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."
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.
What else... (Score:5, Insightful)
What else would you expect from extortionists, that they play fair?
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.
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.
Re:Awesome.. (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.
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?
Re:Awesome.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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. ]
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...?
Re:Good. (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.
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.
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?
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...
wait a minute... (Score:1, Insightful)
"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."
"...artists should not have the choice of licensing their works under a copyleft license."
wtf? Should or should not an artist have control over how his/her work is used?
I'm too lazy to RTFA, but if these really are valid quotes, then they have a terrible argument here. Sadly, Congress will probably be too stupid to see that.
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: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:first they ignore you ... (Score:1, Insightful)
You forgot the "then they laugh at you" part.
Re:They are undermining their own argument (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It's my choice (Score:1, Insightful)
If I choose to release my work under a free license, what is it to them?
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Deal Breakers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's my choice (Score:2, Insightful)
If I choose to release my work under a free license, what is it to them?
A (potentially) lost revenue stream.
Re:Copyleftists, damn those commies. (Score:0, Insightful)
meh. That's not it at all. Communism is closer to the way these pricks operate. In a free market "copyleft" would have just as much an opportunuty to flourish. This ASCAP nonsense is more about squashing the free market to save a dying business model and the highly centralized monopolistic major media monoliths. They are losing money because they are not providing providing products people want to buy, and the people in the marketplace are choosing to bypass their systems (the artists), and form their own alternatives, which is absolutely their right to do. This shows that the ASCAP is not acting in favor of artists, but of record labels, as "creative commons" is something an artist can choose to release their work with.
As for McCarthyism: There actually were communists working for the USSR trying to undermine western capitalistic values. It was certainly used improperly in some cases, but the threat wasn't entirely made up.
As for communism: You cricitize oppressive systems, yet you cheer for one of the most oppressive systems the world has ever seen. Communism has killed more people than any other idea in the last century. Even Hitler had more restraint at mass slaughter and oppression than the communists. Mao killed 10 times the people conservatively for just as arbitrary of reasons.
Re:first they ignore you ... (Score:3, Insightful)
ASCAP, truly an evil organization (Score:4, Insightful)
What means "our"? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why a piece of land is "yours" or "your parents'"? Why doesn't it belong to other person?
It's a complicated discussion (for instance, why doesn't it belong to the native Indians? some guy even posits Indians are not Americans, even thousands of years being on this continent).
For now and the sake of simplicity, let me sidestep all this and say this is a granted right resulting from a human construct: Law.
Now, it's important to have in mind _why_ the Law grants this right.
What is the end a music or song might have? Is it right that someone own a song just to make sure nobody can sing it?
In my opinion, a lot of things aren't working as they should.
Software patents, no, patents in its wider sense were conceived to protect the inventor and make sure s/he can live on and keep on inventing. If they sell their inventions to companies which want to avoid innovation (so as not to disturb their cash cows), then such inventors really don't deserve any protection. Alas, they should receive said protection conditioned to the disclosure of their ideas. If not so, let other inventor -- with greater public spirit -- receive recognition instead.
In the present case, a music is to be heard according to the will of the listeners, not at the discretion of its rights holders -- because society granted then (through Law) such rights.
The Law cannot be an end on itself. Rather, it's a tool to make sure the society will prevails -- not some corporation will.
How things decayed these days... to think some weasel has the nerve to come in public and discuss openly the appropriation and control of aspects of society life. They make Uriah Heep look good... we need protection against them!
This is actually good news (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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.
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.
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: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.
.
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.
Because he is a business owner (Score:4, Insightful)
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:2, Insightful)
As I grow older (33 and counting), I find myself "growing up", too. I agree more and more with the sentiments expressed in Steal This Book (have you even read it?), kopimi [wikipedia.org], Creative Commons, the public domain, and by other similarly aligned "movements".
I have shrunk my consumption of big media "goods" by about 99%, to a point where I download maybe one movie every three months, hardly a commercial song ever. Of these, 50% would be in the PD by now by any sensible measure of copyright terms, another 20% I anticipate to be highly shitty and watch them to be able to criticize them, should they come up in discussion with other people. The remaining 30% I downright steal because I'm pissed off that I am forced to keep several cubic meters of storage space for redundant storage media of music I couldn't otherwise prove I have rights to.
In short, your viewpoint is limited. Your obtuseness, it's disheartening.
Re:Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
I also hope for a future where we deal with copyrights; maybe that means that they won't exist.
As someone that makes royalties from copyrighted works, I don't hide behind the copyright, but the effort to make those works is real, involves much care and labor, and they are a product.
Calling them imaginary or intangible is a rationalization. Stealing is when you deny someone their just reward for goods or services rendered. My services were books, almost a dozen of them. Right now, they're largely worthless because the service of the content of the books has gone by. Nonetheless, I still own the copyrights, and they're still my effort; they can be justly compared to making a car that I rent out, keep serviced, until no one wants to rent them-- but I still own the car and its design.
The Canadians are somewhat visionary in some areas, copyright being one of them, but they haven't completed the ecosystem where artists, content creators, and others are rewarded monetarily and systematically.
The attempt to abstract tangible from intangible assets, however, is a rationalization on your part. You stole.
Wanna fight back? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Speech by NMPA CEO about "anti-copyright agenda (Score:1, Insightful)
The irony is that all 10 of those positions are quite sensible.
It just shows how far out in right field these wackos are, that they can believe this is an "extremist, radical anti-copyright agenda". I don't know a single person under 25 who would think any of those points was extremist, and several of them are not ANTI-copyright at all. Anti-copyright-abuse, maybe.
Re:Sometimes people make music for music's sake (Score:2, Insightful)
A long time ago someone set up an organisation with the explicit purpose of lobbying for and protecting artists rights.
This extended to the collection of fees on behalf of the artists.
Naturally these organisations which originally made up of the artists themselves are now staffed mainly by lawyers and the kind of people who's main aim is to maximise revenues for the artists and to increase the power and size of the organisation itself.
Not hard to see now why they don't see "artistic expression" and "the promotion of music" as their main aim.
Happens all the time... organisation outgrowing it's original purpose and becoming a thing unto itself.
You get what you pay for (usually) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Waiting for prostitutes to complain that there are people out there making love for free. o_O
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!
Re:You don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Good. (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 the original code for free and only need to contribute the incremental improvements. Both parties end up with a product that is better than the one that they paid for. If someone else wants a new feature they can pay me or someone else to write it but, again, they only pay the cost of the incremental improvement, not of the whole thing.
People frequently call me a communist, although mainly people who call themselves communists - people who call themselves capitalists tend to call me a capitalist.
People have also bought me beers for some of the things I've written in my own time, which at FOSDEM meant that I got to drink some very nice Belgian beers until about 6am on the first night...
ASCAP (Score:1, Insightful)
Did no one have the heart to tell them that they named their company "asshat"?
Re:Good. (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 its confidentiality.
As things stand, copyright infringement is legally close enough to theft that its penalties reflect the loss of revenues from the objects copied. The criminal code is at http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html [copyright.gov]: do take a look, it's fascinating materlal.
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:1, Insightful)
How about separate copyright terms for commercial and noncommercial uses? Two years pass before Your Book can be PDFed and freely distributed over the internet, and two years before noncommercial derivative works can be produced. But if you want to commercialise a derivative work, or profit from distributing the original, you have to either wait ten, fifteen, however many years, or seek permission from the creator.
Under this system works of culture are passed back to society to enrich it very rapidly, though not before the author reaps a reasonable reward from retail distribution (and he continues benefiting from retail for the entire commercial period, because people do like to buy things). But if a faceless corporation wants to profit from the work it has to pay the author or wait and run the risk of the work being culturally irrelevant by the time it passes completely into the public domain.
Re:Good. (Score:1, Insightful)
By giving those things away, you were buying equity in your career. This "goodwill," as accountants refer to it, is intangible but immensely valuable. People know who you are, and they are now more willing to pay for your expertise (e.g.: would you rather have Bill Gates or some random guy run your company?) Although somewhat subtle, this is capitalism at its finest.