize that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act undermines Copyright.
What is the purpose of copyright? To encourage artists to create more useful arts which after a limited monopoly turn over to the public domain.
By encouraging creative commons and similar licensing schemes, the original intent of Copyright as defined in the Constitution is actually being fulfilled.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50