[p2p-research] ASCAP Declares War on Free Culture

[Patrick Anderson]

ASCAP wrote:
> 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."

Copyleft is a *kind* of Copyright license.

Copyleft cannot undermine Copyright BY DEFINITION because
it uses that very legal instrument to enforce it's own terms.

Copyleft cannot even *exist* without Copyright, for it is through
Copyright that Copyleft has any stance at all.

Without Copyright, Copyleft would be a toothless plea for Freedom.


> these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music.

There are two problems with this claim.

1.) The phrase "our music" is in reference to authors who have
chosen to use more traditional Copyright licenses for their works,
and so are choosing to remain outside the of a Copyleft license.

The CC, PK, EFF (and I would add the FSF) would only interested
in those authors and works for the purpose of educating and
freeing them from the social problems caused by user subjugation.



2.) The phrase "do not want to pay" suggests these groups are
against commerce in general, and yet (except for the occasional
use of non-commercial clauses) they are not against the buy or
selling of Free works.  In fact, the the most used Copyleft
license of all time: the GNU GPL was started by a man (some would
say Saint) who used it to sell copies of GNU Emacs shipped on tape.


> Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.

No, their mission is to spread the word that *their* music (and
any Copyrightable work placed under Copyleft) should be free
as in Freedom.


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Patrick Anderson
Social Sufficiency Coalition
http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com