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ASCAP War On Free Culture Escalates
An anonymous reader writes "After ASCAP declared war on free culture and Creative Commons responded on the incident, the war of words is escalating. Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid has been following this story closely. The EFF responded to the ASCAP letter, saying 'we don't think that ASCAP characterized EFF and its work accurately. We believe that artists should be compensated for their work, and one proposal we have for that is Voluntary Collective Licensing.' The response from the EFF came with a study and a letter written by one irate ASCAP member who donated to the EFF and to Public Knowledge as a result of the ASCAP letter. Public Knowledge also responded to the letter, saying, 'It's obvious that the characterization of Public Knowledge is false. Public Knowledge advocates for balanced copyright and an open Internet the empowers creators and the public. What we oppose are overreaching policies proposed by large corporate copyright holders that punish lawful users of technology and copyrighted works.' Now the National Music Publishers Association has weighed in to support ASCAP, saying that organizations like Public Knowledge and the EFF 'have an extremist radical anti-copyright agenda,' according to a transcript of a speech posted on Billboard. Public Knowledge has dismissed those allegations, saying 'anybody who has spent more than five minutes on our website or talking to our staff knows that these things are not true.'"
Bingo! And the irony, of course, is that your comment was posted on a site where visitors make bad jokes every single day about how none of us here read TFA.
This is just more of the same obstructionist, no-responsibility attacks we see across the spectrum of topics. Another good example is climate change. The deniers make ridiculous attacks based on blatantly false information, send scientists death threats, and no one is ever held accountable. In fact, one of their favorite tactics is to cite a published paper that directly contradicts their position and claim it supports them, since they know very few people will actually read the paper, and the refutation requires (as you pointed out) an explanation. It's asymmetrical information warfare, in which the defenders have to play by the rules and the attackers get to ignore the rules and say and do anything that sticks. We're fighting bumper stickers with essays, and losing.