Techdirt vs. ASCAP (Round 2)

Piracy is not theft

Six months ago, we linked to a Techdirt article wherein Blaise Alleyne challenged the premises of ASCAP’s “Bill of Rights” for Songwriters. One of our regular commenters immediately rebutted Alleyne’s arguments (“That post is BS and uses disingenuous comparisons to make untenable points.”). It took him a while, but Alleyne finally responded:

The problem with the copyright crutch is that digital audio files are an infinite good. The price naturally tends toward zero because the supply is infinite. Musicians and music fans alike would be much better off leveraging the infinite value of digital music (i.e. spreading thread music as far and wide as possible), and capitalize on the scarcities associated with their music (e.g. physical goods like CDs, concert tickets, access to the musician, the ability to create new music, etc.).

ASCAP is stuck trying to enforce artificial scarcity on music through draconian copyright measures. Good luck with that. Musicians would be better off not to get sucked into the sinking ship, but to leverage the economics of abundance to their advantage.

I’m linking it to here so it doesn’t just get lost in the itty bitty comments section…