Last month the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) sent an ill-advised fundraising letter to its members, signed by the organization’s president. The letter made obviously false and easily rebutted claims about Creative Commons and was lambasted across the net. See our response for links.
Now the ASCAP president has posted an equally misinformed letter on the ASCAP website. Summary: The anti-copyright “copyleft” movement is attempting to silence me!
Every bit of this is incorrect. To the extent there is a single movement the ASCAP president is attempting to criticize, it would be called the free culture movement. Presumably the ASCAP president thinks “copyleft” sounds more threatening than “free culture”. But copyleft, or a licensing requirement to share adaptations with the same freedoms as a source work, is one mechanism used to protect free culture (in the Creative Commons license suite we call this mechanism ShareAlike), and as a copyright licensing mechanism, it builds on copyright.
Furthermore, nobody in the free culture movement is attempting to silence the ASCAP president. The remedy for misinformation is more information–last month’s ASCAP fundraising letter was linked by many free culture blogs, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig offered to debate the ASCAP president (incidentally, the ASCAP president’s latest letter claims that Lessig is a founder of the “copyleft movement”–also not true; Lessig is arguably a founder of the free culture movement, but to the extent there is a copyleft movement, its founder would clearly be Richard Stallman), and right here, we’re linking to the ASCAP president’s letter–go read it, blog about it, post the link–make sure the ASCAP president is not silenced!
For a blow-by-blow of this affair so far, see Mathias Klang, lead of Creative Commons Sweden, on ASCAPs charge of the light brigade.
Thanks to everyone who donated to Creative Commons in response to ASCAP’s deceptive fundraising letter. You can still do this!
Posted 27 July 2010