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

[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

[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

[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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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: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: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.

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: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?

[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: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: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.