American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) filed copyright infringement suits today against 24 eating and drinking establishments in 15 states. The establishments were charged with publicly performing the works of ASCAP’s artists without permission (read: money).
“Informing business owners of their obligations under Federal Copyright Law is one of ASCAP’s key roles,” said Vincent Candilora, Senior Vice President of Licensing at ASCAP. “We provide any business using music the opportunity to receive permission through acceptance of a license covering the use of over 8 million copyrighted songs and compositions…”
Not looking good for the 24 businesses–ASCAP batted .1000 with their copyright litigation in 2004. More here from ASCAP press release via Yahoo and the Nashville City Paper
Sounds like …
An opportunity to play royalty-free classical music. Or for restaurants with a pre-1923 kitsch.
Or hope for songwriters participating in the Creative Commons.
Anything to start fighting back to reclaim our culture.
Re:Sounds like …
Reclaim our culture? Not to be rude, but what the heck does that mean?
The performers own the rights to their work, they arrange for ASCAP (or BMI) to administer those rights. When ASCAP takes an aggressive position to enforce the rights it is a bad thing?
Where do you park your car, I want to drive it until it runs out of gas and then dump it somewhere.
If someone owns a restaurant and they want to play music then there are a plethora of choices by which they can provide music. They can obtain it through a commercial music provider this including the license fee in their subscription. They can have live music and pay the appropriate license fee to ASCAP or BMI depending on the music the musicians play. They can amplify broadcast radio to speakers through the establishment and pay the appropriate license fee. If they want to avoid a license fee, they can simply write and perform their own music.
If music in bars and restaurants is the sum total of our culture you want to take back then we should probably consider ourselves culturally bankrupt.
The creative commons is fantastic, but it is unworkable model for continued success. There needs to be some quid pro quo for the musician’s work. As they become more widely regarded they will have to spend more time on their work. If this is done without remuneration then it must yield to work which supplies the essentials of life. Sure, I’d like to sit around and strum my guitar all day but I have to put cat food on the table.
If you want free music get (from a library) the CDs from the various military bands and copy them. There is no copyright protection to things produced by our tax dollars. Rebroadcast them or replay them as you will. It is not all patriotic music, heck the USCG even has a harpist.
Re:Sounds like …
Have you actually read anything on the Creative Commons site? CC isn’t opposed to creators being paid for their work; it’s not opposed to copyright. The whole idea is that creators should be able to yield some of their rights if they choose to.
There’s a huge difference between wanting some balance in copyright and being against remuneration for creators. Even if some people refuse to recognize that difference.
For the record, I’m with ASCAP on this one…
Re:Sounds like …
Well Walt, apparently not enough. I had a creative commons license on my weblog (and still do I think) I guess I’ll have to go read it all again.
Then I can speak intelligently about it. (If I will speak intelligently about it is another story 🙂
Re:Sounds like …
It depends on the CC license–one of them, after all, is the Founder’s License, which grants no rights at all but pledges material to the public domain after either 28 or 56 years (don’t remember which).
The most common CC combination, I suspect, is the one I use at C&I: BY-NC, which allows reproduction (and derivation) with full credit, but ***not*** for a price. It restricts commercial exploitation.
Yes, most of the classic CC licenses allow copying without a fee–but not all.
And CC itself makes a big point that it’s about more choices and flexibility within copyright, not about depriving creators of revenue.