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

Ha.

[bbqsrc]

It gives me great pleasure when these things escalate, because the more they escalate, the higher chance the media may accidentally make these arguments mainstream, and people might actually wake up and notice how flawed the system currently is.

Radical extremists?

[mcgrew]

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

ASCAP itself is an incredibly mafia-like entity. I've known bartenders who have been shaken down by ASCAP thugs for fees that they clearly didn't owe, as bands that performed in those bars played their own, non-ASCAP compositions. The bar owners soon find out that the ASCAP fees are far cheaper than the legal fees.

And these lying, theiving sociopaths have the gall to say that the EFF is radical and extreme? I'd laugh if it weren't so pathetic. ASCAP execs belong in prison for their extortion of bar owners (and likely other establishments).

Buffer Copies?

[Dogun]

From the speech, item #7 on the list of reasons they hate the EFF et. alia: 'They favor the elimination of the songwriter and publisher rights for server, cache and buffer copies.'

I am actually rather shocked that ANYONE can rationalize royalty fees for 'server, buffer, and cache' copies of content. This is content that people are not seeing or hearing. These are invisible pink unicorn copies.

Re:Personally, I do have a radical agenda

[Yvanhoe]

Sorry, I made an English mistake. I didn't mead edited, I meant published. Most books ever written are not published anymore and can't be bought anywhere anymore. Ok, here is one quickly-found source : http://bookstatistics.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cfm
That states that in Canada there are more original titles published every year than reprints. Apart from having a number of titles doubling every year, the only explanation for that is that some (most in fact) books go into oblivion after their first print (I mean, is there a single person claiming that the majority of books are reprinted several times ?)
It happened to me several time to pick old books on garage sales, and when liking it, looking for books of the same author. When the book is 50+ years old, it is incredibely difficult ! There is one author that I liken to Saint-Exupery, but with more humor, that is completely unknown and unpublished as of today. Thanks to internet, it is now possible to find used copies, but for how long ? The one I have is losing its yellow pages.
Even famous people like Henri Laborit have some of their works unfindable today. (I am willing to pay twice the normal price if you find me the book "La Nouvelle Grille"). And don't get me started on comic books and roleplaying games (Amber, Circus, Bitume, Starwars D6, very good games out of print for other reasons than lack of success). Current copyright laws may allow some authors make a living, but they are also erasing a volume of culture that should qualify as "vandalism against humanity". That is something that is important to correct.