A crowd-sourced effort by common people to entice Congress the same way that corporations do: monetary compensation. Even assuming it doesn’t work in a direct way to help convince Congress to drop SOPA/PIPA outright, it does point out the absurdity of treating corporations as people.
From the text of the statement:
ACTA is the predictably deficient product of a deeply flawed process. What started as a relatively simple proposal to coordinate customs enforcement has transformed into a sweeping and complex new international intellectual property and internet regulation with grave consequences for the global economy and governments’ ability to promote and protect the public interest.
A useful statement that sheds light on an agreement that, while it will significantly impact the lives of billions, was cobbled together entirely in secret. What makes it even worse is that it seems like, while the general populace did not have much representation in these meetings, several industries did. I wonder how that happened…
[via Slashdot]
ASCAP is the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. As per the letter they sent to their members, they “are facing [their] biggest challenge ever.” Continued from the letter:
Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote “Copyleft” in order to undermine our “Copyright.”
It is not entirely clear to me how they are being challenged by the free culture movement. Seems to me that the various free source licenses do not attempt to push out traditional licenses but offer artists other ways to license their work.
Regardless, instead of substantively attempting to grapple with the free culture movement (e.g., Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation, etc.), what do they do? Set up a fund to lobby Congress and plead with their members to donate to it… Nicely done, ASCAP.
[via Slashdot]
