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.'"

Comments

Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Lord Bitman]

I think that copyright should exist to promote the creation of content. Once the money involved in creating that content has been paid, copyright should automatically expire.

This isn't just about money. It's gotten to the point where I can't go a month without hearing someone mention something they'd like to do, or would like to track down, or would like to show others, but can't because of short-sighted copyright laws. How many books, movies, TV-shows, radio plays, and other content, is irretrievably lost for all time, not because of a lack of technology or willingness required to preserve it, but because of some insane and nonsensical copyright laws which prevent archival of content whose monetary incentive was long-since paid? This must end. Culture is dying.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Yvanhoe]

We lost many of 19th century plays because on the beginning of the 20th century they refused to be recorded (yes, copyright law). We lost many movies of the first part of the 20th century, save for a few blockbusters. Most books are not edited anymore, but copying them instead of letting the content die is forbidden. They fight for copyright, we fight for culture. Yes we indeed have an agenda, and they have none, save personal greed.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Twinbee]

Maybe we should all discuss the most appropriate expiration for copyright (say 10 to 30 years), and then create a website and try to change copyright to the new limit.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[mcgrew]

Art, like science, is built on what has come before. Nothing is created in a vacuum; culture feeds on itself. If the Grimm Brothers' work had still been under copyright at the time, most early Disney cartoon could not have been made. This journal is a violation of copyright, for example, but it shouldn't be; the copied part is 35 years old. Copyrights should be short so the work can pass into the public domain, like they are supposed to.

ASCAP and their ilk are against fair use and the public domain. Who's the radical extremist here?

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[PeterWone]

Twenty years? Five years, for movies. Seriously, five years later a movie only gets played on TV if

• It's cheap because it's rubbish
• It's awesome and can support ten minute ad breaks all through it

If a movie is so awesome it can support ten minute ad breaks all through it, then arguably it is a cultural icon and should move to the public domain.

Music is a little different. The chances of repeat play are much much higher.

I could go off on a long rant but the long and the short of it is that the value of music companies to society was the services of distribution and promotion. Google and youtube have reduced the sell price of these services to zero, so the commercial value of music company services is close to zero. In a free market economy they would have gone broke five years ago and rightly so.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Garwulf]

That tears it - I want to see your sources.

I'm sorry, but I actually work in the publishing industry, and I own a publishing company, and I think you're talking through your ass. So, I'm calling bullshit on these claims.

Aside from which, not only are most books edited (that's a key part of the publishing process), but whether they're edited has no bearing whatsoever on whether you can copy them. That's faulty logic on the level of South Park's Chewbacca defense.

So, provide your sources, or stop making the claims.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

7 years max. There's hardly a company that would make an investment if it didn't pay itself back within 7 years. Quite a few refuse to look beyond 3.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Yvanhoe]

The demand did not die, the demand went below the threshold of rentability for published book. Digital copies however, cost close to nothing in comparison. Making it illegal to keep and exchange them is really causing these things to disappear. Most of the people have an unused space on their disks that could store the totality of published text in the first half of the 20th century. Space is really cheap, much cheaper than publishing a book.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[mattsucks]

As far as availability goes, that has to do with economics of demand. So long as the demand is present, the book is available

How do you know there is demand for a book (ie people are interested in it and will read it) if there is no supply?

Chickens and eggs; although in this case the eggs can be made available for pennies each in digital form.

Mmmmm digital eggs .... need breakfast.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Garwulf]

"But, the system, if not the authors, does not support the making available of books once the initial rush has died down - as you say, it is a matter of economics as to what gets published. However, if it is no longer economic to publish, then the author no longer makes any money from sales (since the books are not available to buy new, once stocks are depleted), and so it strikes me that there is very little reason to maintain a restriction over the book."

So, let me get this straight - you're actually saying that once the sales for a book die down, you'd strip the author of the right to try to get it started up again?

Now, I imagine you're about to say that I'm putting words in your mouth, but I'm really not. You are talking about dropping a book into the public domain once the sales are no longer enough to keep it in print, and in order to do that, you have to strip all rights the author has to their own book away. So, if the author wants to try again, they can't - the book is in the public domain, and they no longer have any say in the matter.

And, by the way, most book contracts have the author retaining the copyright - the author is free to seek another publisher once the contract has terminated, and can publish on their own terms, as you put it. The opposition to Google Books had far more to do with them failing to ask anybody for permission first, and then trying to set themselves up as a bookstore in their own right, which broke just about every publication contract any of the publishers and authors had signed.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[mattsucks]

How can there be sales figures for an out-of-print book?

The content has to be available for there can be any "sales", but there have to be "sales" before the publishers are willing to continue making the content available. That's why I went for chickens and eggs.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[betterunixthanunix]

Please do not say all companies cheat or use shells

I did not say all companies cheat or use shells. I said that major movie studios do, because they do. The author of Forrest Gump the novel was entitled to a share of the profits from Forrest Gump the movie. He should have been given a check for a very large sum of money, given the overwhelming commercial success of the movie, but he was never paid a dime -- the profits were converted into a net loss by the movie studio, by using the sorts of tactics I described. This is not the sort of business practice that "makes the world go round," it is deliberately reporting a loss despite the fact that a profit was turned, in order to deny someone the money they were legally entitled to under the current copyright system.

These same companies, of course, point to the suffering of the people they cheat whenever the issue of file sharing comes up.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[bzipitidoo]

Basically, it works like this - so long as a work is a steady seller, the distributor keeps it in print.

You mean, it used to work like that. It shouldn't still work like that, but the monopolists have been doing everything they can to stop progress.

once it's in the public domain, unless it has stood the test of time, it has no champion and truly is lost.

Now it's our turn to call b.s. What do you think libraries are for? You don't mention them at all, as if you want to forget about them. Which would conveniently make the publishing industry the only repository of content.

And I'm not talking only about libraries as you know them. We very much need to move to digital libraries, but it isn't legal to do so. Can you not see the huge, huge savings to be had by going digital? No more tracking of loaned out books, as there'd be no need. No more fines for being late. No more being late at all. No need to have multiple copies. The space savings is incredible. Just look at the physical. One average sized paperback book is about 500 cc of paper. A digital device less than 1 cc in size can hold thousands of books. Distribution costs are negligible. Preservation would be easier. We want to digitize everything we still have, as yet another and perhaps the best yet means of preventing works from being lost forever. Obviously there'd be no need to physically travel to the library. Then there are the wonders of searchability. No more fumbling through stacks of paper to find a quote. Google maybe has the power to offer such a service to the public over your strenuous objections, but that's the last thing we need-- another big corporation that could monopolize information.

You publishers are crazy. Being businessmen, I expect you do see all these wonderful savings if only dimly. But you sit there and moan that you can't do it because of piracy and the lack of good DRM! And you don't seem to get that copying (or piracy as you insist on calling it) is at the center of the savings. It most certainly can be done. And it will be done. Forget DRM, it doesn't work and it can't work. And get over piracy, you'll never stop it. Time you quit demonizing copying and accept that sharing is beautiful. You trolls can't hold us back forever. You'd better get with it, or some day you will find that it's been done without you.

culture is NOT dying.

Right, culture is not dying, but that's little thanks to vultures like the typical publisher. If I want to read what Darwin, Newton, or Lincoln actually wrote, I can, thanks to things like Project Gutenberg and not traditional publishers. Obtaining a printed copy of such things might be easy or nearly impossible. But just finding out that much could be a lot of work. If I want to find out what's hot, I'd look at Pirate Bay long before the Top 40. (Is Top 40 still relevant? Haven't noticed it or gone looking for it for many years now.) Some of the best music of recent years is to be found in video games. What a mess to obtain a legit copy of a song made for a game. And, as you say, Hollywood is in a rut.

Culture is indeed booming, thanks to technology having lowered the barriers. Now anyone can publish, for free! Recording is cheaper than ever. Getting heard above all the noise is the main problem.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Neil_Brown]

It disturbs me just how easily you talk about taking somebody's rights away

As above, we see things very differently - you see a right in your written work. I don't see that such a right exists - that there is, or should be, such a thing as a common law copyright. As such, I don't see it as taking rights away from you, but simply not awarding you rights which you would not naturally have, or awarding them on a different basis, or with different content etc. Copyright is a gift, or reward, or incentive, depending on how it is construed, but, however it is construed, it is a creature of positive law.

If there were a natural right, the framers of the US constitution would not have needed to grant Congress powers to award limited monopolies, because such monopolies would already exist at law.

By awarding a right for creation, the public domain is deprived - so, in order for society to want to grant such a right, there has to be a compelling reason to do so, and I sometimes struggle to see that reason. The "creativity requires copyright" argument belies hundreds of years of history, having arisen relatively recently. Plenty of creativity existed prior to the establishment of authorial copyright.

Perhaps copyright, as such, has a valid existence, independent of its terms etc. Perhaps it does not. But, for everyone's distress that they are "losing rights", others see that, by granting them to you, society is giving away something to you, and this requires a balancing act - copyright is a societal choice, not a natural right, and, if it is to be imposed on society, it must be effective, and not overbearing.

As I say - we simply see things differently. Currently, your view is prevailing :) Disagreement or not, thanks for a positive and interesting discussion.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Danse]

It disturbs me just how easily you talk about taking somebody's rights away. And frankly, that "intangible property" doesn't seem so intangible when you've spent months working on it.

How about this - take the time and effort to write a book of your own. Spend some time dealing with publishers, get it published. And THEN see what you think about how intangible it is.

Copyright isn't some inalienable right possessed by creators of works. It's a limited right granted by the government for a (supposedly) limited period of time, for the specific purpose of "promoting the progress of science and useful arts." The publishing industry has lobbied for and continually been granted extensions and expansions of the duration and scope of copyright, to the point where the public sees little benefit from the bargain in the first place. I hardly see it as some terrible thing to roll back those changes to something that is more balanced with the public interest.

wrong product and/or wrong line of work

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want to sell air, don't bother the politicians, the law makers, and law enforcement with your "intellectual property" security concerns.

the politicians are supposed to serve the people. the greater good. not the good of companies with ideas that are akin to selling me a license to breath the air in my own house.

if you can't create works that you or a service provider can't secure, then you need to find another product to sell, or job to do.

I'd love to be paid every time someone used the word "yeppers". and with enough money and attorneys and influence in the district of columbia, I could probably get it to pass.

Then I'd start suing all the john does...

Re:wrong product and/or wrong line of work

[Seriousity]

The line between the government and the corporation has been blurred.

In fact, every time something like this happens we scramble to find that line, and it's nowhere to be found.
And some of us can scarcely remember what it looked like.

What we have now is a global Corporatocracy, the compromise between government and corporation.
What have the compromised? Our rights.

If we don't fight ACTA, our grandchildren will have no idea that a line ever existed at all.

Extremism

[TheSpoom]

...is their word to associate us with terrorists in the public's mind.

Re:Extremism

[thijsh]

Extremist capitalists... Who terrorize ordinary civilians with bankruptcy... What a bunch of wankers, I hope this will get a *lot* of publicity!

And if this war breaks out and the EFF shows they can stand their ground I will support them (i'd rather give all my money to the EFF than let a dime go to these thugs), and I hope many others will because of this.

Re:Ha.

[Seriousity]

Indeed, the sheer audacity of the industry giants behaviour has increased over the years and is becoming more and more visible.

If only we had better coverage of the issue offline. The mainstream media is wroth to anger their corporate overlords.
But millions of people are discovering the war on freedom through websites online...
Hence the need for an INTERNET KILL SWITCH!

Honestly, it's nearing the point where we should physically confront these politicians and smack them upside the head. The farcical pretense of democracy has been stretched so damn far that it might just tear down the middle.

In some ways this is a good sign

[electricprof]

At least to me it confirms my belief that big media is absolutely terrified of its own demise. The complete hyperbole of their statements only makes sense to me as a expression of this terror. Unfortunately, since they have great influence I don't forsee them doing anything but morphing into some other greedy monopolistic form. Still ... watching the terror makes for a good show.

Re:Radical extremists?

[walterbyrd]

Have to agree. Since when is it considered illegal for me to give away my own content, if I chose to do so? How is that forcing anybody else to give away content? How is that stealing anything?

Too late.

[AntEater]

'anybody who has spent more than 5 minutes on our website or talking to our staff knows that these things are not true.'

That, in a nutshell, is why the public in general will ever know what is true. We've pretty much reduced our collective thinking to ingesting media prepared "sound bites" and have no motivation to think beyond that point. I heard a politician or campaign manager once summarize the problem with the statement: "if you're explaining, you've lost" (or something to that effect.

Re:Too late.

[Late Adopter]

But pointing out that information is available is itself a soundbite, perhaps one that people might buy, even though they might not be bothered to look up the information personally.

I have this problem a lot when trying to have political conversations with my friends. They get pointed the same news stories on the same topics by people close to them, so regardless of the context of the information inside, which they don't actually examine with a critical eye (if they read it at all!), they're led to believe that the consensus is what the headlines say. And good luck trying to hold a contrary, centrist, or nuanced opinion in that environment.

Irrelevant.

[inode_buddha]

These ASS-CAPS have been largely irrelevant for a long time, at least for me. The problem as I see it, is that copyright is all about money for them - it's not about art anymore. In order to be fair, they should re-publish their entire back-catalogs clear back to World War One, on CD's for $8 each. Basically if they're going to lock up copyright for that long, then they should be required to publish and sell for an equal lenghth of time, else they should STFU. I have *hundreds* of record albums recorded back in the 1950's and 1960's that you won't find anymore, and I wouldn't mind getting them on CD's from the original labels. If the labels cry that this would cost them too much, then I guess that shows a lot about them, and what they're really after. If they're not making anything off a recording anymore, then they should relinquish the copyright on it.

Re:Radical extremists?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

It looks to me like it's the established music (and film as well) industry whose position on copyright is radical and extreme.

Moreover, their own extreme position is the real motivator behind their opinion of the opposite side of the debate. It's similar to debates in the culture wars or similar debates where one side accuses the other of having an "agenda" when in reality it is they who have ulterior motives beyond the matters at hand.

Essentially what is going on here is that the copyright industry is trying to label those in favour of reform as extremists in an effort to shut them out. It's actually surprising that its taken them this long to reach this strategy. As history has shown, such tactics work very well--in the US in particular--where you can turn a debate completely on its head by proclaiming the exact opposite of what's going on. The best example of this is: "The Media has a Liberal Bias."

The ultimate objective here is to make copyleft illegal and ensure that copyright is legally the only game in town. It's not implausible that ASCAP et al may succeed in this endeavor.

Re:Ha.

[Yvanhoe]

Exactly. Most people may not understand the intricacies of DRM and its inherent flaws but they can recognize greed when they see it. More importantly, I wish some artists (which by definition have an audience) take some positions. They will determine how this thing ends.

Beat 'em at their own game

[Anita Coney]

Copyrights are government granted monopolies contrary to the free market. That should be the argument against ASCAP's belief that anyone who disagrees with them are radical anti-copyright extremists.

The EFF should be hammering it: Why does the copyright industry need increased government handouts and draconian government monopolies to survive? Let the free market sort it out. If they can't survive in a free market without massive government help and an erosion of our rights, so be it.

Re:Beat 'em at their own game

[Anita Coney]

If they're too classy to tell the truth about copyrights, they'll certainly lose. (Heck, they'll lose anyway, the copyright industry is way too powerful.)

Re:Beat 'em at their own game

[Nadaka]

The ASCAP is waging a war against culture, rationality and freedom. In war there are no rules, it only matters that you win. The time to play nice and be respectful is over. With all due respect, they are due negative.

Re:Beat 'em at their own game

[LihTox]

Creative Commons, for one, is NOT anti-copyright. Look at the "no commercial use" clause in particular: people who use that CC license are relying on copyright law to keep large corporations from using their work without royalties.

CC's best strategy is not to take down copyright or even to take down ASCAP and their like, but to displace them. Persuade enough artists to take out copyright licenses that allow for non-commercial copying, and persuade enough people to prefer artists who do, and the draconian copyright organizations will become much less powerful and less relevant than they are today. Their ranting about copyright in general, however, will only make ASCAP a sympathetic character.

Re:Ha.

[dyingtolive]

I shouldn't feed the trolls, but have you tried talking to a normal person about the conspiracy against them? If so, were they an American? They listen to you talk for about five minutes and then the eyes roll back into their sockets and if you're really lucky they continue to sit there pretending to listen to you even though they're just praying for something, anything to actually make you stop going on and on, especially since American Idol comes on in a half hour and all they want to do is run down to McDonalds to pick up a 50 piece McNugget meal before it comes on so they don't have to miss any of it. An individual can't make a difference in this country until they get on the big glowy box the people here venerate like a god. America the Proud, indeed.

Re:Radical extremists?

[Moryath]

I see a large amount of cognitive dissonance in your post.

Essentially what is going on here is that the copyright industry is trying to label those in favour of reform as extremists in an effort to shut them out.

This, at least, is true.

As history has shown, such tactics work very well--in the US in particular--where you can turn a debate completely on its head by proclaiming the exact opposite of what's going on. The best example of this is: "The Media has a Liberal Bias."

Hmm. Oddly enough, a long-term political science analysis done by UCLA (not exactly a "right-wing bastion") found quite the opposite.

I'd say the opposite...

[SharpFang]

EFF is pretty much moderate copyright/freedom balance organization.
OTOH, ASCAP is a rabid extremist radical pro-copyright agenda.

Re:The EFF is just a tool of the hardware guys

[king neckbeard]

It makes sense once you're paid enough to think it makes sense.

More telling

[mystik]

What's more telling is rather than defend their positions with facts, economic or otherwise, they are simply name-calling groups that are attacking them. "They're stupid because their ideas are stupid" Bonus points for using words like 'extremist' to label their opponents in there too.

Part of the strong-copyright groups problem is that they have been producing reports in their favor for years, and folks are finally coming around to realizing that those reports were wildly inaccurate, and skewed heavily in favor of their position.

The art of debate in politics and policy has been lost. No --- the art has simply been reduced to kindergarten-like school fights.

Going About This Wrong

[PantherX]

Typical. Instead of just defining what copyleft is and isn't we get into a dickering match with people that have more money and resources. Let's get to the point already. In small bites so your grandma can understand in less than 2 minutes.

Here's a start, under typical creative commons copyleft:

Copyright - a way to make sure nobody plagiarizes your material, so you get credit for your work, usually with a motive to make profit.

Copyleft - a way to make sure nobody plagiarizes your material, so you get credit for your work, with little regard to how that material is used, copied, improved, changed, etc.

The main difference being copyright can be used in a Daffy Duck method. "MINE! MINE! MINE!" and copyleft is generally a "Hey, if you want to use this to do something else with, go ahead. Just make sure I get credit."

Flame on.

Re:Uh, the newspaper's name is ZeroPaid

[dyingtolive]

Funding from ads != profit. Or did you not know there are operational costs incurred with running a website? If that's your best scrutiny of this issue, then I'd say you should probably try harder to find something else.

Re:Ha.

[commodore64_love]

"Ya know that new CD you bought? ASCAP and RIAA won't let you copy it to your iPod."

"What?!?!?"

"That's right. They expect you to buy the song twice - once on CD and again for your iPod and then a third time for your computer. It's nuts." - That's how you get people to pay attention.

Re:Radical extremists?

[Nadaka]

I'm sorry, rationality and human compassion have a liberal bias.

Re:Radical extremists?

[ScrewMaster]

Since when is it considered illegal for me to give away my own content, if I chose to do so?

It isn't. ASCAP's position is that it should be.

That's very true. ASCAP (and the RIAA, and all other such abominations) feel that they are entitled to a piece of every sale or performance of every copyrighted work. Doesn't matter if they have no rights to such works. Doesn't even matter if the work is under an expired copyright, is public domain, or was released under some other terms. So far as they're concerned, we owe them for the right to "consume" creative material, whatever the source because, well, we just do that's all. Bloodsuckers, all of them.

And they call Public Knowledge and the EFF "extreme"?

Their level of hypocrisy is just stunning, really, it is.

Welcome to the USA

[betterunixthanunix]

Hi, I see you are new here. Some basics:

1. Citizens are supposed to vote for politicians that represent them; however, those citizens rarely take more than 30 seconds to look at what those politicians are actually doing, and less than half of those citizens even bother voting
2. The two dominant political parties serve the interests of corporations. One of those parties is up front about it, the other pretends to serve the interests of the majority of the citizens while really pandering to corporations
3. Corporations send people to Congress to represent their interests, ensuring that even those politicians who are considering representing the interests of the average citizen will have a nonstop stream of communication with corporations; most citizens do not bother contacting their representatives (many are not even sure who represents them)
4. Anyone who dares question this system is immediately labeled as a "socialist," which is something you are supposed to be terrified of; most Americans cannot actually define what socialism is, but they "know" it is a bad thing
5. You do have a right to protest all of this; however, the government will tell you where to hold your protest, and if you try to hold it somewhere where it will be more effective (say, in front of a major stock exchange, instead of the park 3 miles away where nobody will notice), you will be arrested because you did not exercise your rights the way you were told to -- after all, we can't have protests that disrupt anything!

While you are here, do try to follow all our laws. Unfortunately, there are so many of them, that nobody is even sure what the exact number of those laws are, and most people wind up breaking them anyway, but you should at least try to follow them.

Re:Ha.

[Lumpy]

Too mild.

"you know that New CD you bought? ASCAP and RIAA think that you are a stinking dirty THIEF scumbag if you put it on your ipod."

"They also think you are a complete douchebag that needs to go to jail and be raped if you loan the CD to someone..."

That is the approach you need to take, it get's attention far more than "they dont want to let you"

Re:Radical extremists?

[sorak]

Of course, they arrived at that figure by assuming that the 2005 congress was "centrist", and comparing everything between 1995 and 2005 to them. Anything to the right of the Republican controlled congress was considered "liberal". I am curious how that exact same study would work if the 1995-2005 coverage were compared to the current congress, or, for that matter, if the 2000-2010 coverage were compared to the current congress.

Radicalism all around

[pyalot]

The EFF and Public Knowledge are doubtlessly on the relaxed side of copyright. Also doubtlessly the ASCAP is not in any way relaxed about copyright. In fact, it would seem that the ASCAP is a fervent pro-draconian-copyright troll.

The question isn't weather the EFF and Public Knowledge are radical contra-copyright. The question is who will be radically contra-copyright if the radical pro-copyright trolls force an equal opposition to emerge to their radical pro-copyright views. I've got doubts though that the EFF or Public Knowledge would be polarizable enough in the coming copycalypse. I'd peg them as mid-field. The Pirate Party (I'm a member of the swiss one) seems a much more natural contra pole to the pro-draconian-copyright trolls.

Re:Why won't ASCAP or BMI people show themselves?

[inode_buddha]

In contrast, I'm largely a visual artist nowdays -- traditional oil painting and drawing. For the last thousand years, the traditional way to teach and learn the craft, is to study and copy the Masters. As long as one gives credit to the master, everyone is happy. Usually this is done by saying something like "Study after [insert-master's name]" on the title. Such practice is encouraged, and one can even freely sell studies. But visual artists usually retain copyright under almost all conditions regardless. So if you do a study, then you have copyright on your study; the master still has copyright to his masterpiece. In the case of a master who died 500 years ago, one must still give credit to them regardless of copyright; or else it would end ones career, to be ignored or put down by other artists and peers.

Re:Ha.

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

They will determine how this thing ends.

No they won't, the people with the shekels will decide how this thing ends, as always. And thats not some greedy corporation my friend, that's you and me.

Re:Ha.

[sammyF70]

too optimistic.

The way this generally goes is :

"you know that New CD you bought? ASCAP and RIAA think that you are a stinking dirty THIEF scumbag if you put it on your ipod." "hmm ... don't care really. I didn't buy a CD, I have it in iTune. by the way, do you have an idea how I could copy the track to my non-apple mp3 player?" "that's what I'm telling you. they won't let you do it" "yeah yeah ... [ rolls eyes ] ... nothing to do with me. I just want to copy it to my mp3 player. Anyway" double-face-palm

Face it : most people don't care a bit about copyright issues or changes to the system which might affect them. Sometimes I wonder whether it's because they just don't actually understand the concept. Copying music, movies or games isn't something people give tyo thoughts about. If it works, then great. if it doesn't they'll just bugger any halfway knowledgeable person they know until they can do it, without thinking twice about any legal implication. They just assume that ~something was broken~ and look for a fix. (incidentally, they are right : the copyright system is broken). Many never heard of the RIAA, MPAA and any attempt to explain what ACTA is and how it might be bad for them is met with a sardonic grin and some smartass remark about conspiracy theories

Another standard line I often hear? "hey... do you know where I can download free music?" "try jamendo.com or archive.org. Some very nice stuff there. Archive even has classic movies and tv-shows!" "hmm ... but nobody I ever heard about, so it sucks. I meant real music!" "nope, sorry. you'll have to pay for it and it's just better known, but not necessarily better. You could try torrents of course, but it's illegal" [their eyes go all glazy just before the mention of illegality. basically they didn't even register the word] "oh ... and how does it work?"

Re:Ha.

[BobMcD]

This. My own wife was one of the rolleyes crowd right up until the WalMart store cancelled all the tracks she had purchased. THEN the lightbulb came on, and she got it. However, she only now checks that they are mp3's, so you couldn't necessarily call her a copyleft champion or anything.

Re:Radical extremists?

[caseih]

Nah. I think Steven Colbert got it right when he said, "reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Post-Industrial Economics

[pcfixup4ua]

The notion of Intellectual property, backed with military force, is the mechanism by which the elite is preserving its place in the world. America has outsourced all industry, mostly to China and India, and has no way to generate income except through revenue from Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights. The greatest leverage the recording/movie industries have is they are the only ones bringing in wealth from outside. The only other thing we export is debt. Change will not come from within the United States because by the time the middle class starts to care, they will be crushed.

Re:Ha.

[geekd]

Do you know music artists? I am one, and I know a lot of them. I don't know any who think they "automatically deserve to be paid for producing their music". Most are thrilled when they can make a living from their music, but none expect to. Most musicians I know make WAY more money from shows and t-shirt sales than from CD or MP3 sales.

In fact, many, like myself, give the music away for free (I license it under the Creative Commons) in order to get more fans, so to have more people at shows and sell more merch.

Get my music for free at http://theexperiments.com/

Making music is a labor of love, and anyone who does it expecting to get rich is an idiot.

Orphan works are a major problem

[langelgjm]

You claim that shortening copyright would have no impact on the availability of (many) books because there is no demand for them in the first place.

You then support your claim that there is no demand for them by claiming, presumably, that the cost of a limited print run would be so low that were there any demand, it could profitably be met.

I don't really buy this. Isn't the entire problem with thousands and thousands of orphaned works that the copyright holder can't even be easily identified? So that even if there is demand, and the costs of a limited print run are small enough that I decide it would be profitable to do it, I can't find the copyright holder (who may be dead, have gone out of business, or simply forgotten or lost the records pertaining to the copyright).

There are a huge number of books that are out of print but still under copyright. Wasn't one of the benefits of the Google Books scanning project to make these widely available at essentially no cost to interested readers? I could turn your argument around and say, look, if the copyright holders weren't exploiting their copyright and selling the book in the first place, clearly they didn't think it was worthwhile to do so, so what's the harm in Google scanning it and making it available?

Furthermore, there are other reasons to have access to the text of old books than just for passing interest or pleasure of reading them. Lots of scholars would love to have full-text search capability of old, out-of-print works, if only for statistical analysis. It doesn't make sense to do this with limited print runs, and it would be prohibitively expensive. Just scanning everything, OCR, and archival makes much more sense.

On the issue of film preservation, a letter from the National Film Preservation Foundation discusses the problem of orphan works again:

"In an environment of scare resources... Copyright status becomes part of the preservation decision-making process... I believe that important parts of America's film heritage will become lost to educators and the general public unless some simpler, more structured and cost-effective system can be developed for ascertaining the rights status of orphan works." (source)

If copyright were shorter, there would be fewer orphan works, and at least according to that group, more preservation and dissemination of cultural material.

Re:Ha.

[hairyfeet]

The problem with the "artists can fight it" theory is this: They gotta eat like everybody else and the gateways are controlled completely by the cartel. Thanks to the corporate whores in government removing what little barriers we had just look at how many radio markets are 100% owned by Clear Channel. I know in my own market you can spin the dial all day and all you will hear is the same CC playlist over and over and OVER.

My last band had built a pretty decent regional following, especially among the college kids. It actually got to the point we had a couple of DJs call us and say "Would you PLEASE tell your audience not to call us? We are ONLY allowed to play the CC playlist, and since you guys won't sign (we had seen friends get royally fucked by contracts and the record company attitude was "suck it or leave it") it doesn't matter that we actually like your stuff, as we will get fired if we play even a single song that isn't on the playlist."

So it doesn't matter what the artist wants, as eventually he will have to pay bills just like anybody else. How many of the new NiN songs that were given free did YOU hear on the radio? Because I didn't hear a single one, in fact since Reznor did that I haven't even heard their old stuff played anymore. As long as the gateways of radio and TV are completely owned by the cartel you can give up on artists having any say. If they did then the big ones wouldn't get fucked so hard on their contracts.