An ASCAP Political Action Committee fundraising letter that seeks to vilify advocacy positions of organizations like Creative Commons has been circulating the Web. As I noted in a separate story, it’s not exactly news that ASCAP has taken issue with the licenses Creative Commons advocates. Now, however, ASCAP’s legislative advocacy arm also argues in the letter that the advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation is also an enemy of artists getting paid. The EFF hasn’t made a public statement about the issue, but in a response to CDM, an EFF spokeperson says the letter “mischaracterizes” her organization.

“They imply in that letter that the EFF don’t want artists to get paid for their work,” says Rebecca Jeschke, EFF spokesperson. “For years, we’ve had a proposal for Voluntary Collective Licensing,” she says, a scheme by which users of file sharing services could contribute to funds for artists. She says the EFF has been working on the issue since 2003. “We’re interested in making sure that there’s a balance, that copyright respects the rights of the creators but also innovators and speakers, and that [the doctrine of] fair use rights [a provision of US Copyright Law] are respected.”

For more on EFF’s proposals on voluntary collective licensing, see the organization’s 2008 white paper. Ironically, the proposal explicitly cites ASCAP and similar organizations as their model for how file sharing collections could work:
A Better Way Forward: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing

The Precedent: Broadcast Radio
It has been done before.

By voluntarily creating collecting societies like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, songwriters brought broadcast radio in from the copyright cold in the first half of the 20th century.

What would cause ASCAP to lash out at EFF in the first place? While the EFF advocates on a number of issues unrelated to ASCAP, including privacy, government transparency, and free speech, it conflicts with some ASCAP positions in some of its recent intellectual property work. For instance, in regards to the case of United States of America versus ASCAP, EFF has criticized ASCAP in court battles over whether mobile phone ringtones should be licensed as performances, and thus subject to performing royalty collections. In legal analysis on EFF’s website last year, intellectual property lawyer Fred von Lohmann described ASCAP in harsh terms:

ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you’re violating copyright law by “publicly performing” it without a license. This will doubtless come as a shock to the millions of Americans who have legitimately purchased musical ringtones, contributing millions to the music industry’s bottom line. Are we each liable for statutory damages (say, $80,000) if we forget to silence our phones in a restaurant?

ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings [EFF Deeplinks]

There’s no evidence I could find that any EFF position is advocating that music “should be free,” and ASCAP isn’t clear in the letter about either what EFF policies it opposes, or even what the legislative agenda ASCAP themselves are advocating – and for which they want money. ASCAP’s legislative site is also vague, with a link to a legislative timeline that’s now 12 years out of date, before the popularity of MP3s, Napster, iTunes, iPods, and so on. Legislative recommendations made in March to the US government range from the finer points of international trade policy and enforcement in countries of China to ASCAP talking about their anti-piracy mascot for 10-17-year-old kids, skateboard-wielding “Donny the Downloader.”

ASCAP had not yet responded to CDM’s request for comment; I will follow up with them. ASCAP does, however, have a record of a advocating tougher intellectual property enforcement, including harsher penalties and monitoring.

EFF policy is clearer, however: mandatory monitoring and penalties for Internet Service Providers and mass lawsuits don’t work, says Jeschke. And, she says, that means they also don’t work for artists. “The way, for example, the RIAA has [litigated] in the name of protecting copyright hasn’t really gotten anybody paid. They gave up their lawsuit scheme. The lawsuit campaign just kept going but file sharing continued unabated.”

The EFF is arguing Wednesday in federal court against mass lawsuits. Despite the fact that the music industry dropped the approach, filmmakers of movies like “The Hurt Locker” are now going the same route:
EFF Argues Against Mass Copyright Infringement Lawsuits in Wednesday Hearing: Predatory Suits Improperly Lump Thousands of Defendants Together

Monitoring ISPs and blocking peer-to-peer file sharing, as a recent call from a number of advocacy organizations including ASCAP advocates, is also problematic, she says. When it comes to ISP monitoring, “There are clearly privacy implications for lots of people, in addition to price implications, if ISPs need to step up their enforcement.” Even worse, she says, are policies that would take away users’ Internet access if they are deemed guilty of infringement. “Most of these three strikes policies are three accusations — not three trials where you’re found guilty of infringement. People get caught in that dragnet all the time. Taking away someone’s internet access is a really big thing, and it shouldn’t happen based on three strikes.”

Since even Jeschke acknowledges that music file sharing continues, though, what about artist income? If enforcement isn’t the answer, what is? Voluntary collective licensing is still the EFF’s prescription, says Jeschke. “There will always be some new technology,” she says. “Instead of trying to put fingers in the dam and styming innovation, we need to find ways of getting artists paid.”

In doing so, though, so long as ASCAP sees the EFF as “Copyleft” advocates who only want “free music,” and EFF analysts see ASCAP as the organization confronting Girl Scouts, it’s hard to see these two organizations collaborating on solutions any time soon.

Sure, many issues around intellectual property are gray. But contributor Jo Ardalan has a disturbing story: what happens when a fundraising album gets pirated? Did illegal file sharing users know what they were doing — is there a need for a donation mechanism for these services — or is it really this bad? Apologies if this is old news – catching up during travel – but a question well worth considering. -Ed.

We all know piracy forces labels, artists and developers to incur a huge cost. Recently, however, illegal file-sharing cost a bundle for the fundraising efforts aimed to raise money for reconstructing parts of Italy after a recent and devastating April quake. Universal Music and Italian pop artists collaborated on a track entitled “Domani 21/4/09″ that sells digitally for 2 Euros and will later be sold in stores for 5 Euros. According to Variety, the track has been downloaded illegally 2 million times.

Caterina Caselli, who produced the track for free says that this project is (translated from Italian) “sort of ‘mission impossible’: in one project between eighty artists and musicians doing almost everything in one day. All have dealt with air travel at their own expense, technicians and porters have worked for free, as do the catering…Universal does not gain anything.”

Artists inovled are Jovanotti, Ligabue, Zucchero and Elisa and many others.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118003748.html?categoryid=19&cs=1
http://discomania2.myblog.it/archive/2009/05/09/domani-21-4-09-con-jovanotti-e-altri-60-artisti-serve-a-racc.html [Italian]

Quick – you’ve got a music file that someone (a collaborator, a client, a friend) needs to hear. How do you send it to them?

It seems countless Web entrepreneurs have new ways for sharing media – there are online Flash-based music editing applications, social networks, elaborate MySpace and Facebook killers. We’ve been impressed with some, like the rich player and commenting and fans on Soundcloud or the ability to create artist/band pages that really work on Bandcamp. (The latter, I do really want to spend more time with.)

But sometimes, these services are overkill. This week, I had to get some revised sound scores to a choreographer so he could have them in a rehearsal. I didn’t want to share them with my network of friends or let people remix them in Flash – I just needed to get them to him in the easiest way possible.

That’s where drop.io is just absolutely gorgeous and lovable. Using something else? This is probably better.

1. There’s not even a login. Click a button, upload a file, done. You can add your email address and password if you need to be updated, but even that isn’t necessary.
2. You get an instant short URL – either automatically generated or customizable.
3. Drop any media you want – images, music, etc.
4. You get instant in-browser playing / viewing, and embeddable links and downloads.
5. Control: non-public if you like, expire whenever you want, let others add files.
6. It’s free for basic usage, and the free account isn’t crippled. You get 100MB of space per drop. Need more than that, and you can upgrade, but I think a lot of folks will be pleased with the free plan. Fortunately, the premium plan is powerful enough (branding, bigger drops) that premium users may be able to subsidize the occasional, casual user.
7. Integration: Firefox add-in, Twitter, etc.

In other words, this kicks YouSendIt’s sorry, badly-designed, clunky and non-functional a**.

drop.io
playlist.io, announced this week, allows easy, playable playlists, so ideal if you have a set of tracks – all with the same features of drop.io

It’s probably not how you want to share video or whole projects. But for a quick audio bounce of your current track, photos of the venue you’ll be gigging at, and the like, it’s about perfect. There’s a place for more complex tools that allow you to collaborate on, say, custom designs for music software or hardware or elaborate session sets. But that makes it even nicer to have a quick tool that solves a simple problem.

And speaking of “tools that get things done up against tight deadlines,” drop.io has added a whole new dimension:

Real-time functionality

The folks at drop.io (who work just over the river from me in DUMBO Brooklyn, that “other” Silicon Alley) have been hard at work on new real-time functionality.

What this means is, you can instantly add media, notes, and chat message, even via a mobile device, and everything is there instantly. So, someone calls on the phone and wants a file. It’s up there instantly, and you can even comment on it, make changes, and get it done.

Speaking as someone who is constantly missing deadlines, um, I mean regularly procrastinating things until the last minute, uh, erm …. uh, always overbooked and dealing with crises … uh, I mean, “moving at the speed of innovation,” this sounds like a lifesaver / problem solver.

There’s no question this is of use to music pros and the ilk. I know the people doing music and sound design for South Park have regularly emailed MP3 files in order to get them on the air on Comedy Central the same day. We’re a “just-in-time” — or, perhaps, “barely on time” crowd, the digital creatives.

I’ll be really curious to hear how you use this, and what other tools are out there you like. And because drop.io is a relatively simple tool, I’m equally interested to see what might be possible with their open API. Let us know what you think.

Updated: Via comments, Kyran notes that Dropbox is also a really strong option. What I like about Dropbox: desktop clients, sync capabilities, easy sharing of whole folders, revisions, and most of the chat features. What I like about Drop.io: stupidly-simple quick file uploading one file + url. Drop.io is to me sort of Twitter-style file uploading. Dropbox is also a really terrific solution. I could actually see using a little of both, which is why lightweight solutions are nice.

Music DRM may be a thing of the past, online sales may be growing, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. record industry has missed a beat in its ongoing legal and lobbying campaign against music piracy online.

The latest battle starts today in Rhode Island federal court. The difference this time: the RIAA and record companies will have to face a Harvard Law prof and his students. Prof. Charles Nesson and his team allege the industry is abusing the court system, unfairly making “examples” out of the people they’re suing, and invading privacy.

Whatever your feelings about the righteousness of litigation as a deterrent to piracy, the case in particular gets pretty strange. Rhode Island residents Arthur and Judie Tenenbaum face having their home computer seized as evidence, despite the fact that even the industry legal team doesn’t contend this particular computer was used for the alleged downloading. The couple’s son faces a stunning $1 million+ in possible damages, but only allegedly shared seven songs on Kazaa – and the couple didn’t even own the computer when their son lived with them.

The team will be up for interviews, so I’ll try to follow up – let us know if you have questions for them. More here:

RIAA v. Joel Tenenbaum @ the blog CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion [Harvard Law]

Updated: Early word is that the hearing has been rescheduled, Prof. Nesson isn’t admitted to argue in a Rhode Island court, and the judge (rightfully) denied the RIAA motion to look at Joel Tenenbaum’s parents’ computer, since it wasn’t involved. More official details forthcoming.

In other news, Jim Griffin of Warner Music Group continues to push a plan to offer a blanket license to campuses to avoid litigation by allowing students to pay a voluntary monthly fee to download music from file sharing services. It’s not entirely clear to me why this scheme continues to attack such ire online. Ars Technica rightfully says hold the kneejerk responses and wait for the details. There’s certainly a precedent: clubs, bars, concert venues, and the like already pay blanket license fees for performance rights, and the revenue is ultimately distributed to the people who own the work (think publishers and writers). That’s not to say the plan isn’t rife with potential problems, and it seems to me could even endanger efforts to encourage things like Creative Commons licensing. But without more details, it’s tough to criticize the idea without taking into account both its pitfalls and potential.

One thing everyone ought to be able to agree on, perhaps even some of the beleaguered record labels: ongoing litigation has been ugly and unproductive, and still doesn’t solve the underlying problem. With broad wireless Internet access on the horizon, even if I were to play devil’s advocate and assume I was an RIAA member wanting to stop campus sharing, it seems just scaring campuses into blocking these services isn’t really a solution.

And as artists, our primary concern ought to be that these responses aren’t doing what we most desperately need: establishing a real business model and promotional possibilities for emerging distribution online.

SoundCloud, the music and sound sharing service we saw launch this month has added a very important feature: support for different licenses. When you upload tracks, you can elect to protect your work with a conventional copyright or opt instead for a Creative Commons license. That’s an important feature I’d like to see all these services support. The one thing Creative Commons and conventional copyright advocates agree on is that being explicit about what rights you want to your work is essential.

Naturally, this means not only that you can upload works, but that SoundCloud could soon become a rich repository for CC-licensed work to use as video soundtracks or sample, in the way that Flickr’s CC search has fired up lots of (legal) image use. We have heard some dissatisfaction from readers about SoundCloud’s pricing scheme, but this announcement means SoundCloud remains one to watch — even if you’re not personally uploading to it.

SoundCloud also came up with a unique idea: they created a drop box for CC-licensed works which they played at a party.

You can read about the new licenses and other news tidbits on the SoundCloud blog:
Introducing SoundCloud Creative Commons Support

I’ll be taking both for a test drive, but as I’m looking at them, any other services we should be considering for a prize fight? Any first impressions on which you like best?

Be sure to vote in wire to the ear’s poll, too; we’ll be watching.

Bandcamp Screencast from Ethan Diamond on Vimeo.

Could meshes of data help the creation of new, international radio broadcasting and receiving mechanisms – even in rural areas? Artist Juan Esteban Rios proposes a design to do that. It’s not just a software concept; a hardware design would make the idea accessible even to people who don’t own or know how to use computers.

It seems a powerful idea for musicians, as well, particularly if it helped eliminate the need for dedicated streaming servers. (There may be others who are more familiar with P2P broadcasting technology out there; if so, I’d love to hear from you.) Imagine tuning into a gamelan performance in Jakarta, then a live electronic music evening from Brazil, then a performance in rural sub-Saharan African (relayed to better infrastructure in Lagos).

The technology here is radio-based (see clarification from the creator of the video in comments), but mesh and P2P technologies involving the Internet — or a bridge from remote, radio- or satellite-based communication — could likewise apply.

Video feature by designguide.tv, found via toxi.