Posted on 09/15/2014 9:32:57 AM PDT by Dallas59
Warner Bros. has filed a lawsuit against a small bar from Amityville, New York, for playing one of their songs without permission. The track in question is not a recent pop song, but the 80-year old love song "I Only Have Eyes for You" which first appeared in Warner's 1934 movie "Dames."
giacomoMany bars, pubs and restaurants like to entertain their guests with live music, with bands often playing covers of recent hits or golden oldies.
As with all music that’s performed in public, the bar owners are required to pay the royalties, even if there are just handful of listeners present.
Royalty collection agencies take this obligation very seriously and drive around the country visiting local bars and pubs to check whether they obey the law. Those who don’t usually get a bill in the mailbox, and if they refuse to pay up it gets worse.
(Excerpt) Read more at torrentfreak.com ...
The said wrongful acts of the Defendants have caused and are causing great injury to the Plaintiffs...
I’d like to cause ‘great injury’ to the plaintiffs.
It’s just another protection racket. The money collected NEVER goes to the artist/songwriter. It’s just a fee to prevent being sued.
This would be in the public domain if Mickey Mouse hadn’t bought enough politicians to get copyright extended.
I think ASCAP used to collect a check from the clubs I worked in Manhattan back when I was young and stupid.
Goofy scam...
Seems a nationwide boycott of Warner Bros.,
by those who support the bar,
might balance the scale.
And they wonder why the music industry is dying.
I would say that actual damages can be calculated. $1 per song for a year (cost to buy a song at iTunes store), so prorated over the number of days the bar is open, times the number of people at the bar on the day in question.
So 1.00 / 312 (assumes open 6 days a week)
times 1 day
times the number of patrons (lets assume 20)
works out to about 6 and a half cents.
Heck, lets be generous and award them $1 just to cover any other possible infractions or errors in assumptions.
Nice post re: Happy birthday. I always wonered why that was still in copyright.
Yep. A clear cut case of CAE.
C ongressionally
A ssisted
E xtortion
The Horror...
It seems to me they are cracking down harder against the targets they can go after, because they are so many other infringers they have no chance of stopping. It’s a losing battle for them, but they can’t give up because that would mean finding an entirely different business model.
Sooner or later though, I expect intellectual property laws to face a severe overhaul, as technology has rendered enforcement of them rather impossible.
That's not true. I am friends with a number of songwriters who receive substantial income from their PRO (ASCAP/BMI/SESAC).
Having spent some time at Disney University we had some discussion about their copyright enforcement.
The way it was explained is they if they let someone go for putting Mickey Mouse’s image on a birthday cake—and it could be shown that they did nothing—they would lose the right to enforce it later. It is an all or nothing proposition.
The headline is that the little guy is being sued for $30,000. The settlement is for a lot less. In the bar situation there is usually a blanket ASCAP payment. My guess is that they were not paying at all...or had let their contract lapse.
This stuff happens all of the time.
Purchasing a song on iTunes does not grant you public performance rights.
Yep, and probably told the ASCAP rep to go [blank] themselves when they told the owner they needed to sign up.
Even our church has fill out an online form of songs sung during services and royalties paid (the exception, of course being old hymns in the public domain).
You are very correct.
For an artist to collect on the royalties that are apid, the artist has to join the organization (like Warner Bros). For a fee.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.