Response to misleading ASCAP statements

Last week, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) sent a fundraising letter to its members, urging them to fight against “adversaries” such as Creative Commons, falsely claiming that we are working to undermine copyright. *

Creative Commons licenses are copyright licenses - understandable and simple. CC licenses are legal tools that creators can use to offer certain use rights to the public while retaining other rights. Without copyright, these tools do not work. Artists and record labels who want to make their music available to the public for certain uses such as non-commercial copying or remixing should consider using CC licenses. Artists and labels who want to keep all their copyrights should not use CC licenses at all.

Many musicians, including Nine Inch Nails , The Beastie Boys , Youssou N'Dour , Tone , Curt Smith , David Byrne , Radiohead , Yunyu , Kristin Hersh, and Snoop Dogg, used Creative Commons licenses to share with the public. These musicians do not seek to stop making money from their music. In fact, many artists who use CC licenses are also members of royalty societies, including ASCAP. This is how we first heard about this smear campaign - many musicians who support Creative Commons received an email and redirected it to us. Some of them even added a Creative Commons donation.
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If you are also outraged by dishonest ASCAP techniques, I hope that you can help us by donating to Creative Commons — and sending a message — at this critical moment. We do not have lobbyists on wages, but with your support we can continue to work hard on behalf of the authors and consumers.

Respectfully,
Eric steuer
Creative Director Creative Commons

* For more information about the ASCAP vs Creative Commons fundraising campaign, see Boing Boing , Techdirt , ZeroPaid and Wired .


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