ASCAP Assails Free-Culture, Digital-Rights Groups
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By David Kravets
- June 25, 2010 |
- 3:35 pm |
- Categories: The Ridiculous, intellectual property
The association representing 380,000 composers, songwriters, lyricists and others associated with the music industry has begun a fund-raising campaign to stifle groups that support free culture and digital rights.
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is urging the membership to donate money to battle the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and even Creative Commons.
In a letter sent to members this week, ASCAP said those groups and unnamed “technology companies” are “mobilizing to promote ‘Copyleft’ in order to undermine our ‘Copyright.’ ”
The letter continues, saying “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.”
The fund-raising campaign came a day after Victoria Espinel, the nation’s copyright czar, outlined an intellectual-property enforcement plan that did not include a call to push internet service providers to adopt policies to cut service to repeat copyright scofflaws. Such a policy, referred to as “three strikes” or “graduated response,” was strongly backed by the motion picture and recording industries, and opposed by EFF and Public Knowledge.
Instead, Espinel said the nation’s “intellectual property-enforcement efforts should be focused on stopping those stealing the work of others, not those who are appropriately building upon it.”
The ASCAP, which also distributes royalties, said those groups are “influencing Congress against the interests of music creators. If their views are allowed to gain strength, music creators will find it harder and harder to make a living as traditional media shifts to online and wireless services. We all know what will happen next: the music will dry up, and the ultimate loser will be the music consumer.”
ASCAP did not return messages seeking comment.
ASCAP’s attack on EFF and Public Knowledge are farfetched. Those groups do not suggest music should be free, although they push for the liberalization of copyright law.
But the attack on Creative Commons is more laughable than ASCAP’s stance against EFF and Public Knowledge.
While lobby groups EFF and Public Knowledge advocate for liberal copyright laws, Creative Commons actually creates licenses to protect content creators.
The non-profit has issued various licenses to approximately 350 million pieces of content to writers, musicians, scholars and others. Flickr, for example, is filled with pictures licensed by Creative Commons.
The licenses allow the works in the public domain, with various rules regarding attribution, commercial use and remixing.
The group’s creative director, Eric Steuer, said nobody forces anybody to adopt the Creative Commons credo. “I think it’s false to claim that Creative Commons works to undermine copyright,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s an opt-in system.”
Following Wednesday’s fund-raising letter from Paul Williams, ASCAP’s president, Steuer said several ASCAP members who also use Creative Commons licenses have donated money to Creative Commons.
Hat Tip: Boing Boing
Photo: labguest/Flickr
“When music is “free”, who will actually make the music? Just a bunch of amateurs who know little to nothing about what makes music a work of art?”. That’s about how it is now. You don’t want to go down the “The current music industry oligopoly creates higher quality” road, because you’re putting your foot in your mouth there. If you want to get laughed right out of the discussion though, go for it. The music industry is populated with 1) Looped, thumping noises 2) 20-somethings playing guitar who started in their garage and snub formal training and music theory in favor of meandering around the fretboard and playing power chords really fast. Are you seriously trying to argue that the pop icons and manufactured rockers who populate the industry are the best and brightest, the greatest quality of music? Just stop talking before you embarrass yourself further. If music is being devalued it’s because it was never very difficult to begin with. Any asshole can hit some piano keys, bang on some drums, strum cluelessly or layer some loops. Music is highly accessible to anybody – any mediocre, unexceptional, 100-IQ kidde can be a musician of the same quality as the most famous in the industry if they just grind at it for enough time.
I’m not disagreeing that musicians should be able to be paid for their work. But you already are. Jealously hoarded music co-exists with freely shared, collaborated, cut-up and remixed, copyleft music. If someone wants to pay you a royalty for your jealously hoarded music, then I support that. I support the concept of copyright, the principle of intellectual property owners, and the right of said IP owners to share and license as they see fit. Your particular works belong to you, but MUSIC does not belong to you. You, and scummy organizations like the ASCAP, do not get to decide copyright policy for everyone. MUSIC itself belongs to everyone, it is accessible to everyone, and we are entitled to choose free exchange for our own hard work. If you’re afraid of CC it’s because you’re so untalented that you can’t compete. You’re slowly coming to realize that any given work of music has low intrinsic value, that you aren’t the creative superhero that you thought you were, and that many freely shared tracks by the “kids” you snub your nose at are suitable replacement for your overvalued work. Stringing noises together isn’t an act of genius after all. Lots of people can do what you do just as well. Live with it. Get better or die.
“The reason why ASCAP is going after people like the EFF and CC and all other is not that those companies aren’t willing to pay ONCE, but they don’t want to pay for everytime they use the songwriters material”. But these aren’t pirates, you idiot. CC isn’t Napster. If you don’t want to be denied royalties, then don’t CC license your music! Simple as that!. The ASCAP is a cartel trying to strong-arm the entirety of society, in order to protect their own empire. They’re trying to squelch free expression in order to artificially create more demand for their product. In my eyes, every last artist who remains a member of ASCAP after this move is a criminal, an accessory to a dangerous cartel.
@Enoch74 Maybe you need to rethink your business model if you can’t compete with people who are willing
to give away the product for free. After all open source software didn’t stop Gates and his buddies from becoming billionaires even though a lot of software pros think the free stuff is better than the commercial stuff. I don’t download free music buy the way. I’m really not much of a music fan. I think this intellectual property stuff is kind of interesting though.
Just wait when the google isp arrives… and let’s see how this one plays out.
”
Hey Dano, why would Nike buy a spot from me if they can get it for free from CC? Just because some kid is willing to give away his GarageBand track for free so he can see his name in lights I have to stop charging for my tracks? Thats crap, these idiots are trying to change the value of music so they can line their pockets with all those extra production dollars falling to the wayside when the ad guys come out on top of their budgets. Music has value and just because some people are willing to pull down their pants to get in the music biz we will see the end of the livelihoods of many artists before they even get started.
”
So you are trying to curtail my right to share my music (that I wrote) for free. That is pretty heavy-handed don’t you think. I understand that you (a pro-musician/ songwriter) want to get paid, But I (a decent hobbyist with other sources of income) want a convenient way to share what I do. All that means is that you have to be better than the hobbyists, that should not be to big a problem (and if it is you should find a new job).
Bravo! FINALLY someone steps up to the plate for content creators. Finally someone gets the whole thing about fees being charged at the final point of distribution and not at the moment of consumption when dealing with intellectual property rights. ASCAP is by far the smartest, most effective organization creative content generators have ever had.
Screw you “music wants to be free” thieves. Creators NEED to be paid.
”
People seem to confuse ASCAP with record labels. I have never gotten a check from a label, but I have from ASCAP because I wrote some music used on TV. My day job is recording bands…People, these bands are not rich, they are broke ass kids. ASCAP is their protector. When Apple says it is paying too much to the writers (mandated by congress) it is actually paying only 8 cents to the writer of the song, out of 99 it charges. ASCAP fights for us – the writers, saying it is Bullshit, adding another 1 cent would not kill Apple! Please, I’ve made about $2000 for writting music over 10 years that has been on TV over 4000 times. Who paid me was ASCAP. Without them probably nothing! This is not to protect Diddy – he is a label executive. Nor Elton John, or anyone who is so rich they don’t need protection. It is for the rest of us that are really struggling to get any money from music. ASCAP is musician/writers. They are the members, and they are the administrators. Don’t be confused – they protect the writers of the songs from the record companies who would love to take everything!!!! That is why the labels (including Apple) are always fighting them, and spending their big bucks on lobbiests ASCAP is the little songwriters true friend! I hate greedy record labels as much as anyone, but I do appreciate the small checks I get for work that actually cost me (and all musicians) a fair amount to create. What is wrong with paying songwriters?
”
It sounds like ASCAP should be fighting Apple and the labels not the guys who want to do CC copyright on their own material.
”
When music is “free”, who will actually make the music? Just a bunch of amateurs who know little to nothing about what makes music a work of art?
”
Apparently you never heard of pickin and grinin on the back porch.
To those artists who won’t get paid if music keeps trending towards free,
It sucks, it really does. You dedicate your life to something only to see it turn to shit. But at the same time, if I download my music for free then my money will go to making someone else’s dreams come true like a painter or farmer or (more likely) a CEO of a corporation. From a micro economics perspective I’m getting double the utility for my money and while music jobs are being lost there will be gains in other places in the economy that woulf offset that.
ASCAP should go back to shaking down small cafes for having open mic nights.
“Screw you “music wants to be free” thieves. Creators NEED to be paid”. But, you troglodyte, they’re trying to silence creators who themselves do not want to be paid. You can’t thieve from someone who is giving it away for free. Why is this so hard to get through your thick head?
“All that means is that you have to be better than the hobbyists, that should not be to big a problem (and if it is you should find a new job).”
You get what you pay for. It’s the same in the photography biz. Every jackass with a camera is a photographer. The professionals must step it up and create real art and offer what the amateurs can’t.
In our Walmart mentality society, artists’ talents are generally undervalued.
I have written a short bit on this,
http://fmtyewtk.blogspot.com/2010/06/enemies-of-copyleft-are-enemies-of.html please read and share.
I would like to point out another mental failure in the current attack on copyleft :
Copyleft is based on copyright. If you try and forbid or block or attack it, you are attacking the foundation, which is copyright.
It does not matter how many new laws come into being, dmca, acta etc, they can all be used as the foundation of copyleft.
Copyleft is in essence very simple :
1. you first have no rights to copy my work, it is protected by copyright.
2. I grant you permission to do so under a certain condition, which is the sharealike license.
3. This sharealike license means that you have to give everyone the same rights you got, otherwise we go back to 1, and you infringing.
I hope that this explains the points a bit better, of course, it seems that the current campaign against copyleft is not rational or intelligent, it seems to be just a deathcry from the hungry dying beast called “pre digital mentality”.
Some of you really sound seriously old. “Music these days” and “talentless hacks” are not universal realities. Many of those bleeps and loops you lament are shared freely within certain genres – their entire value and point is they become a language unto themselves. Stop lumping techno, pop and rap all into the same pot, they will never properly fit.
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Techno is the last bastion of the punk ethic. Here’s the funniest part – for the most part, those rif fswaps don’t even concern BMI. Perhaps this is why they feel so threatened? They’re not complaining about the artists losing all that licensing money – they’re complaining about themselves becoming obsolete. It’s really sad – if someone these had a lick of sense they’d be doing all they can to ally themselves with the copyleft movement. Imagine how much more widespread these licenses might become if creators felt they could deploy their works under those licenses with some reassurance of enforcement against the power players.
@ photawg
I disagree. As barriers to entry lower, I think we are discovering far more people have artistic talent then professional artists have claimed. It is becoming less about access to expensive or complex tools, and more about getting people’s actual artistic vision created and distributed. More and more professionals are discovering that their skill is in using specialized tools that are not actually necessary.
back in the days of “starving artists” who would have thought that by 2010 artists representation would make the claim that Artists would not create at all unless they could get paid millions to do so.
Dear RIAA, etc – ever hear of Satisfying ones Muse? Thought not.
With moneymen in charge of Art all you get is “product”, not “art” and THAT is why music sales are in the toilet.
@ poptones
Actually, you should check out Filk/Dementia. Lots of self publishing going on there, along with groups of bands getting together for cross promotion.
I am (somewhat regrettably) a member of ASCAP and I have not yet received this letter. Is there a scan, or full text of this letter somewhere available online? FWIW I have a small publishing company and many of the songs I have published have received regular radio airplay over the past 6 years (documented by radio playlists, CD sales that indicate where the music was discovered, etc. As well as documented playlists from two worldwide syndicated programs that show they have played on hundreds of radio stations around the world) and I nor my songwriters have yet to receive ANY payment from ASCAP.
Oh, and stop referring to Apple as a label. They are not. They are a retailer just like any other. To whom ever it was that stated Apple only pays 9 cents to each writer and they should pay more (per song download) has NO clue what they’re talking about. IIRC, Apple gets 30 cents from every sale, 70 cents goes to the label/publisher etc. A retailer never gets to decide how much various parties receive from the sale of music, the contract that writer and/or performer has with his publisher/label determines this.
Just because some people want to give their art away (CC) doesnt force everyone to give their art away. Personally, I would never CC my music, but that I have a choice is a good thing. There’s room for more than one model.
just because you want to listen to music without paying for it doesn’t mean that you can steal it. i want a ferrari but i have to pay for it. i just don’t understand how people don’t understand what stealing is. i think it’s a pretty clear black and white issue.
@sali
Considering this has zero to do with stealing, I am guessing you are the one that has no concept of what stealing is.
”
just because you want to listen to music without paying for it doesn’t mean that you can steal it. i want a ferrari but i have to pay for it. i just don’t understand how people don’t understand what stealing is. i think it’s a pretty clear black and white issue.
”
You appear to be commenting on a different article. It is as if you were talking about trout fishing or aviation, you are just way off base.
What is all the poker money for?
@Xylenz “Just because some people want to give their art away (CC) doesnt force everyone to give their art away. Personally, I would never CC my music, but that I have a choice is a good thing. There’s room for more than one model.”
Yes, absolutely. Making something possible doesn’t make it compulsory.
The [grievously oversimplified] example I’ve used in the past is if Tropicana comes out with a new flavor of Twister and hands out 8-ounce bottles at the grocery store, that doesn’t automatically devalue every juice in the place.
“influencing Congress against the interests of music creators. If their views are allowed to gain strength, music creators will find it harder and harder to make a living as traditional media shifts to online and wireless services. We all know what will happen next: the music will dry up, and the ultimate loser will be the music consumer.”
How insanely stupid can you get?
1. The music creators are the ones voluntarily releasing their music for free. ASCAP is the one working against the music creators here. They have every right to distribute their own work for free.
2. Even if all music becomes completely free, it will never “dry up”. People will just do it to get laid instead of to make a living, as they did before the legal fiction of “copyright” was invented.
I am now a sustaining member of EFF, and made a donation to CC.
Support musicians! F the RIAA. F the ASCAP.
ASCAP as just tried to spread their control over songs a little more. This time they’ve tried to enforce a chenage which will affect all songwriters and not just their members. Here’s something else to consider about ASCAP and others (BMI and SESAC).
Most people don’t know that instrumental composers get paid one third of the full royalty rate for the use of their songs while the composers of songs with lyrics get paid the full royalty rate. However, ASCAP and others still collect 100% of the royalties for the use of those instrumental songs from broadcast and public performance. If Victoria Espinel really wants to affect a change which would help Copyright holders that’s a good place to start. A copyrighted song is a copyrighted song and all should be treated equally with regards to royalty collection and payment.
as my life passion and work has been in the production and performance of music i say the that times have never looked brighter for musicians. Big business are the only ones who are going to loose money and they can shove their talentless money grabbing hands up their arses and get a real job.
There was a time, not so long ago, when to be great you just had to be better than the rest of the people in the pub/village.
The performance of music was a pleasure enjoyed by a large part of the population, where huge numbers of people would join in singing along.
Times have changed, music is not personal, in our ears, performance is about shifting units and appealing to the largest audience.
I don’t honestly think that the past was that bad, or more to the point that modern mass market music is “better” in any way other than a technical one. I do not fear a return to music being an act of expression, involving more people at more levels with fewer or even no mass market music. I do not fear music becoming a participatory activity, I do not fear people singing off-key or playing bum notes. I would rather have a technically poor live performance with a human being, than some over engineered, over market researched perfect performance from some hyped up superstar.
That is just my view. Diversity is our strength and hopefully music will move forward and become more diverse and less main stream.
Long may the mega media superstar continue, but perhaps shining less brightly and a myriad of little tinkles might emerge to fill the darkness.
I am an ASCAP member, recently joined, and received ASCAP’s blast against EFF and Creative Commons. Here’s my reply, sent to ASCAP’s president.
> At this moment, we are facing our biggest challenge ever.
> 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.
I am an ASCAP member and also a supporter of Creative Commons, and a contributor and member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The above statement is false and totally misleading, and ASCAP should know better than to propagate this kind of crap. Creative Commons provides a license whereby authors and creative artists can distribute their work for free with the assurance the that license is legally solid and their work can’t be appropriated by others who would attempt to charge for it. People license their works under a Creative Commons license VOLUNTARILY. In no way does this represent an effort to circumvent existing copyrights and licenses.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a legal watchdog organization, providing legal support for consumers and organizations in a digital world much as the American Civil Liberties Union provides similar services for the non-digital world. I FULLY support EFF’s work and have been a member and contributor to EFF’s efforts. If ASCAP has a legal beef with EFF, perhaps ASCAP should keep it in the courts and not go spreading lies such as these to their members.
In my humble opinion, ASCAP owes some big time apologies. This kind of BS inclines me to sever my new relationship with ASCAP and join instead with a more honest and progressive performance rights organization.
Needless to say, I will NOT be contributing to the ASCAP Legislative Fund for the Arts!
Lindsay Haisley
ASCAP member 3165030
ASCAP publisher member 3188663
Un freakin real… so perhaps we could use this with everything. When you buy like say a saw, then every time you use that saw you should pay someone for the use of it! (Better not let anyone use it!) So if I buy a CD, then I guess I’ll have to keep paying to listen to it, or even more crazy, let other people listen to it God forbid! Perhaps the entire human race should start jumping into the ocean and let us all drown in this revolution of stupidity… blood is literally squirting out of my eyes! wow!!!