Reposted with permission from Creative Commons:
ASCAP's Attack on Creative Commons
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has launched a campaign to raise money from its members to hire lobbyists to protect them against the dangers of "Copyleft." Groups such as Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are "mobilizing," ASCAP describes in a letter to its members, "to promote 'Copyleft' in order to undermine our 'Copyright.'" "[O]ur opponents are influencing Congress against the interests of music creators," ASCAP warns. Indeed, as the letter ominously predicts, this is ASCAP's "biggest challenge ever." (Historians of BMI might be a bit surprised about that claim in particular.)
As a founding board member of two of those three organizations, and former board member of the third, I guess I should be proud that a 96 year old organization would be so terrified of our work. And I would be if there were anything in this fundraising pitch that was actually true.
But there is not. Creative Commons, Public Knowledge and EFF are not aiming to "undermine" copyright; they are not spreading the word that "music should be free"; and there is certainly not yet any rally within Congress in favor of any of the issues that these groups do push.
I know Creative Commons best, so let me address ASCAP's charges as they apply to it.
Creative Commons is a nonprofit that provides copyright licenses pro bono to artists and creators so that they can offer their creative work with the freedom they intend it to carry. (Think not "All Rights Reserved" but "Some Rights Reserved.") Using these licenses, a musician might allow his music to be used for noncommercial purposes (by kids making a video, for example, or for sharing among friends), so long as attribution to the artist is kept. Or an academic might permit her work to be shared for whatever purpose, again, so long as attribution is maintained. Or a collaborative project such as a wiki might guarantee that the collective work of the thousands who have built the wiki remains free for everyone forever. Hundreds of millions of digital objects from music to video to photographs to architectural designs to scientific journals to teachers lesson plans to books and to blogs have been licensed in this way, and by an extraordinarily diverse range of creators or rights holders including Nine Inch Nails, Beastie Boys, Youssou N'Dour, Curt Smith, David Byrne, Radiohead, Jonathan Coulton, Kristin Hersh, and Snoop Dogg, as well as Wikipedia and the White House.
These licenses are, obviously, copyright licenses. They depend upon a firm and reliable system of copyright for them to work. Thus CC could have no interest in "undermining" the very system the licenses depend upon copyright. Indeed, to the contrary, CC only aims to strengthen the objectives of copyright, by giving the creators a simpler way to exercise their rights.
These licenses are also (and also obviously) voluntary. CC has never argued that anyone should waive any of their rights. (I've been less tolerant towards academics, but I have never said that any artist is morally obligated to waive any right granted to her by copyright.)
And finally, these licenses reveal no objective to make "music free." Nine Inch Nails, for example, have earned record sales from songs licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
Instead, the only thing Creative Commons wants to make free is artists free to choose how best to license their creative work. This is one value we firmly believe in that copyright was meant for authors, and that authors should have the control over their copyright.
This isn't the first time that ASCAP has misrepresented the objectives of our organization. But could we make it the last? We have no objection to collective rights organizations: They too were an innovative and voluntary solution (in America at least) to a challenging copyright problem created by new technologies. And I at least am confident that collecting rights societies will be a part of the copyright landscape forever.
So here's my challenge, ASCAP President Paul Williams: Let's address our differences the way decent souls do. In a debate. I'm a big fan of yours, and If you'll grant me the permission, I'd even be willing to sing one of your songs (or not) if you'll accept my challenge of a debate. We could ask the New York Public Library to host the event. I am willing to do whatever I can to accommodate your schedule.
Let's meet and address these perceived differences with honesty and good faith. No doubt we have disagreements (for instance, I love rainy days, and Mondays rarely get me down). But on the issues that your organization and mine care about, there should be no difference worthy of an attack.
Meanwhile, you can read more about Creative Commons here, and support its response to the ASCAP campaign here.
Via
Afterdawn, the U.S. Government Accounting Office has issued a report that indicates that the FBI, Federal Trade Commission, and the U.S. Border Patrol have simply made up numbers about losses the entertainment industries have incurred due to internet piracy. And, of course, the RIAA and the MPAA have happily passed these numbers along.
Scientific American has a gloss in this month's issue on the decline of U.S. broadband access over the first decade of the 21st century (no link provided because access is limited to paying subscribers):
At the turn of the millennium, the U.S. had some of the best broadband access in the world. It reached more homes, and at a lower price, than most every other industrial country. Ten years later the U.S. is a solid C-minus student, ranking slightly below average on nearly every metric.
Just how the U.S. lost its edge and how it plans to get it back are the issues before the Federal Communications Commission as it prepares to launch the most significant overhaul of network policy since the birth of the Web. As part of last year's stimulus package, Congress provided $7.2 billion to expand broadband access to every American. It also required the FCC to outline a plan for how to make that happen. The outcome of the FCC's deliberations, due February 17, could determine not just control over the broadband infrastructure but also the nature of the Internet itself.
The reason for this decline can be traced the the FCC's decision (under the stewardship of Bush administration appointees) to exempt the telecoms and cable companies from the open access provision of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which forced the local telephone monopolies to grant access on reasonable terms to any and all long-distance telephone service providers. The result of this act was a dramatic reduction in long-distance phone costs, and a corresponding decline in profits for the telecoms.
The exemption the FCC put in place for broadband services has had the direct effect of putting the U.S. in a distinctly inferior position on broadband access across a variety of metrics, most notably download speeds and cost of service. But Verizon and Comcast love it. With the FCC now under new management, it looks as though it is poised to rescind the previous rules and bring open access back to internet services.
the idea that "too big to fail" is just too big is gaining traction, with recent comments from Alan Greenspan, Paul Volker, and Mervyn King. Simon Johnson over at
The Baseline Scenario has a good summary.
Apparently, it can. Link
here. I'm glad I was young in the '70's.
Simon Johnson has an important post up at the
Baseline Scenario suggesting that Too Big To Fail financial institutions are not only too big, but counter-productive to the American economy. He supports this view by pointing to the amount of unproductive rent-seeking behavior these institutions engage in to ensure their own continued profitability. (This, of course, is precisely the problem that David and Michele have pointed up in their book.)
From Johnson's post:
Finance is rent-seeking. The sector has devoted great resources to tilting all playing fields in its direction. Consumers are taken advantage of; consumer protection is vehemently opposed. And great risks are taken, with the downside handed off to the government (and the consumers again, as taxpayers). This downside protection allows an overexpansion of debt-financed finance - reaching the preposterous levels seen in mid-2008 and now re-emerging.
Finance in its modern American form is not productive. It is not conducive to further sustained economic growth. The GDP accruing from these activities is illusory - most of finance is simply a tax on what is done by more productive members of society and a diversion of talent away from genuinely productivity-enhancing activities.
The rise of China does not necessarily imply slowdown or demise for the United States. But if they specialize in making things and we specialize in finance, they will eat our lunch.
Via my colleague Michael Trick,
Groklaw has an interesting post pointing out that the recently unveiled Wolfram|Alpha computation service makes some pretty strong claims if not to copyright, then to the right for attribution, for results the service returns.
For example, if you plug x^2*sin(x) into the search window, you will get back a graph of this function, as well as a number different series representations for the function. Wolfram|Alpha claims that these materials are protected. Individual use of them must be attributed, and any commercial use requires a specific commercial license. The problem with this, though, is that any table of mathematical formulas will provide both the graphs and series representations for this and many other functions. Furthermore, it could be reasonably argued that these are facts, which generally can't be copyrighted.
The Groklaw post contrasts this with Google's terms of service, which basically says you can't use the service to break the law.
I would also contrast Wolfram|Alpha's service with that of Economagic, which provides publicly available economic data, and, for subscribers, the ability to generate graphs, run regressions, download data to spreadsheets, and do other kinds of data analysis. None of these results are held to be protected, and Economagic requires no specific attribution. There are also no limitations or additional requirements for any commercial use of the service. The subscription fee is also easily within reach of any economics graduate student (which is the site's target audience).
So, I would have to agree with the Groklaw post that Wolfram|Alpha seems to be overreaching.
There's a great article in the NYT's Business section today by
David Pogue on the various monopolistic practices of the cell phone industry. These range from the hidden subsidization of phone purchases, to double billing practices, to the fact that Verizon typically rakes in over $800 million each year by making customers waste 15 seconds listening to voice mail recording or retrieval instructions!
Well worth reading.
