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

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:33 PM,  <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 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.

Nesson is a borderline drug-induced lunatic.  He is also not
affiliated with any of the organizations named in the ASCAP letter, as
far as I know.

Though the comment that you quoted isn't that outrageous.  "Penalizing
___innocent infringers___ for downloading music blights creators of
music who want to freely distribute their music." (em mine).   The
concern isn't limited to P2P, it is also the risk of stigmatizing
things which are available at no cost.

It's a pretty real risk— outside of the world of zero marginal cost
informational goods "free" is strong a sign of a hidden catch, so
people tend to have the wrong intuitions.  I've made a decent amount
of money selling people my photographic and software works under
licensing _more_ restrictive than the licenses they were already
publicly available under simply because some manager was equating free
with dangerous and paid with safe.

This is a pretty uncontroversial argument. Slamming someone with a
million dollar lawsuit for downloading something which they honestly
and reasonably believed to be free would absolutely blight those who
are willingly distributing their works at no cost.   Now— the question
of any of the actual existence of lawsuits against innocent
infringers, is another matter entirely!

But having to demonstrate that the infringement was something a
reasonable person ought to have known about before prevailing these
bits of million dollar litigation would probably not unduly burden
artists enforcing their copyright. ... or at least thats a discussion
worth having and isn't something which should be perceived as
automatically dangerous to people who depend on strong copyright for
their livelihood.

On LWN I commented with a bit of criticism towards CC, PK, and the EFF
because I don't think they've done enough to distance themselves from
copyright abolitionist and crazy people like Nesson
[http://lwn.net/Articles/393798/].  But it's a big step to go from
saying that they could do more to distinguish their positions to
saying that they are actually advocating these things.  I don't think
you can cite much in the way of evidence to support that position.


On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:57 PM,  <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> No, what ASCAP means by that is that they want to get a fee when
>> people distribute CC-licensed music too.
>
> Do ASAC also expect to get a fee when music by people represented by BMI
> or SESAC gets distributed? I think not. So why would you assume that
> they expect a fee when any music is distributed by an artist that isn't
> signed up to them?
[snip]


Yes.   That isn't their official position, but their folks in the
field take a position very much like that.  "You can't prove that you
won't eventually play something by one of our artists, even by
accident, so you _must_ pay up".

I could bore you with my personal story of ASCAP extortion making my
life unfun, but there are plenty of similar stories on the internet:
http://blindman.15.forumer.com/a/ascap-closing-down-live-music-venues_post35872.html