ASCAP Declares War On Free Culture, EFF 483
Andorin writes "According to Drew Wilson at ZeroPaid and Cory Doctorow, the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), a US organization that aims to collect royalties for its members for the use of their copyrighted works, has begun soliciting donations to fight key organizations of the free culture movement, such as Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge. According to a letter received by ASCAP member Mike Rugnetta, 'Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote "Copyleft" in order to undermine our "Copyright." They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.' (Part 1 and part 2 of the letter.) The collecting agency is asking that its professional members donate to its Legislative Fund for the Arts, which appears to be a lobbying campaign meant to convince Congress that artists should not have the choice of licensing their works under a copyleft license."
Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
or allow themselves to to be screwed
This is exactly what's going to happen. Lets not kid ourselves here.. most people don't care about any of this. The few people who have any interest in this.. even enough to never pay for media again.. are just a tiny little insignificant blip.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
While the damage produced is probably nominal, the number of people that gulp pirated content is fairly large, not an insignificant blip.
You are of course absolutely right. The problem however is the the people who gulp pirated content may not stay that way for ever. Many previous movements in history have shown us that as people get older they generally become more inclined to toe the line and less inclined to break societies laws, however injust they may be.
Once upon a time when I was a student I pirated everything I watched. I always made sure my ratio was sky high and kept a permanent ultrapeer available on the gnutella network. Now I actually buy more DVD's than I pirate and very rarely use bitrorrent or any of the networks I thought were so important. I would also be horrified if the software I produce for a living was given away free without me seeing any benefit or giving my consent. The only thing I use bittorrent for is for things I am unable to buy, such as very old computer games or copyleft materials.
I am also far more conservative in my views than I was when I was young. I used to think nothing about being arrested for my beliefs (and as an eco-protester I frequently was) but now this is not something I would allow to happen.
Unfortunately this is how things are, just ask the vast majority of people from the sixties who have now given up struggling against the system and are now contributing towards it since it is in their best interests to do so. Generation after generation have tried to rock the boat while they were young then switched to steadying it in their middle and old age.
Even after all this though, I would certainly not ever support bittorrent being banned or non-copyright material being made illegal. The question however is how far I would be willing to go in order to campaign against laws that made such things illegal now I have other concerns that come with old age.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
What you're saying is that you grew up, and so did others.
The ease of theft vs the value of content hadn't really existed in this way before. But copyright became mangled because of extensions to copyrights that probably shouldn't have been put into place. No matter; it's still not right to steal.
Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book is the pinnacle of counterculture methods to purloin things. Hackers also test locks. The difference between a pirate and a hacker isn't intention, it's actual deed.
The fact that you contritely contribute is the penance of your own doing. Others don't feel the same way, while still others have no compunction to stop grabbing everything from torrents and paying nothing for media. The ASCAP move is propaganda and doesn't address the real problems-- only the problem from the ASCAP point of view. They miss part of their ecosystem when they become myopic, and start feeding the discussion with FUD. The ends don't justify the means.
.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
You're declaring up is down.
Copyright is a statutory construction. Unlike nearly any other form of 'property', intellectual property is purely a legal tradition created as an indulgence, basically in response to what we now call lobbying.
Theft, on the other hand, is a universally recognized and deterred thing. Our notions of theft are from common law, but the legal recognition of theft is as old as anything we can consider law.
The most important aspect of the definition of theft is that it is about the deprivation of a rival good. If I steal a car from you, you are deprived of that car. That's how the word works, that's how the law works.
Infringement is a different thing. In plain language, in law, and in simple intuitive sense, at least to most people, when they think about it. I can no more steal the informational payload of your book than I can steal your soul. I could steal a physical book from you, or a thumb drive with a copy of a book. That would be theft.
They are just different things. By all means, you can continue to be wrong - I fully support everyone's right to be wrong. But you then shouldn't be surprised when people want to correct you, and perhaps wonder why you are trying to smuggle a bit of an emotional appeal ('you're depriving me of money that is rightfully mine") to what is actually a factual discussion. Blue is not red, and copyright infringement is not theft.
If you want to change the world such that copyright does, in fact, equal theft, I suggest starting a law career and look for a way to get an invitation to join the American Law Institute - they produce the Model Penal Code, which drives a fair amount of criminal law. Get them to recommend a change, and you have a chance (not much of one, but you'll do better there than whining here about it).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, dear. *Property* is a statutory construction. Take a careful look at land ownership, human slavery, and pet ownership to verify that "property" can mean some very strange things that are not merely a physical object. And take a very good look at the history of copyright related to religious texts to understand that it's not merely about sales: it's also about making sure that the copies match the original work according to the owner's wishes, or the use of copyright on private correspondence to preserve
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's your choice to be protected by copyrights in exchange for donating the work to the public once the copyrights expire. You don't have to do that. You can keep the work a trade secret, and require buyers to sign non-disclosure agreements. In which case you don't enjoy the protection of copyright laws, but can keep ownership indefinitely, and can sue the hell out of buyers who distribute your works, and someone who takes one of your copies is committing theft, not just violating copyrights.
The problem is that the copyright organisations wants it both ways. They want to have their cake and eat it too. To both have the rights protected by the state, and be able to sue as if the author still owned all copies, and interminable extensions to the copyrights to keep income coming in even if nothing new is produced.
I have no problems with copyrights, if we go back to the original intent for copyrights and patents: To give the [b]creator[/b] (not a corporation) a [b]time limited[/b] monopoly on distribution [b]in exchange for[/b] transferring ownership of the work to the public. The time limit must be short enough to force the creator to not rest on his laurels, but continue to create.
And these days, when distribution happens so much faster than in the past, the time should be even shorter.
My recommendation: 5 years for patents, 2 years for copyrights.
No extensions, but make it easier to publish without public copyright protection for those who choose to do so, e.g. by making copyright cartels and opt-outs illegal.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To get the books published twenty years ago, publishers demanded that the work be copyrighted.
There is no copyright group, in my case.
I would extent patents to ten, copyrights to five.
You're kidding right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Two years sounds good on paper until you write a super kick ass novel that XYZ Corp wants to turn into a movie. They'll write the scripts, shoot the film, create the special effects, print the reels, and at 12:01 AM exactly two years to the day the copyright was granted, ship the film out for a release date 2 Years + 5 days past the original copyright date. All perfectly legal since they did not, in any way, distribute your copyrighted work with anyone outside their company until after it had expired.
You, the author, will get absolutely nothing from this, XYZ Corp will rake in 60+ Million on opening weekend, over 150+ Million by summer's end, 200+ Million worldwide box office, and an additional 300+ Million after worldwide DVD sales are factored in.
A two year wait is nothing to an immortal legal entity with many of the same rights as an individual, two year copyrights are a joke. So are 90 years plus life of the author, anyone old enough to read this now will likely be dead before they can make any use of the ideas inspired by current copyrighted works. So much for progressing the useful sciences and arts!
A good compromise would be 25 years. Long enough to give an incentive for XYZ Corp to work with you, a popular novel being turned into a movie will be a money train for all involved and 25 years is a long time to gamble it will still be popular, while still being short enough that the inspiration to create new derivative works can be realized while you're still alive to do it; I've seen a few Star Wars fan-films that deserved the big-budget treatment and in a sane copyright world would have been allowed to.
[rant]
If I had the money I'd buy stock in "XYZ Corp", any large media company would work here, then sue their asses off for failure to maximize shareholder value through deliberate lobbying to extend the copyright term length. For example: When 20th Century Fox releases a Star Wars movie they earn 100+ Million in the box office; the worldwide box office, DVD, and broadcast rights will garner many times that value. Had Star Wars been allowed to pass into the public domain, which wasn't possible due to active lobbying by XYZ Corp, XYZ Corp could have also made its own Star Wars film and earn a comparable sum of money.
Yet through their successful lobbying of governments to extend copyright terms they have artificially impeded their ability to generate profit, an action which goes against the interests of shareholders. Consider the primary role of a corporation as defined by law, to legally maximize shareholder value to the exclusion of all other considerations. Maximizing copyright terms prevents the creation of a rich public domain, preventing the use of popular works that otherwise would have entered it. Through their actions to impede this process it negates their ability to create competing products using popular public domain franchises, in this case the creation of a competing Star Wars film, and creates a lost opportunity to maximize shareholder value.
[/rant]
I honestly think that all the recent attempts to reform copyright have been going about it the wrong way. Appealing to the loss of the public domain and the moral issues surrounding it, like the recent lawsuits to repeal the Micky Mouse Protection Act, wasn't going to work because the money side makes it look like we're trying to steal their stuff; even though they're ones who are stealing. You want to get copyright reduced to a sane time limit, you need to show that the actions of media companies to create ever longer copyrights impede the maximization of shareholder value.
All the flower power talk of morals and how it relates to the public domain will get you no where, show the courts that the actions of big media are hitting shareholders in the pocket book and we'll get the shorter terms we want!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Go to their donation site and donate 0.01 on your credit card.
Nice idea, but if you do that, their site says the minimum contribution is $5.00.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
I am also far more conservative in my views than I was when I was young.
Really? Because I found the opposite happened. I used to write shareware. People occasionally registered it, but not nearly as many people registered as used it without paying. Bugger. So I made it less and less functional, without registering. Even *less* people registered, and not only that but on BBSes (jeez, I'm giving my age away) people used to post cracks to get around the registration code.
As I grew up, my silly, naive and idealistic capitalist side waned and I settled down into the comfort of being a rabid old Commie. I gave my software away for free. I gave my music away for free. I gave my circuit designs (ones that I wasn't being paid quite a lot of money to do by my employer, but stuff like guitar effects) away for free. People posted on the Internet, oh yeah, use this stuff, it's quite good. People I spoke to at computer festivals and other such geekery pissups said "Oh you're the guy that wrote $thing? Cool, I use that" and bought me beer.
Long story short, fuck capitalism. Give the stuff you love away for free, and earn money from the stuff you don't care about.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Same here, with the slight difference that now I'm actually being paid to work on some of the code that I give away for free, by a company that benefits from the code existing. Being paid for stuff and not distributing it under restrictive terms are orthogonal. If I write a hippyware library in exchange for some money, other people can fix bugs in it. The company that paid for it originally get the benefit of those bug fixes, without needing to pay anyone for them. The people who fix the bugs get to have
Re:You don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No. The very grievance communism had against capitalism (and tried to change) is that under capitalism, most people work for someone else, and only get a tiny fraction of the fruits of their labour.
It's sad that an economic system is being likened to the principle that rulers should b
Re:Good. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that protecting your God-given rights to the works you've created precludes anyone else from releasing works under a free license. People who are releasing their works under a Creative Commons are stealing from the real artists, who work so hard to earn a living. They just want to get stuff for free. Good to see ASCAP has understood this simple fact.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that protecting your God-given rights to the works you've created precludes anyone else from releasing works under a free license. People who are releasing their works under a Creative Commons are stealing from the real artists, who work so hard to earn a living. They just want to get stuff for free. Good to see ASCAP has understood this simple fact.
Are you trolling or seriously arguing on the side of ASCAP?
Who says that artists have God-given rights to their works for a start? I've personally done several years of Scriptural studies, can read and write in Biblical Greek and Hebrew and find nothing to support this strange idea of yours.
Let me use a parable to explain what ASCAP seems to be wanting to do. "At a large park there is a running track all the way around the public gardens. Many people use it every day, but when the weather is hot, they get really dehydrated and sometimes people even have heart attacks while running. An enterprising kid makes up a great drink with a mix of fruit juices and salts to sell to the runners. Some other youths set up a protection racket to make sure that the runners buy his product and take a large cut of money on the top for their 'services'. Meanwhile another kid also produces a good drink for the runners, but he really wants to just give it away. He sets up in another part of the park and starts to give away drinks on the hot days. The boys in the protection racket hear about him and come over to threaten him. When he doesn't seem likely to stop, they try and get the police to take him away."
That is what ASCAP is about. If I want to put a copyleft license on what I produce, what is that to them? If I want other people to enjoy what I've done, to use it and possibly copy it or improve on it, what is that to ASCAP? It doesn't mean that I want anyone elses work for free, it just means I want to share what I've enjoyed making with other people on my own terms. What is wrong with that?
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been making a living releasing my music under Creative Commons licenses exclusively since 2006 (when I also quit ASCAP).
Creative Commons is not (necessarily) a "free license.
I understand that you're being sarcastic and you believe that you were making some sort of joke, but there are some issues about which I don't find snarkiness the least bit useful. Repeating verbatim what ASCAP really believes hardly qualifies as parody. And there are people out there that won't understand the subtlety of your wit and will believe that a bright Slashdot reader really does think this way so there must be some merit to such an argument, god forbid. For the sake of such simple folks, I politely request that you make your cleverness a little more blatant in regards to this issue, kthx in advance.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Patent Pending. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Funny)
Sarcasm detector...that's a useful invention
It does a good job of detecting an absence of sarcasm, giving a zero in such situations, but the sarcasm readout indicator gets sarcastic itself, giving a sarcastic zero when there is sarcasm. I'm beginning to think it may actually be just a "zero" sticker.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I have one, but it must be broken. Its indicator never turns off.
Take it offline, that should help normalize its readings.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
The same argument has been going on in photography for a while now. The explosion of "microstock" agencies that facilitate Joe Blow Hobbyist actually licensing the one good picture he has ever taken really aggravates the old pros. Even worse are people who just post their stuff online and don't worry about people who choose to use it commercially.
The proverbial million monkeys have left their typewriters, and are taking photos now with digital cameras. I don't say that disparagingly. I am one of the million monkeys.
It probably sucks to be a pro when some hobbyist undercuts you on price, with pictures that are not as good... but good enough for many clients' uses. But I'm not going to support changing the laws to keep them or anyone else in business.
It's not the first industry that has been shaken up by changing technology (or culture) and it won't be the last.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
The proverbial million monkeys have left their typewriters, and are taking photos now with digital cameras. I don't say that disparagingly. I am one of the million monkeys.
So am I. I just got an email this morning that a location-based networking service used one of my Flickr pictures (CC with attribution) to represent a tourist attraction in a city I'd been in last month. I'm sure some professionals would be happy to sell similar - and almost certainly much better - photos of the same place. My price was right, though, and the shot was good enough for the user's purposes.
Things like that have to be terrifying to stock photographers.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
What a fucking nightmare, where charity and social generosity is outlawed for the benefit of those who make a living mining and locking the commons under exclusive personal licenses. Plus I hate that the only truly applicable paradigm is Ferengi (TM).
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Waiting for prostitutes to complain that there are people out there making love for free. o_O
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Waiting for prostitutes to complain that there are people out there making love for free. o_O
First they would have to establish that there are people making love for free...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yep. And look at artists like Helen Austin, Poko Lambro, Lizzie Hibbert and Kina Grannis promoting their material (through free content, usually live recordings). Plus hundreds of artists trying to get known.
For new artists, things like Creative Commons and YouTube are like playing in bars and other areas -- it is another avenue to gain fans and make extra music sales.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Plus hundreds of artists trying to get known.
Yes, unlike Helen Austin, Poko Lambro, Lizzie Hibbert and Kina Grannis who are already household names. ;)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
it's like telling a joke! We do it to put smiles on peoples faces. I don't ask for a dollar every time I tell a joke to someone.
Well I do!
Why did the parrot wear a raincoat?
He wanted to be polyunsaturated
Anybody laughing at that owes me a dollar!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how far they had to stretch to assume this was a good idea?
It's going to put them out of business.
"hey, we can embrace our fans, or sue our customers". I guess we knew which one of those sounded more appealing.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
People are unaware of the money collected for ASCAP because it is done "behind the vinyl curtain." Radio stations, college campuses, and other large institutions who play recorded music or put on live performances pay an annual fee to ASCAP. It is ASCAP's position that they represent all song writers and composers, therefore all music performed and recordings played are subject to their fees. Radio station owners feel it, university chancellors feel it, but consumers do not.
Consider gasoline taxes. What con
Awesome.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong.. this is really bad because they probably have a good chance of succeeding. As absurd as this is, essentially making it illegal to give the stuff you produce away for free, the media industry has a metric ass tonne of money and influence, and most importantly your average guy on the street is not going to understand or care.
I am just happy to finally see what I would describe as inevitable happen. And I totally don't blame the media industry. It a logical approach:
problem: something is costing us money
solutions: make it illegal
Should be interesting to see how this all unfolds.
Re:Awesome.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright is all fine and dandy, but if Congress tried to actually make it illegal to *give away* your own recordings, I believe that would pretty clearly run afoul of, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Congratulations, ASCAP: you are in the glorious position of educating Congress and the public on how awful and evil the 1st amendment is.
Re:Awesome.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that ASCAP is not going to ask congress to stop people giving away their work with no restrictions (hence allowjng other "artists" to make money from it), rather they will ask the lawmakers to remove copyright protection from works that people want to release under a Creative Commons or similar license.
In other words, it is an attack on the GPL and similar licenses.
Coffee shops (Score:5, Informative)
ASCAP is already [viewnews.com] preventing coffee shops from hosting independent artists.
Re:Coffee shops (Score:5, Informative)
Holy shit. After reading the above I started searching Google for other instances of similar bullying and found this [oregonmusicnews.com]:
I'm not usually a violent person, but if some ASCAP pisher came to my place of business and said those things to me it is very likely I'd end up in jail for assault after breaking the bastard's nose with a baseball bat.
Re:Coffee shops (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Coffee shops (Score:5, Informative)
I'm in Sioux City, Iowa of all places, and our band has seen this shit tried on two bars that I've played at. We called the fine gentleman who left his card and told him we were not ASCAP members and played only original music. He responded that it only takes four chords before we infringe on his artists' songs, and it was simply not possible for us not to infringe.
ASCAP are assholes, but what about the artists who belong to them? Isn't their membership the reason ASCAP can even exist?
Because he is a business owner (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed. It's their money and if they think it's in the best interest of their companies, they should do it. It's not their job to make sure the USA keeps running like it's supposed to, it's the job of Congress and the judicial system. They are who we should be outraged with.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I blame the courts... (Score:2, Interesting)
Can't say that I blame them... it's their industry and they're advocating for it - big surprise. That's how the system works: Both sides fight it out based on how important it is to them and the courts decide. If I'm a shareholder, I want them doing everything they can to make the value of my stock go up. That's why the courts are supposed to be there to make sure they're playing by the rules. It's the courts that screw us.
Re:I blame the courts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't say that I blame them... it's their industry and they're advocating for it - big surprise.
Uh, they apparently want to lobby Congress to pass a law which will prevent 'artists' from giving away things they've created.
If true, that is so mind-bogglingly retarded that I really don't know what else to say. Surely even Congress will have to laugh them out of the building?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on how much the donation campaign raises.
What else... (Score:5, Insightful)
What else would you expect from extortionists, that they play fair?
They are undermining their own argument (Score:5, Interesting)
ASCAP is asking its members to send donations to help out in a project against the free culture movement. They realize that no single organization alone can finance this 'war', and are trying to spread out the effort among their companies. They are using exactly the same strategy here that open source software like Linux uses - have large corporations that benefit from the project being successful all contribute to it, and allow the entire world to benefit from the result. If they lose, we win. If they win, they will have shown us that we can also win.
Re:They are undermining their own argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They are undermining their own argument (Score:5, Insightful)
No, its proof that CC, EFF, etc., are boogeyman that they think they can use to scare up money to use to lobby Congress to put into place laws which will provide support for their business.
This isn't proof that CC, EFF, etc. are actual threats to their business. The fact that an organization is used to scare people into giving money to a lobbying organization is not evidence that the organization is the source of any actual problem for the constituency of the lobbying group (or even that any actual problem exists.)
That something is useful for propaganda purposes doesn't mean that it is true.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like a pretty clear case of step 3 to me.
first they ignore you ... (Score:3, Interesting)
In a way this is great news. As long as people are ready to answer them with a good message, this will give great publicity. However, it's really important to point to new things that are produced by the free as in freedom movement. Out of copyright stuff and especially illegally copied stuff isn't stuff we have any right to claim and doesn't show the value of the new approach. Find good artists on Jamendo. Create your own stuff. Talk about how most new things in computing come out of the F/OSS movement.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes people make music for music's sake (Score:5, Insightful)
If nobody could ever make one penny from their music, I guarantee you that music would not die.
Re:Sometimes people make music for music's sake (Score:5, Insightful)
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.
-- Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If nobody could ever make one penny from their music, I guarantee you that music would not die.
Beyond that, if nobody could ever make one penny from their music, music would be better off as there wouldn't be loads of factory-produced, industry sponsored vapid pop being rammed into everyone's heads, drowning out music which has more value.
Re:Sometimes people make music for music's sake (Score:5, Interesting)
It might not die, but there would be a whole lot less.
I don't think so. One of the problems most live musicians face is that they don't have to compete with their neighbors; they have to compete with the best in the world. Why listen to some guy who's just "good" at the guitar when you can listen to Jimmy Hendrix? If there was a whole load less recorded music, that would definitely be good for actual live music.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Why listen to some guy who's just "good" at the guitar when you can listen
> to Jimmy Hendrix?
For the same reason that in college I watched my friends play intramural hockey but never bothered to attend a varsity game: the intramural players were people I knew and liked who were playing because they enjoyed it while the varsity players were arrogant jerks and assholes in it for fame and fortune.
ASCAP v. RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that the ASCAP should be going after the RIAA so that artists can actually make money on music recordings again. Forget about free. People are willing to pay for music, but even when they do, how much do the artists actually get anyway? Not much, if anything.
Big brother much? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow,
So not only do they want copyrights to last forever, but now they also want to take the copyright away from the creator of the content, because obviously the creator isn't capable of understanding what 'value' their property has if they want to release it under a copyleft license?
"Deep pockets" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Deep pockets" (Score:4, Informative)
What a bunch of— (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What a bunch of asshats.
That's ass-CAPS... :)
If it's real... (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to see the proper letter, with letterhead, contact details etc. At the moment this looks like it can be fake.
If it's not fake then these people are insane and by not wanting to allow people to choose another type of licence, they are taking away rights that they do want for themselves (to choose their own licence).
Assuming for the moment the letter is real:
It's not about music. And in case of music, if it's 15 years old or more, I have no problem with copying without paying for it. It should have paid the author, if not, tough luck, that's life.
The long copyright duration (essentially unlimited) also means companies and individuals who don't allow free copying after say 15 years, are hogging our past. Want to see a film again for nostalgia, or some music? (That you probably paid for already, via cable networks, records) Then you have to pay for it again. It's a great business model, getting paid for nostalgia etc. [ Note: Cleaning up very old records etc. and making those available should be rewarded, but for most music there's very little cost, lots of profit, and still lots of whining. ]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Orly? [ascap.com]
Names of donors so I can boycott their products (Score:5, Insightful)
And is there a list of these donating members so I can boycott their products...?
Too late for these morons (Score:5, Insightful)
These morons want to prevent ME from releasing MY OWN SONGS under the Creative Commons?
It's idiot moves like this that led to do exactly that. Here: http://theexperiments.com/ [theexperiments.com] All my band's music for free under the Creative Commons.
They can pry the Creative Commons from my cold dead fingers.
Re:Too late for these morons (Score:5, Funny)
They can pry the Creative Commons from my cold dead fingers
"Your proposal is acceptable."
-FBI Copyright Enforcement Special Weapons & Tactics Division
Strat
No actual points of purpose in the letter (Score:4, Insightful)
Man, don't you love letters like that? They are asking for money, but they don't list a single, specific point of how the law needs to change, or what specific philosophical claims for which they are in disagreement with EFF, CC, et. al.
They are asking you to write a check, but they haven't explained, AT ALL, what the money is going to be used for. They use very vague and nebulous statements that add up to nothing. What do they actually want to do?
They're songwriters (Score:3, Informative)
They're songwriters. They want to something something night, something something light, something something else something feel so right.
Free culture movement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Free culture movement?? They either don't understand what those organizations fight for or they know and are completely twisting everything around.
Organizations like the EFF are fighting for the consumer to be free to use what they PAID FOR in ways not dictated by multi-million dollar organizations. I have no interest in "stealing" copyrighted content, nor selling or giving it away to others. But when I pay for music, video, text, pictures, or whatever, I should be able to use it on any device I own, for as long as I like, in a manner that I choose. Most consumers are not anti-pay, or anti-copyright, or anti-arts. We just want to be able to obtain quality, reasonably priced media, and enjoy it on our stuff without some company dictating which program we must use, or which operating system, or which device.
And if creators of content want to release things under Creative Commons, or Copyleft, or Public Domain, or whatever, that has NOTHING to do with fighting against commercial companies wanting to make a profit on their materials. They should have that choice, and it should have the protection of law, just like traditional copyrights. What do they propose? To FORCE people to not license content how they choose? What's next? Legislation to block donations to the Red Cross because it might compete with big business? Amazing...
Even if they win (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if they win and oulawed 'copyleft', forcing everyone to use 'copyright', its still MY work, and i can choose to give it away if i want..
Industry needs to change, instead of fighting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Will it ultimately result in less money for the same amount of art (music/video/writing)? Probably, but in a day and age with our technology does it really make sense that publishers get billions of dollars (not going to the artists) for burning cd's and posting videos?
"Our" music? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last I checked, the Creative Commons licenses were applied to the music by the people who created the music... you know, the ones who actually have ownership of the music per current copyright laws.
Clearly ASCAP's problem is that they assume they should own everything and receive all the money from whatever automatic and inescapable royalties they can bribe Congress into assigning to them instead of to the actual musicians. Musicians being allowed to let other people play their music for free are cutting into their profits.
Re:"Our" music? (Score:4, Informative)
So there is clearly precedent that suggests ownership and membership are not sufficient concerns to these types of organizations. Unless it is their material or members that is!
So in this case they are either seeking statute authority to collect song composing royalties for members AND non-members, or they intend to behave that way anyway and defend it on the premise that the copyright office already delineated similar powers to SoundExchange and that since ASCAP is a similar group to SoundExchange they are entitled to a similar wide scope of authority (performance royalties -> SoundExchange vs composing royalties -> ASCAP)
I'd really like to see this blow up in their face and get both groups rights to even try this sort of thing revoked, but there are too many MAFIAA members in DoJ (and probably other parts of gov't) now and they have the administration's support (much to my dismay as I do generally otherwise support the administration). So this could get ugly and have bad consequences quickly.
I really hope the copyleft groups start gathering funds and resources in a way to respond to this head on. I'd support it.
About RIAA lawyers at DoJ:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/obama-taps-fift/ [wired.com]
About RIAA/SoundExchange:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/24/141326/870 [dailykos.com]
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/29/0335224.shtml [slashdot.org]
Rampant Windows Piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, its terrible, its just like those "Free Software" people rampantly pirating Windows all over the place. Oh wait. The Free Software people are a group of individuals least likely to pirate Windows. Something is wrong here.
The Deal Breakers (Score:5, Insightful)
ASCAP, truly an evil organization (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd love to see their argument (Score:4, Interesting)
The collecting agency is asking that its professional members donate to its Legislative Fund for the Arts, which appears to be a lobbying campaign meant to convince Congress that artists should not have the choice of licensing their works under a copyleft license.
I'd like to see what their legal argument would be. Basically they're lobbying to make a particular kind of legal contract they disagree with illegal.
Ooo, no - that's not a slippery slope at all. I'm sure lawyers all over the continent will sit still for that! I can't see how that would cause a problem ever!! *hah*
Hell, even the bad lawyers would fight having that for a precedent. Harder than the good guys I'd guess - tricky contracts are where a good bit of their bread and butter comes from. If the law began placing restrictions on what sorts of contracts you could make...well, that would have a lot of other interesting implications.
This is actually good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably not actually copyleft (Score:3, Insightful)
The letter is incredibly stupid, but I suspect they are not actually trying to make the Creative Commons license or GPL illegal. I think instead the writer thinks the term "copyleft" means "ignoring copyrights".
Of course they may want to make copyleft illegal: they would certainly love it if you could not copyright protect your work without having the means and infrastructure to sell it. But I think the chances of that are very slim because even the general public will understand that it is unfair.
Or they are actively trying to get the term "copyleft" redefined in public perception so that these organizations can no longer use it, similar to "hacker".
But my main guess is that the letter writer has no idea what the term "copyleft" means and they have instead made themselves look either evil or stupid or both.
Speech by NMPA CEO about "anti-copyright agenda" (Score:5, Interesting)
"THE NEW ENEMY" [billboard.biz]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No. 7: They favor the elimination of the songwriter and publisher rights for server, cache and buffer copies.
That one's a joke. Isn't it? Because no one can be fucking stupid enough to believe that they should have rights to ephemeral cached or buffered copies.
Right? Please tell me that was sarcasm.
Hey now (Score:5, Insightful)
They are just being idiots about how they are going about fixing things. Bottom line? No one wants to pay for music anymore. Around half my income is derived from ascap. In the last ten years, seismic changes have occurred in television and film having nothing to do with the internet.
First, broadcasters stopped paying royalties for movie trailer music. Next, networks on cable stopped paying fees for music knowing that we would get paid on the backend through their endlessly repeating show schedule. By and large, they were right to a certain degree. Basically, they wanted us to get paid by the broadcasters but now the broadcasters don't seem to want to pay either
Now though, hulu has emerged and it is nothing short of a land grab. you only get paid a performance royalty if there are commercials in the show. Well guess what? Hulu does not pay out royalties even though there are millions of performances daily on their website.
And let's not forget the shady music supervisor that fills in his own name instead of yours in the cue sheets and then he gets the back end that you were supposed to get. It happens.
At some point you have to stop and ask yourself, what is the value of your work on a whole when everyone and there mother is hell bent on not paying you a dime.
Creating music for television or film is no joke. It takes a lot of time, energy and skill to learn how to craft a score to picture. Underscore is a lot different but still, lots of work. I mean, if everyone is cool with hearing the same loops from GarageBand and logic than really, what the hell do I know?
However, if you agree that while the world is not fair, just like licensing code, use of music needs a mechanism of payment that is fair.
I like creative commons, ascap is just misguided.
And finally, before anyone tells me to play live and find alternative revenue streams, licensing is the alternative revenue stream. I give all my music away because licensing makes it so I don't have to worry about actually selling anything.
ASCAP forgets that copyright is about progress (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes I think groups such as ASCAP forget that copyright is about letting people copy things and defining how and when it should be done. It's goal is to encourage copying and development as a way of progressing science and art. The restrictions on copying is about convincing authors via the lure of money to develop something further.
But the restriction gets tighter and tighter... how is life-of-the-author plus 75 years (the term for individuals i.e. non-corporate authors) supposed to encourage an author to develop the something they created further? I'm pretty sure they can't create new material after they've died. Plus, progress often comes from combining other people's stuff together in new and novel ways, which copyright, an idea to promote progress, often blocks in its current form. Long ago copying was hard and temporarily limiting was no big deal to the public; today in the digital age, copying is so easy that it can happen by accident while sorting one's computer files.
Creative commons is about striking a balance between copyright and public domain-- to come to a place closer to what copyright originally was. ASCAP would now have me believe that an independent artist, who is not affiliated with them, choosing to utilize creative commons will somehow bankrupt them (or something similarly awful) and that this would... what? destroy culture? stop development? I don't know as they don't really explain why its bad-- just a vague 'trust us, it's bad for authors' answer. If they are really worried about their business, they need to evolve with the times or simply go under just like all other companies. They are no more special then any other company, nor should they be.
ASCAP say that the opposite side wants people to believe that music is free, and that they do not want to pay for it. First off, music is already free. The purpose of copyright is to barter away a tiny bit of its freedom for money to motivate creators to create. Second, I don't hear anyone saying that don't want to pay for music. I either hear people expressing they want a simple and affordable way to pay, or people expressing dismay over paying for the same thing the umpteenth time. Groups such as ASCAP are often against a simple affordable way of excepting people's money. It competes with their old dying way of doing business. Again, evolve or go under. They go and ask the government for help. The people are giving us less money, please force them to pay again. (Well, it's never gotten THAT simple.) When their market changes, they simply should not be going to the government and asking them to force the market to do something. It doesn't work. It never has... and it has the side-effect of creating headaches for everyone along the way.
*Sigh* My two cents,
David Romig, Jr.
Wanna fight back? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hypocrites... (Score:4, Interesting)
They claim that we don't want to pay for music. And at the same time, their begging for donations tells us that THEY don't want to pay to litigate.
Free Culture and the EFF already lost the war (Score:3, Funny)
MPEG-LA beat ASCAP to the punch.. ASCAP will just have to buy up a bunch of patents. That should cover their bases
Free Drives Out Overpriced (Score:4, Insightful)
There are already more free books and story sites on the web than any person could read in a lifetime. It used to be that the only way you could read out-of-copyright works was if someone reprinted it and sold it at a low enough price to not be undercut. Now you just download it and nobody profits from that download -- which is just WRONG to some people. And while you're reading your classic liteature, you're not paying for and consuming other overpriced content.
Are we better off for this? I would think so because we are a richer culture overall! How long, for example, before a radio station starts only playing out-of-copyright performances that you can play in your bar or restaurant without paying ASCAP, BMI, and all the rest of those money grubbers a single red cent? Would be great, provided that they can't kill it in the cradle. Let that happen and soon there may be music everywhere!
Prostitutes Declares War On Free Love, Marriage (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Who would drop $15 on a CD just to see if it was god or not?
Don't know. I mean I am sure there is someone out there who might think a round plastic disk with a silver coating with tiny circular pattern holes and "valleys" cut in the silver layer might think it is a god. But, I know I don't.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I wouldn't pay just to find out if it was god or not. I really don't care if they put Vishnu in a cd case. I mean he's one of many. I feel like I'd have to buy a lot of them to collect the whole set. But, if it was God, in there? There's only One, so that might be less expensive a proposition. I don't know I might. Depends on the odds. Do on out of every ten CD's contain God, or one out of every Billion?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
typical rightly... you know nothing of political or economic positions.
Communism is for abolishing markets all together and replacing them with public centralized command production systems that vary widely from full public ownership to private ownership and public command of what is produced and in what quantities.
Fascism is all about the corporation and industries. They remain privately held and decide what is produced and in what quantities. Fascism is all about the corporations being given special treat
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As for McCarthyism: There actually were communists working for the USSR trying to undermine western capitalistic values.
One of the "western capitalistic values" is freedom of speech and conscience. This, in particular, means that not believing in those values, and agitating other people to follow suit, is something for which you're not supposed to be harassed.
Until you actually do (or conspire to actually do) something harmful, you're supposed to be left alone.