On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:33 PM, <wiki-l...@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-l...@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 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l