[Foundation-l] ASCAP comes out against "copyleft"

[wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 26 June 2010 11:53,  <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
> The point of my post was, of course, that ASCAP are attempting to
> apply pressure to Congress to outlaw the licence most Wikimedia
> content is released under (by its creators).
> 

I don't suspect that is correct for one moment, and there is nothing to 
suggest such FUD in their letter. They are talking about THEIR copyright 
and that "these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of *our* 
music". The music that is predominately listened to on the internet is 
not CC licensed you'll be hard pressed to find any CC licensed music 
that is in the top 40 of any chart or of any of the most popular 
downloads on a pirate site either. CC licensed music is not what is 
drawing eyeballs to youtube, and its not the background music that 
starts playing when you visit a MySpace page.

Undoubtedly one can find plenty of startup groups distributing their 
music under a CC license and best of luck to them. But the majority of 
the music you hear isn't under a CC license, do CC licenses have any 
thing other than zero effect on the music market place? I suspect not.

What CC licenses do in the music industry is give an excuse to justify 
downloading music from P2P networks. I recall Charles Nesson making just 
such a claim no more that a month a go "Penalizing innocent infringers 
for downloading music blights creators of music who want to freely 
distribute their music."

http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2010/05/peer-to-peer-defendant-seeks-supreme.html?showComment=1275013139245#c2634227307833538599

I doubt the local basement startup band actually needs to distribute 5MB 
songs over a p2p network. That the bandwidth used would hardly trouble 
their hosting site.

Its such nonsense by Nesson and others at PK and the EFF that ASCAP want 
to counter.