ASCAP Starts To Act Like the RIAA 272
Scott Lockwood writes "Below Average Dave, a Dr. Demento style parody artist, has been shut down by the ASCAP. This collective, acting as badly as the RIAA, is now attempting to ignore the 2 Live Crew Supreme Court decision that parodies are new derivative works. Just like the RIAA, ASCAP seems intent on misrepresents the law. If you know anyone who can help BA Dave in his plight, please contact him." This artist doesn't have the resources to fight the ASCAP, even though the law is pretty clearly on his side. Anyone at the EFF or the ACLU interested?
Paging Ray Beckerman (Score:5, Insightful)
If you know anyone who can help BA Dave in his plight, please contact him.
Number of certified lawyers that read Slashdot: 5.
Number who actually give a shit: 1.
Paging Ray Beckerman [slashdot.org] alias NewYorkCountryLawyer.
Soap box, ballot box, and jury box have failed... (Score:1, Insightful)
Would it really be so bad if someone started using mafia tactics on them since they're so fond of them? I think that wiring bombs to *IAA executives' cars and those of their slimy attorneys would be a good start. It's pretty clear that going through legal channels isn't working.
Re:If you are right by the law... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you are right by the law... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all parodies are legit (Score:4, Insightful)
What the Supreme Court said was that if a parody was sufficiently transformative, this would operate in its favour when weighing up the fair use factors. BA Dave is taking the position that because he created a parody, fair use applies, but the Supreme Court stamped on that theory pretty sharply:
"Like a book review quoting the copyrighted material criticized, parody may or may not be fair use, and petitioner's suggestion that any parodic use is presumptively fair has no more justification in law or fact than the equally hopeful claim that any use for news reporting should be presumed fair."
Now I've no idea how transformative BA Dave's parodies are, but this quote should at least show him that he needs to do a little more than cry "parody" if he's going to convince them to back off. Let's hope he can. And let's be grateful he is in the US where parody is given some recognition as a fair use. In the UK, for instance, it's viewed as being no more legitimate than any other form of copying.
Completely unbiased! (Score:3, Insightful)
What a totally unbiased article summary. It doesn't automatically take a position or make assumptions about anything. I expect a fully qualified, objective discussion to follow presenting both sides in a fair and factually-based light.
Re:Soap box, ballot box, and jury box have failed. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easy.
STOP consuming their products. All of them.
Don't pirate (ANY support that keeps their products available is market chumming), don't buy, don't bother.
Re:Why Is the Music Industry So Messed Up? (Score:5, Insightful)
What was the quote? Evil is what happens when good people do nothing? Well nobody did anything, so evil happened.
Re:Why Is the Music Industry So Messed Up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that the music industry seems to be so corrupt?
I think that's why it seems worse. Because, to some degree, it is.
Re:Starting? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not licensing for live music, licensing for peforming someone else's composition. That's their job.
When you play a songwriter's composition in a way that makes you money (such as attracting customers), you owe that songwriter a cut.
While BMI and ASCAP may be bastards, the general principle of "share this song if you like it, but if you make money from it you owe me a royalty" is, IMHO, a good one -- indeed, it's the principle that ought to apply to all media. (Along with the understanding that such a royalty right applies for a limited time and only to authors, not their heirs or employers or assignees. It's ridiculous that someone still claims rights on "Happy Birthday" -- though the claim is dubious [wikipedia.org], they still manage to squeeze money out of people.)
A venue that encourages original music? Outstanding!
Re:Soap box, ballot box, and jury box have failed. (Score:2, Insightful)
Research the artist. Research the label. If it really means that much to you, take the time to learn who, by your definition, is a tool and who isn't*. Even a simple Wikipedia search might net you some information.
*: Note that this does not mean you have to learn who Tool, the band, is if you don't want to.
Re:okay, they're scumbags, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Very well put.
I think the zeitgeist on Slashdot is this: we dislike record labels, but we like artists. We want artists to make money directly -- and that's why actions like pirating the music and then "going to a concert" or "buying a t-shirt" are acceptable, as more money goes to the artist.
In short, we like it when artists make money directly, without record labels being involved.
And that's exactly what ASCAP is -- a collective of songwriters and lyricists, creating a revenue stream that's largely untouched by the record labels. It provides artists a way to do what they love and get money for it, even if they're not signed to a label or selling CDs.
We want them to have rights. We simply don't want them to get all uppity and enforce those rights. You artists can have all the rights you want, but if claiming your rights gets in the way of us doing something with your music without paying you -- such as recording a new song using your melody -- then the proper response is to sit down, shut up, and know your place.
It's quite sad, really.
Re:Soap box, ballot box, and jury box have failed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, what should I do if I'm an aspiring musician, and I'd like to draw on some of my cultural heritage -- and yes, copyright lasts so insanely long that we are talking about cultural heritage here -- and these thugs come and sue me?
In other words: What do we do about The Grey Album [wikipedia.org]?
For that matter, as part of my "boycott", should I stop singing Happy Birthday [unhappybirthday.com]?
Fuck no. I will not spend my life avoiding our culture because it happens to be owned by a few corporations. I will continue to assert that this is our culture, not theirs.
Re:Change the fucking law (Score:3, Insightful)
Or it could mean that you had better lawyers, or had enough money to pay off the judge, or that the judge was ignorant of the law as it applied to your case, or any number of other things that happen in a courtroom that have nothing to do with whether you're right or wrong.
Re:Paging Ray Beckerman (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Starting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? No, seriously, why? It doesn't take money from the people who made the music, it doesn't even deny them CD sales in the way that piracy could theoretically do (though there is no hard evidence that it does).
The reason the stupid copyright law exists in the first place is to benefit the people! It isn't so that you can claim profit from each and every rendition of a song throughout space and time. A cover band playing a professional song will never detract from the professional group's funds, and I defy you to find anything to the contrary.
Explain the moral obligation society has to pay an artist for every single performance of work that he originated, please.
Re:Paging Ray Beckerman (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, that's entirely wrong.
If I want to record a parody to the melody of a U2 song (assuming I could find one that has a melody) that makes fun of people who post legal opinions that are completely incorrect but have some sort of weird internal logic, I would be on safe legal ground.
However, being within the law does not protect you from some wealthy organization with a 5-letter name that makes its money off the backs of creative people and has created the artistic equivalent of a Mob protecion racket that decided they were going to engage you in a costly and time-consuming lawsuit in order to show everyone else that they better pay up or, you know, bad things can happen, and you wouldn't want bad things to happen, would you?
Re:Paging Ray Beckerman (Score:3, Insightful)
Parodies are not automatically fair use. Re-read the two live crew decision.
Getting permission to make a parody just makes you not be a douchebag.
Re:Paging Ray Beckerman (Score:1, Insightful)
Those resources are better spent reforming the system to prevent innocents from going to prison in the first place.
No, it's more important get people out of danger first. You don't discuss how to put out a fire while people are burning inside.
Re:Starting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright is a valid and useful thing for a society. The implementation of it can be problematic though and ours is rife with abuses, such as Disney, etc.
I tend to not have a problem paying for actual performances and if I use something someone else owns to do it, paying a fair fee is reasonable. The bigger problem is with licenses for the simple 'sale' of recorded performances. With technology this is now an infinite good; the value of a 'copy' of the performance is so low as to be zero.
The value of a performance is a different animal, however. Whether it's through live music or recorded music (radio, iPod over the speakers in the gym, etc.) an experience is being gained, good bad or indifferent it's still an experience. Good ones will attract repeat paying customers, bad/indifferent ones won't. That's the free market at work.
One of the best modern examples of this is The Grateful Dead. They made millions playing *live* concerts, while letting recordings of those concerts be freely made and traded among their fans. Which in turn brought *more* fans to their shows making them more money.
The issue of ASCAP harrasing a bar or other venue is legitimate. However, if the above facts are to be believed, paying $500 for a flat fee versus having to itemize every performance and when questioned provide proof it wasn't licensed music being played seems like a *massive* undertaking. Pay the $500 and walk away much happier.
All of this argument is predicated on the idea that these rights are *LIMITED* by time. But that gets back to the implementation problem I said earlier. Copyright is still a good thing but with limitations.
Re:Starting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Songwriters don't necessarily have CD sales. Songwriters often produce rough demos, or written music, to get their ideas to performing or recording musicians. Not all songwriters are singers.
It's the songwriters, not the original performers, who get these royalties. If I play "Love Potion Number 9" at a paid gig, Leiber and Stoller [wikipedia.org] get the nickel, not The Clovers.
Exactly! And having creators get paid is of benefit to the people, it helps "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." But restricting sharing of creative works is not.
So how can we have creators get paid, and not restrict sharing?
One solution is to restrict selling, by requiring a royalty on commercial use of a work. This is orders of less magnitude less invasive than trying to restrict personal sharing. And it's more in line with intuitive notions of fairness.
(Note that I'm speaking of the general idea, not the current ASCAP/BMI implementation which adds many problematic aspects on top of it.)
And, since I said the royalties should apply only to commercial performances (as is currently the case) and only for a limited time (as it not), we don't have a disagreement on that point.
Me camping out on your front lawn will never detract from your funds. (I'm a good camper and always leave the site better than I found it.) But yet it still detracts from something abstract, from your sense of control over your life.
So it is with art. If someone gets rich off by performing a song I wrote and I get nothing, it detracts from our sense of justice and fairness.
Of course, the world is not very fair. Nor does it give us much control over our own lives. But we structure our legal and social systems around these ideas anyway.
As a practical matter, creators of works we enjoy ought to get paid. As a matter of cultural freedom, people ought to be free to share works they enjoy. As a matter of intuitive fairness, creators ought to get a share of riches made off of their creations. Royalty-right supports all these ends.
If you have a counter-proposal that does it better, I'm open to hearing it.
Re:Completely unbiased! (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, I totally have bias (as you well know, I'm sure since you have me friended). I'm a DJ for Dementia Radio and crap like this (ASCAP / BMI extortion) threatens our ability to function as a community. No one in this sector of art is making ANY money. Every single person I know in Dementia has a day job, without exception. Even The Great Luke Ski supports himself as a caricature artist. Not everyone is as popular as Tom Smith, Jonathon Coulton, or Wield Al Yankovic. Most don't make any kind of profit at all, and do it for the Art. For ASCAP to shake down artists for other artists who aren't really owed anything (see the various legal opinions) and who DON'T ever see the money anyway are EXACTLY like the RIAA in this regard. They are leaches who exist on the life blood of the people they should exist to represent. I have been involved in the business of music all of my life, and so have my parents and grandparents. BMI/ASCAP are nothing but boils on the ass of humanity. Am I biased. You bet your ass I am. I am biased against all manor of pimps and thugs - and these guys are at the top of the list.
Re:okay, they're scumbags, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
i think your viewpoint is quite sad.
'we' want artists, authors and others to have a copyright. but those 'we' want this copyright to be reasonable.
that includes reasonable terms on time and reuse restrictions.
really, macaulay probably wasn't the first, but he put it the best, as far as we know. on copyright extension... in 1841.
At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot.
Re:Paging Ray Beckerman (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Paging Ray Beckerman (Score:2, Insightful)
A better analogy would be that you don't stop putting out fires and instead only teach or campaign about fire prevention.