ASCAP Attacks Creative Commons, Advocacy Groups as Anti-Copyright, Anti-Artist
An ASCAP fundraising letter revealed last week that the American performing rights organization is invoking fears of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Creative Commons in order to raise money. ASCAP appears to be repeating, now in the more heated language of fundraising, arguments it has had with the Creative Commons license in the past. For its part, Creative Commons insists most of its licenses don’t preclude performing rights bodies like ASCAP from collecting funds.
In the letter, sent on behalf of their Legislative Fund for the Arts, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) argues to its members that that these organizations undermine the value of music:
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 in 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.
This is why your help now is vital. We fear that our opponents 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.
Attacks on Creative Commons by ASCAP are nothing new. The organization argued in a 2007 essay (and subsequent report) that elements of the license, which is applied to copyrighted works, meant “artists should give up all or some of their rights.” As noted in a rebuttal by Creative Commons’ Laurence Lessig, some of those claims were incorrect. Among other items, ASCAP said that the “licenses ask creators to waive the ability to collect royalties,” which isn’t true of the non-commercial CC licenses.
The claims in the fundraising letter were more bluntly inaccurate. Creative Commons’ licenses are all built on copyright, and as non-exclusive licenses, they do not in any way prevent artists from being paid for music. They don’t even, as the organization observed three years ago, preclude ASCAP license collection – at least not on works licensed with the non-commercial provision.
Creative Commons licenses do reserve fewer rights for the creator, by definition. All the licenses currently in use include provisions to allow works to be freely distributed via peer-to-peer file services, and depending on the license chosen, may open up other possibilities for use and remixing. But nowhere does the letter acknowledge that an artist must choose to license their work; unlike Copyright, CC licenses are not automatic, nor is the CC organization advocating that they should be. Creative Commons spokespeople have previously told CDM that they aren’t even suggesting that CC licenses are the right choice for everyone in every circumstance. As advocates of their own license, on the other hand, they have explicitly said that their hope is that the license will help artists make money, not that all music “should be free.”
The blog ZeroPaid covered the initial controversy and criticized ASCAP’s take on Creative Commons as an attack on creator choice:
Creative Commons is a middle-of-the-road approach when it comes to copyright and enables creators to tell consumers, in plain language, what they can and cannot do with their content. In short, it’s an option for artists. Any attack on Creative Commons is an attack on an artists right to choose what they feel is appropriate for their chosen distribution channel.
ASCAP Declares War on Free Culture
Creative Commons responded on the same site:
Creative Commons Responds to ASCAP
Additional coverage:
ASCAP Claiming That Creative Commons Must Be Stopped; Apparently They Don’t Actually Believe In Artist Freedom [Techdirt]
ArtsJournal blog Mind the Gap observes that the fictional characters on Glee are in conflict with current US Copyright Law, and expresses surprise that the black-and-white claims of ASCAP’s fundraising letter would target the EFF, Creative Commons, and Public Knowledge. He asks if any card-carrying, royalty check-cashing ASCAP members would share how they feel, and they do – largely to express frustration with ASCAP.
The Right Balance on Copying [Mind the Gap]
ASCAP membership dues can go toward advocacy; only the ASCAP Foundation is a 501c3 charitable organization; the latter supports education and talent development. I’m curious, then, what royalty-check cashing ASCAP members think of these issues, as well.
Thanks to Jason Phoenix for the tip, and incidentally to my friend Mike Rugnetta, whom I was surprised to see pop up in the stories. (Internet: population, one dozen?)
View full post on Create Digital Music
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10 Comments so far
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@Tom: Yes, absolutely… I think there is some stuff to criticize. Such is the irony, though, not only that ASCAP would go after these particular organizations, but that they’d use it to raise money for legislative efforts, some of which are unrelated.
The fundamental problem, though, is that no one has easy answers. The sorts of record sales that generated big volumes are evaporating, and the landscape for the whole distribution apparatus is shifting. And it isn’t a stretch to say that sometimes it’s shifting to free, or to things with such tiny royalty slices that they cease to generate income. Because of their charter, ASCAP is naturally going to try to make everything into a performance royalty. But obviously that’s going to sometimes defy sense. I sure don’t have the answers, though. I hope to run the EFF conversation interview I put together later today – waiting on a fact check from them – but while they expressed commitment to getting artists paid, they didn’t have any terrific solutions outside of voluntary collections via P2P. Of course, it’s not in their charter to solve that; it is in ASCAP’s, which suggests to me that cooperation rather than open hostility might be more productive.
This one is just buggy. What next, you can’t share your own music with friends and family unless you charge them?
“Well, mom, I’m afraid that is gonna set you back 99 cents. Nothing personal. I realize I wrote it for your birthday, but rights are just not right anymore.”
What these people need to remember is that copyright is not a ‘right’. It only exists so far as most people agree that it is fair and should be respected. If the copyright owner tries to impose unreasonable restrictions on use, or to gouge the public with unreasonable prices, the respect will be lost and copyright ignored. Those seeking ever more draconian sanctions against people who choose to disregard copyright are doomed to fail, and will alienate the very people they hope to sell to. The days of paying $20 for a piece of plastic containing a dozen tracks 6 of which are garbage and 4 re-releases are long gone. Get over it. And to artists, music (or whatever) is worth only what people are prepared to pay for it. And the RIAA needs to remember – most of the world is not America.
@ Tom – amen
@ Kyran – amen, too
@Gary Gore
“I look forward to the day when recorded music has no value whatsoever.”
I’m completely opposed to that statement. For a simple reason: I’m currently writing, composing, rehearsing and eventually recording an album with a band this year, and so are many other musicians all around the globe. And you are telling us that the hours, days, weeks we’re spending working in our artistic project should be worth absolutely nothing as a principle, regardless of the quality? Unacceptable.
“Buying cd’s directly from musicians you enjoy at their live performances is the best way to support them.”
Live performance is certainly the main income source and activity for the contemporary musicians (and maybe THAT will kill auto-tune pseudo-musicians), but I don’t see why it should mean that they should be forced to give away for free the music they’ve painstakingly composed, arranged and recorded over several weeks or months should have no value (especially, like Kyran said, in the case of non-performing musicians / composers). Unless of course, they do decide to give it away for free, why is a valid option. In any case, if recorded music loses its value, then why would you buy cd’s from bands at their concerts when you could just get them for free?
There aren’t any simple answers for this issue. The old model where record companies ripped off artists and consumers is on the way out and I’m glad for it. But recording your music is part of your work as an artist and some new model should be developed that allows artists to charge a *fair* price for their music (with less middlemen and intermediariy companies charging up the price) or give some of it or all of it for free, whichever they choose.
Which brings me to the article. ASCAP’s attitude won’t take them anywhere. People will either CHOOSE CC (to give consumers a taste of some or all of their music without the fear of having the RIAA jump out of your modem and strangling you) or they will CHOOSE copyrighting their work (if they want to sell it or just stop people from sampling it and using it in adverts or political rallies without their permission). The fact that CC exists is not in itself a challenge to copyright, it’s simply an attempt to fill a hole in copyright law. Many artists want to register their music and be credited, but they also want to have it freely distributed, used, abused and/or remixed. Personally, I still prefer to copyright my work so I can have some say on what happens to it.
The day recorded music has no value whatsoever I have a problem.
I like to produce music, I spend ages in my studio finetuning sounds. On the other hand my music doesn’t really lend itself for live performance (or at least my way of making it doesn’t really translate well to a live environment) and there are a lot of dj’s who are a lot better at giving a great party than me.
Basically: if recorded music has no value, the act of recording/producing it and making it sound as good as possible will also have no value anymore (or very very little).
Bas
As James says, here also the performance of music in shops requires payment to a performing rights society.
I have a problem with the ‘all the way to the bottom’ argument – that once music is worthless then only the pristine will make it any more. When you graft it onto any other labour it seems odd – ‘when no one can make money from farming then only REAL farmers will keep doing it!’ ‘when no one can make money from surgery then only REAL surgeons will do it!’ and so on. Hidden in the argument is the idea that making music is not real work, or if you want to be nice about it – somehow more elevated than real work. Really? Why? It seems like work to me. Or is this a judgement by taste – my music is real – theirs is not. Or does it deny the need for management, for people to distribute, for stores to stock the albums? That’s a lovely vision but it’s just not real.
No, there’s never going to ever be time where no one makes money from music. It’s just going to be a smaller group.
As for uploading to sites – as the record companies go down, the aggregators go up. Are our new masters really any better? They are better at spinning a fable about ‘clouds’ and ‘commons’, and it’s that tale, like all other marketing, that has be critiqued.
@SlowX: I’m not sure how the law in the US works with your example, but if you went to ExxonMobil in the UK, and they were playing michael jackson on the radio, then the estate would be making money from this. Here, the PRS provides obligatory licenses to public places which want to play music (radio, cd, live etc), and the money from this is distributed between the rights holders according to statistical data about the number of plays in different locations.
@Gary Gore Amen brother!
…
Hi guys don’t think anything I have copyrighted your soul. Your ideas aren’t yours, I license them to you for a bit tax…
Keep blank minded, good boys, good boys…
…
@ gary: amen.
the part that upsets me the most is the paternalistic attempt to tell people where the real evil is (like in witch hunts or in racist superstition).
I have no problem with the fact that an artist (or programmer) wants to license his work under a close license: if it’s reasonably priced and I like his work I’ll buy it; if it costs too much for me I won’t buy it and still respect his licensing decisions; if I don’t really like his licensing decision I’ll simply boicot him.
What I can’t really accept is that people try to tell me how I have to license my own work. This is a real copyright infringement.