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."
What a bunch of— (Score:3, Informative)
"We will use the funds... (Score:2, Informative)
... to advance our agenda in Washington..."
Nothing like stating the obvious...
But actually the "letter" sounds a little too goofy..
"We all know what will happen next..."?
Re:"Deep pockets" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Coffee shops (Score:5, Informative)
ASCAP is already [viewnews.com] preventing coffee shops from hosting independent artists.
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]
correction (Score:2, Informative)
ascap -> performance
typed in too much of a hurry sorry. This stuff just really pisses me off about these kind of groups.
Re:Sometimes people make music for music's sake (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.
Actually, there's more... (Score:2, Informative)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/file-sharing-has-weakened-copyrightand-helped-society.ars [arstechnica.com]
---
Pluck the duck, who have we got to lose?
Re:I blame the courts... (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on how much the donation campaign raises.
Re:Truism time! (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:If it's real... (Score:3, Informative)
Orly? [ascap.com]
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:If it's real... (Score:1, Informative)
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.
I'm not going to mention any names and or places here, but there's an active group of hobbyists, strike that: semi-professionals with very high-end equipment that have been cleaning up and sampling vinyl at high resolution audio (24bit/96kHz or better, often ending up with a better-sounding versions than the official CD and remastered CD. These people do this for the common good, and do not expect to be paid for their efforts. The vinyl can go back all the way to the 50s (mono).
While technically competing with the current Super AudioCD and/or DVD-Audio releases of the same material (though lots of time there isn't such a release or is out-of-print/deleted) it's still a copy of the 1950s release.
If copyright will go back to say 20 years, and wouldn't we all want kids in emerging economies and also domestically those in underprivileged neighbourhoods, be able to partake of this giant cultural heritage (yes: think of the kids!).
It can still be prevented by declaring that even though you would be allowed to copy the work after 20 years, you're now creating a (new) derivative work by means of the digitization of the original analog recording, and then you wouldn't be allowed to give it out under a different license like copyleft. Pure genius!
Re:If it's real... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Copyleftists, damn those commies. (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 treatment. It is about passing laws to protect and existing corporation or business model from new upstarts.
Market economics is between these two extremes... Unfortunately, for the US we are far closer to the Fascist model than we should be.
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.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Copyleftists, damn those commies. (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.
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:A simple way to fight them (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: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?
Re:Coffee shops, my reply (Score:1, Informative)
"I'm sorry, Mr Hines, but you fail to understand your own situation. You see, it is ALREADY too late, and the only investigator coming by will be the one inquiring about the missing person's report filed on your behalf by your next of kin. Goodbye, Mr. Hines." (this followed by the sound of a shotgun discharging at extremely close range)
One advantage to living in BFE, the locals won't exactly roll over and piss on themselves when a lawyer comes to town.
Re:Good. (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 be accountable to the ruled (which is what representational democracy is, at heart).
Under communism, whoever does the labour should receive all the fruits of his labour, and that's only possible if he owns the means of production necessary for that labour. Collectivism only enters into it because factories can't be operated by a single person.
You are never free to do what you want unless you're independently wealthy.
History has shown it works just fine: Russia went from a failed state to a global superpower in a few decades under communism, even with a paranoid lunatic at charge hindering it, and stayed that way for 70 years. China is still around and on its way to surpass the USA. Even Cuba is still around.
What history has shown is that blind adherence to an ideology tends to produce unpleasant consequences, and this recent financial crisis shows - once again - that this applies to free-market capitalism too.
(Cue a hundred libertarians explaining how USA is not a free market, how it's the last few bits of regulation preventing banks from coming up with even more convoluted schemes that caused the crisis, how it's all a plot about the huge international conspiracy of climate scientists because global warming is obviously a myth since it suggests enviromental regulation might be a good idea and is caused by sunspots and regulation besides, and other typical inane libertarian ramblings.)