Posted on 03/12/2003 10:48:04 AM PST by mhking
Musicians sue South Beach
By JIM McBRIDE
jmcbride@amarillonet.com
Attorneys representing singer-songwriters Madonna and Lenny Kravitz are suing the owner of an Amarillo nightclub, alleging the club infringed on their federal copyrights by playing their songs without authorization.
The copyright infringement suit was filed in federal court March 4 against Scott Williams Elkins and Pickerington Bicycle Club, which operates South Beach, 2600 Linda Circle. The suit says the club is owned by Elkins.
The Globe-News was unable to reach South Beach representatives for comment on the suit Tuesday.
According to the suit, the various plaintiffs secured exclusive rights and privileges to copyrights for various songs.
The suit claims the club infringed on the plaintiffs' copyrights by giving public performances of copyrighted songs on the club premises.
The suit claims the defendants have not sought or obtained a license agreement from the plaintiffs or the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, known as ASCAP, a performing rights licensing organization that the plaintiffs belong to.
Plaintiffs claim ASCAP representatives contacted the defendants and sent numerous letters informing them of their liability under federal copyright law and that the defendants have continued to perform copyrighted music without permission during business hours.
Songs named in the lawsuit include "Justify My Love," written by Madonna Ciccone and Lenny Kravitz; "Erotica," written by Madonna and Shep Pettibone; "Nasty," written by James Harris III and Terry Lewis; and "Get the Party Started," written by Linda Perry.
Plaintiffs are seeking between $750 and $30,000 in damages for each of the five counts of copyright infringement named in the suit.
The suit also asks that the club be barred and permanently restrained from publicly performing the songs named in the suit.
Do you have any idea how many "artists" there are distributing their music over the internet already with nary a single one of them seeing sales in excess of $10,000 a year. Split that between a 5 piece band and you've got little more than weekend beer money.
The sad fact is, most wannabe musicians suck big time. I can't tell you how many artists I've seen who press up 1,000 CDs, give away about 300, sell maybe 50, and end up using the rest as coasters.
Your disturbing anti-capitalist rant notwithstanding, truly talented artists could not achieve millions in sales without the record companies. There may be Todd Rundgren or Janis Ian who make a living at it, but even they are only selling about 3,000 CDs a year.
Boy, oh boy... do you not know me.
The race is not always to the swift, but that's the way to bet.
Music companies fear new 100-hour discs
And How bout them Dixie Chicks!
Sorry, but songwriters need groups like this more than ever.
First, yes, you can now independently distribute your music to the world if you wish. But how exactly will you make a living that way, much less make enough to pay off the investment in college (do you realize that many composers and songwriters actually have degrees in music? No, really!) or the decades of practice to learn the craft in the first place.
Second, with music so easy to steal, and such a casual attitude toward stealing music to use in your own businesses, ASCAP is definitely desired by musicians. That's why musicians join -- it is member-supported, you know....
No... that's really not me. You'll not find a purer capitalist than me. I don't have any illusions that music (or software, for that matter) should be free.
I'm all for people being paid fairly for the fruits of their labors, at prices that the market will bear. I'm *all* for it. No worries here.
There's a lot about all this "piracy" sort of stuff that's been bothering me for a while, and I've had trouble putting my finger on it. On the one hand, people shouldn't steal the work of others. That's a given. On the other hand, there's something happening here that doesn't fit into the model real well. How many times can I charge people for the same work and have it still be right? It's the basic business model that just isn't making any sense.
In other words, I pay a carpenter to build a door in my house. I don't *license* the door from the carpenter, so that he gets paid for how many times the door gets used every month. Most people get paid once for their labor, but artists are in this odd category of people that think they should get paid over and over for the same work.
For example, a hypothetical question: The bar plays the song on the PA system for everybody in the bar to hear. ASCAP has a problem with this. What if everyone in the bar already owns a legal CD of the song in question? Have the bar owner and all the people in the bar satisfied their obligation to pay the artist for the right to listen to the song?
I'm honestly not trying to be merely argumentative here. I think there are issues that are different for this sort of industry that are different from other kinds of "products and services".
I don't disagree. There's lots of people trying to figure out how to make a living off the Internet and widely distributable content. That's exactly the problem. The problem is we have a business model that is still trying to work in an age where they can no longer control the medium of exchange. That's just plain doomed, for right or wrong. If they're going to survive, somehow the model needs to change.
Here's another way to look at it: Maybe due to distribution necessities, and other market and industry forces of the past, musicicians have been able to take advantage of these forces and leverage their labor into monumentally outrageous sums of money that was merely the luck of the draw. A few managed to work this system into many millions of dollars, and *good* for them. They were in the right place at the right time. No blood, no foul.
But is the multimillion dollar payment really a *right*? Well... no... only in so much as the market is willing to bear the price. Is Eminem really so wonderfully talented that his labors should result in a life of wealth for producing one measly little album? Say what you like... but the guy is no Mozart.
I'm not even trying to say that good marketing shouldn't be allowed to substitute for talent every now and then. That's not what I'm all about. What I'm trying to say is this: Maybe some artists are only now finding out what their product is worth.
You aren't buying a door. You are performing a piece of someone else's work for a period of time, for a given audience.
Artists don't necessarily want to be paid over and over again for the same work; however the economic value of an artist's work can only be established by how many people are exposed to the performance. Therefore, the only fair way to reward a songwriter is to pay him/her a little every time the song is performed under certain circumstances. The more performances, the more important it must be, and thus, more reward to the people who made it happen.... theoretically.
Okey doke... but that gets kinda wierd in the *next* generation of distribution, when "radio stations" aren't even the way people listen to music very much. Imagine a car radio that can listen to any Internet source on the fly, without commercials.
This stuff is only beginning. Like I tried to say at the start... I'm not arguing right or wrong, or what people have a right to, either the artist or the consumer. It's the basic business model that is breaking, like candlemakers at the advent of electric light.
Don't blame me, I'm just the messenger.
What are Dixie Chicks? :-P
Eminem will likely not make millions from his ASCAP rights. He will make his millions from the sales and marketing of his image and recordings. That's an RIAA issue, far removed from what ASCAP is doing.
Hearing names like Madonna, Kravitz, or Eminem, in which all three both perform and write something similar to music, kind of confuses the issue. Imagine all those John/Jane Doe songwriters you've never heard of -- the ones who write the songs performed by people surgically altered to be more beautiful. Those composers/publishers/producers are the people ASCAP represents. If you happen to be a performer as well, more power to you. But ASCAP is there to collect the royalties for the people who created the performance pieces in the first place.
Too bad... Heh. I liked "goodbye Earl"
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