Why should artists be any different?
That's why.
Posted on 09/11/2009 2:23:31 PM PDT by a fool in paradise
Some of the world's largest recording companies are suing "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," claiming producers violated their copyrights by playing more than 1,000 songs without permission.
Many of the songs were played during the "dance over" segment of the show, when DeGeneres dances from the stage to the interview area, often through the audience.
According to the suit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Nashville, when representatives of the recording companies asked defendants why they hadn't obtained licenses to use the songs, defendants said they didn't "roll that way."
"As sophisticated consumers of music, Defendants knew full well that, regardless of the way they rolled, under the Copyright Act, and under state law for the pre-1972 recordings, they needed a license to use the sound recordings lawfully," the suit states.
Scott Rowe, spokesman for the show's Telepictures Productions, wrote in an e-mailed statement that the company has been working with the record labels for months to resolve the issue and remains willing to resolve it on "amicable and reasonable terms."
Rowe said the issue does not involve DeGeneres, who on Wednesday was named as the fourth judge on TV's "American Idol," and whom Rowe calls "a tremendous music enthusiast and advocate."
The suit claims the daytime talk show has used copyrighted music without permission since its inception, including "recordings by virtually every major current artist of popular music." It claims the show routinely used some of the most popular songs of the day, which the record labels don't license for daytime television at any price...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
American Idol jumped the shark.
As I understand it ASCAP cops will go after bars that play records on a record player without paying the fees. Nothing gets past them. What kind of game did the Ellens think they were playing?
Why doesn’t Ellen just redefine the word “copyright” to mean whatever she wants, as with the word “marriage”?
How many times should artists get paid for the same piece of work?
If I’m a truck driver, I pick up a load and drive it from A-B and I get paid for it. Once.
If I’m a bank clerk I work five-eight-hour days and I get paid for that work. Once.
If I’m a cement worker I pour a driveway and I get paid for it. Once.
If I’m a pizza maker I make a pizza and I get paid for it. Once.
Why should artists be any different? Sing a song. Get paid for it. Once.
Hmmm ... didn’t pay ASCAP or BMI huh ...
>>> defendants said they didn’t “roll that way.” <<<<
They didn’t roll that way?
Ha ha.
I am looking through the copy of The Onion that I just picked up on the way home from work, and I cannot find this story.
If I have patented an invention and you want to build something using that invention. I could charge you a one time fee or I could charge you a smaller amount each time you use it.
>>> Why should artists be any different? Sing a song. Get paid for it. Once. <<<<
Sure, if that “Once.” is whatever fee the artist demands, say, something between 1 cent and $10 million.
Copyright. The right to make a copy.
Copyright owners make their money not by charging a lot for a single playing (like you do when you pour cement), they make their money by charging a little for each playing.
It's a system that works. It allows the person who owns the copyright to make money, and it makes it affordable for people that want to play a song once (like for a TV show) to do so, because the cost for a single playing is low.
If the system worked the way you wanted it to the cost to play a song a single time would be sky high (because the copyright owner would have to make ALL their money from the first playing.) The result would be new songs would never get played.
Every time the Tonight Show theme ( when Carson was host )was and is played, Paul Anka received royalties. The story is so well known that everybody who works on producing talk shows has to have heard about it as an example. Legal departments certainly should have. Somebody there thinks the rules don’t apply to them.
Isn’t there a law on the books that states businesses can’t play certain tunes in their stores without authorization?
This is one time when I support the RIAA.She used the songs for *profit*...as opposed to most people they sue...so she should be fined many millions...rather than the tens of thousands others are forced to pay.
Intellectual property rights is a very interesting and complicated topic. Good points, and unexpected points, on all sides.
You don't understand copyright. The singer DOES get paid just once to sing the song. But the creator of the song who owns the rights to the intellectual property gets paid each time the piece is listened to, just like a painter gets paid by each person who enters the museum and a writer gets paid by each person who enjoys the book.
Why should artists be any different?
That's why.
“whom Rowe calls ‘a tremendous music enthusiast and advocate.’”
Who the heck isn’t? I mean, even fire and brimstone preachers who think rock n roll is the devil’s music advocate some form of music.
“If I’m a truck driver, I pick up a load and drive it from A-B and I get paid for it. Once.”
You must realize that your having moved it from point A to B is an act that only has significance once, and fundamentally different from creating something that can be used over and over again. Also, truckers don’t own what they ship, nor do they have copyrights over the act of having shipped something.
I am a Bachelor of Music, a player of five instruments, a composer of over 300 songs and two rock operas, a singer and a DJ and I can honestly say, one of the things I’ve learned recently, much to my chagrin, is that EVERYONE I’ve ever met considers themselves to be an expert on music.
100 years is not feasibly time-limited. It'll outlive all of us and simply be renewed again in the next round.
Islamic rage boy is outraged. There is to be NO enjoyment of music under Islam!
“Rock the Casbah! Rock the Casbah!”
If they say “YES” to boys who say “OBAMA” then why are their legs crossed in the photo?
at least they shaved them...
The painter doesn't make a dime off of the museum visits unless he owns his own museum or is licensing postcards and handbags with his work on them.
Generally a painter sells a painting and then it goes up dramatically in price for reasons that have little to do regarding the effort or public interest in the work.
Some of today's record setting auction prices are bid by collectors who have significant sized holdings in one artist's work and don't want to see the market value for that painter decline.
But the painter doesn't see a cut of the "resale" value and generally he has to be dead before he stops making new works (adding to scarcity).
Musicians and even song publishers don't see a dime of used record sales either. Even if it is a wildly expensive record that runs $800-$12,000 a copy.
Number 2’s poster motto may say YES but her face says NO NO NO.
Do girls say yes to boys who say Biden?
Not that I favor the lengthy copyright period, but I think there is a principled distinction to be made between patents and copyrights.
With patents, the invention is tangibly useful to society, and society as a whole benefits by having the invention publicly available. Works that are copyrighted, however, don’t have the same tangible benefit to society, so we can protect them for longer periods of time without harm to society.
Society doesn’t benefit from having everyone be able to draw Mickey Mouse cartoons. Society does benefit from having medical drugs manufactured by large numbers of companies.
You're looking at the FreeRepublic version. They know how many here said "Obama" without a short list of words immediately before his name. They have a different picture for DU.
Your typical top 40 radio station plays a small number of songs frequently. Yet they pay no royalty each time they play one. That form of entertainment has some sort of exemption under the law. I think the idea is that they are helping the artists and labels by publicizing their songs and thereby increasing their sales. Maybe Ellen would qualify under the same sort of exemption. Any copyright lawyers out there to set me straight?
The founding fathers wanted the limit on copyright so that the works could become part of the cultural fabric of our new society.
Mark Twain is public domain. Edgar Allen Poe is public domain. Tarzan technically is but the ERB estate will still sue your a**.
Today the bulk of recorded film and music copyright resides in a few coporate hands.
I do not see how this serves American society, the families of those musicians who were exploited for decades by Capital, Atlantic, and Warner music. Now the studios are digging in the archives and selling $1000 photos from recording sessions claiming that it was all "work for hire".
The big companies are going broke and yet they don't pay out money collected in artists names as it is. Send an auditor in and you'll always find money that was owed for years.
I guess you're right, but they should.
Copyrighted works are certainly part of that fabric, right? I would assume that Hemmingway's stuff is all still copyrighted, and his work is certainly part of the fabric of society. Movies are certainly part of society's fabric--think "Star Wars" or "The Godfather"--and anything even remotely recent is still copyrighted.
I do not see how this serves American society,
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But the fact that TBS has to pay someone a license fee to show a rerun of "Saved by the Bell" doesn't trouble me too much.
Radio laws were established decades ago. The industry tried as best they could to change laws even after Supreme Court decisions knocked them down.
Originally the money was in sheet music. You did not have to pay to sing a song in public, onstage, or even on record.
And you didn’t have to pay to sing it on radio or to play the record on radio.
Musicians in the 1920s were worried that they would not get gigs anymore. You could turn a radio on and get music in a room and you could play a record at the station rather than hiring a live band.
Eventually two things came about, fees for the music publisher (but not performer) on records played on radio and a fund that stations pay into that keeps live musicians working if they seek to tap into that fund. The fund still exists today.
The big stink today is that record companies want to change the law now to ALSO require stations to pay the ARTIST who records a record, not just the publisher, when they are played on radio.
TV licensing agreements are different than broadcast radio which are different than web-radio and satellite radio.
The industry had better watch their butt because ASCAP saw what happened when the music industry tried to dictate too much to the public. They REFUSED to publish country western or rhythm and blues records. BMI was formed to publish the so called “hillbilly” and “race” records. When those two forms combined to become rock and roll, again ASCAP refused to publish the material. Then when the charts were full of songs by the new sound, they cried “payola” although payola had been part of the music business since day and is STILL present in the radio business today.
All it will take is some new publishing house (and there ARE others besides ASCAP and BMI) to step in an draft their own licensing use agreements with different media sources that aren’t as harsh or expensive as ASCAP/BMI/”RIAA”’s demands.
Increasing sales does not benefit the artist, unless the record label gives him a cut of the "mechanicals." The bigger the artist, the more he can command. Many artists make most of their money out on tour. (unless they are also the songwriter.) Songwriters and publishers are the ones who make all the money off a hit song...check out the Nashville Music Row breakout charts that count total spins and number of stations which play a song.
Vincent Van Gogh didn’t sell too many paintings in his lifetime and died thinking he was a failure.
From what I gather, his brother died within a year (I’m not going to look it up right now).
Vincent’s nephew, his brother’s son, then decided to keep the collection of unsold paintings. Some may have been sold by the estate since then. Today they are worth a tidy sum total. They’d been on loan to a large museum in Holland but now reside mostly in one dedicated museum.
But the principals involved did not reap the rewards.
There have been times that even being the songwriter did not translate into wealth on famous songs. Corruption in the industry saw men like Ahmet Ertegun and Allen Klein steal ownership of songs written by those in their stables.
If ownership does not revert to the wronged parties and their families, then the money is still ill gotten gain.
This is not the same as a writer in a stable, however, who creates a "work-for-hire." The employer of the writer then DOES own the copyright.
Because the photographer, a capitalist interloper with an imperialist job, is being paid for his work by the market?
> What if you only got paid 2 cents for each time you poured cement?
Better still, what if I got paid two cents for every time somebody *walked* on my cement? That’s a much better analogy.
On that basis I would pour cement for free, if the concrete in question were several miles of sidewalk in downtown New York or Tokyo or Mumbai. Heck, I might even pay to do it!
> It’s a system that works. It allows the person who owns the copyright to make money, and it makes it affordable for people that want to play a song once (like for a TV show) to do so, because the cost for a single playing is low.
Its a silly and egregious system that benefits recent composers and performers only. And of course the companies that own and manage their rights.
> If the system worked the way you wanted it to the cost to play a song a single time would be sky high (because the copyright owner would have to make ALL their money from the first playing.) The result would be new songs would never get played.
No, artists will be artists whether they get to charge silly amounts of money for their “art” or not. New songs will certainly be played — and we’re seeing that with the savvy artists who are re-writing the rules by using free Internet distribution channels.
Old media is dying the death because they got greedy and because they stayed greedy long past their welcome.
> You must realize that your having moved it from point A to B is an act that only has significance once,
If what is being shipped is all of your life’s possessions being moved from Chicago to Seattle, I’d say what is being moved has lasting significance: particularly if your irreplaceable family heirlooms got lost or stolen.
> and fundamentally different from creating something that can be used over and over again. Also, truckers don’t own what they ship,
Try not paying your truckdriver for their shipment, and you’ll find that they do, in fact, have a claim on your cargo. It’s called a “Warehouseman’s Lien”.
> You don’t understand copyright. The singer DOES get paid just once to sing the song. But the creator of the song who owns the rights to the intellectual property gets paid each time the piece is listened to, just like a painter gets paid by each person who enters the museum and a writer gets paid by each person who enjoys the book.
I think you’ll find that I *do* understand copyright. I just don’t agree with it.
> Sure, if that “Once.” is whatever fee the artist demands, say, something between 1 cent and $10 million.
If you’re an artist who can persuade someone to part with $10 million for your song on a one-time-only basis, I say “Godspeed”.
I don’t believe anybody would, tho’ — there is a value gap that is too big to bridge. The only way artists get $10 million for a song is by chiseling it out a few cents at a time from as wide an audience as possible.
If the song isn’t worth $10 million cash upfront, it sure isn’t worth $10 million a few cents at a time.
Artists need to get real: they are ARTISTS and they produce nothing of real value. What they produce is of aesthetic value only.
It is called royalties... you are paid a set fee for your work, many (most) artists make their money from royalties and personal appearances.
“Try not paying your truckdriver for their shipment, and you’ll find that they do, in fact, have a claim on your cargo.”
That’s neither here nor there. If you hold up your end of the bargain, they don’t own it. And they didn’t create it, which is more to the point.
“If the song isn’t worth $10 million cash upfront, it sure isn’t worth $10 million a few cents at a time.”
That does not follow. I’m not worthy of a million dollar a year salary, but I could make a million dollars over the course of my lifetime. So long as I keep working, just like good songs do.
“Artists need to get real: they are ARTISTS and they produce nothing of real value. What they produce is of aesthetic value only.”
There’s also entertainment value, but nevermind. If people are willing to pay for aesthetic enjoyment, that’s the only value that matters in the marketplace (i.e. subjective use value). Music is obviously valuable enough to people for them to shell out the dough. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Songs are valuable.
“If what is being shipped is all of your life’s possessions being moved from Chicago to Seattle, I’d say what is being moved has lasting significance”
What’s being moved has significance, yes. But not the act of moving it. You can enjoy the possessions forever, but you can only enjoy the moving for its utility in having allowed you to move the items that one solitary time.
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