ASCAP Refuses To Debate Lessig

An anonymous reader writes "Back in June ASCAP oddly declared war on free culture, specifically calling out Creative Commons, EFF and Public Knowledge, making a number of false statements about all three. The war of words continued as the three groups responded politely, pointing out the errors in the statement from ASCAP's Paul Williams. Larry Lessig wrote a blog post where he asked Williams to debate these topics, saying that it might help if they could get away from making false statements. Williams has now publicly declined to debate saying that it's not worth his time, and once again attacking these groups for trying to 'silence' him. It's difficult to see how a request for a public discussion and debate is an attempt to silence, but that's ASCAP's position and they're sticking to it."

Comments

Re:Idiot

[N7DR]

Amazon gives authors of e-books 70% of purchase price? When I'm ready to publish I'll pay for software to produce content in a manner that Kindle users will be able to easily read my content and sit back and watch as either the $$$ roll in or the cob-webs collect (depending on if my content is any good). Either way, I'll already have moved on to my next project.

Actually, if you're sensible, you'll first read the contract that Amazon requires you to sign. You may or may not decide after doing that that giving up substantial rights is worth seeing the material appear on a particular company's platform. Different authors have reached different conclusions on the matter.

Anent Amazon and the Kindle in particular, you may want to read: http://www.sfwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Amazon_digital_publication_distribution_agreement_annotated_v3_080329.pdf.

Re:Debates are almost worthless

[russotto]

ASCAP doesn't represent music industry executives. They're still asshats, but they're not THOSE asshats. They claim to represent songwriters and composers, but there's a persistent claim that only the top-played ones get anything, and the little guy can go piss up a rope when he wants his (admittedly small) share.

Re:debate = attempt to silence

[Phroggy]

For those who missed it, Amazon screwed something up and determined that they couldn't sell "1984" on the Kindle, despite the fact that they had already been selling it, so they activated a remote-delete feature nobody knew they had, and removed the e-book from all of their customers' Kindles. Amazon soon resolved the original issue, then offered an apology and either a replacement or a check for $30 to affected customers. Had it been any other book, the whole thing wouldn't have been so ridiculously ironic...