This type of fact misrepresentation annoys me. Painting the EFF CC and PK as organization promoting pirating is down right dishonest. I just hope the artist are smart enough to not fall for this crap.
But its true. To organizations like ASCAP, the Creative Commons is undermining copyright as they've come to understand and use it.
To ASCAP there really is no difference between pirating songs and releasing them straight to the public without a detour through compulsory license middle-man world. They miss out on the payday either way.
There is now no point whatsoever buying music. These people should not be supported.
I propose a reverse boycott: pirate the hell out of the artists you like, and donate directly to them what you think they deserve. Directly, as in skipping all the middlemen eager to take a cut of their pay and your freedom.
Practical question: How do we go about doing this? Say there's some band out there. A friend gives me a copy of one of their songs. I want to give the band $1. How do I do it?
They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth in these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.
I don't think the EFF have a particularly anti-copyright position. I mean, EFF cofounder Mitch Kapor was the cofounder of Lotus, which definitely did not give its software away for free. It seems his main motivation in the early days was a worry that a computer-cracking backlash would go too far and violate civil liberties (e.g. in the infamous Steve Jackson Games case), which isn't the same as thinking that computer cracking is a good thing. The organization now has similar concerns about whether the anti-piracy backlash is sufficiently respecting due process, protecting the rights of people who are in fact innocent, etc.
Somewhat more true of Creative Commons, but they still have an opt-in view of it: they'd like to promote a world where many people give away their music for free, under various definitions of "free" (may include e.g. no-commercial-use clauses), but it's strictly voluntary if you want to use a CC license or not.
