Wow, I asked for your thoughts and you responded. A lot of amazing dialog has emerged here on Mind the Gap re: that ASCAP VS EFF PK CC BY-NC-SA fundraising letter in particular and the state of copyright in the digital age in general. If I were a member of Congress, perhaps I would have a catchy name for this battle of the acronyms by now, but as commenter Blik pointed out about halfway through, “The problem is there really is no secret war and now you just pissed off the internet.”
Indeed, we welcomed a number of first-time visitors over the weekend, thanks to Twitter and Facebook mentions, and links from sources such as:
Slashdot: Creative Commons Responds To ASCAP Letter
Wired: ASCAP Assails Free-Culture, Digital-Rights Groups
In addition to the 50-some comments contributed to the Mind the Gap post, hundreds of comments went up on those sites, demonstrating just how personally important these issues are to readers coming at them from many creative specialties. The discussions provided some really interesting insight into how people, particularly those working in the fields of music and technology, are currently thinking about copyright, creativity, and economics.
For my part, the conversation has only strengthened my perception of how insanely confused people are about how the current system is even supposed to function. As Mike Rugnetta, the author of that original tweet, pointed out in a follow up: “If Ive learned 1 thing from this ASCAP situation its that NO ONE – including those who get PRO checks – understands how rights mgmt works…Myself included; I have NO idea. Obviously this is a very broken system.” Even the authors of the letter that touched off all this debate seemed not to fully understand or were distorting the positions of the organizations they were calling out as hostile (as Marc Weidenbaum noted, “My gosh, it’s like suing the freaking Quakers. All CC does is offer an alternate approach — and the two aren’t even incompatible.”).
Hopefully all the conversation here and elsewhere will ultimately help advance positive change in the field as to how we share, protect, and support our intellectual work in the digital age. The entire comment chain is well worth your time for the myriad perspectives shared, but Gurdonark perhaps put it most eloquently:
I favor a copyright system, and the ability for artists, musicians and writers (and other creative folks) to earn royalties. Yet one can keep a strong copyright system, and still encourage liberal licensing and a vibrant public domain. When folks argue that nobody will fund creative projects absent a copyright system, that raises the strawman that everyone wishes to abolish copyright. To the contrary, many of us wish to preserve copyright, and to merely make it more workable in the modern age.
http://www.ascap.com/playback/2010/07/action/Copyright.aspx
When folks argue that nobody will fund creative projects absent a copyright system, that raises the strawman that no-one CAN be paid for their creative work if copyright is abolished.
To the contrary, many of us wish to abolish copyright, to make it possible for everyone to share and build upon their own culture, for artists to be paid directly by their fans in the modern age.
One doesn’t need a monopoly in copies if one is selling the art instead.