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Music Media

ASCAP Shakes Down Webmasters 161

Posted by Roblimo from the "they-never-stop-trying" dept.
afabbro writes "Wired has this article about how ASCAP is shaking down webmasters for licensing fees. The key point is that they want fees even if you're only linking to another site. "
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ASCAP Shakes Down Webmasters More

ASCAP Shakes Down Webmasters

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  • Re:Par for the course (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    /*
    I've never understood how this works, legally speaking. The radio station pays a licensing fee to broadcast the
    music, and if I'm in a commercial environment, I have to pay a fee for receiving it?
    */

    Yep. That's why Muzak is in business. They sell paid-for content so that businesses don't have to worry about ASCAP hassles over radio.

  • Copyright violators (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02, 1999 @08:09AM (#1820724)
    Why are /.ers so protective of copyright violators? Copyright is the only protection free software authors have. Musicians have just as much right as programmers to determine what happens with their creations.

    And let's get this straight: framing someone else's content is piracy, just as surely as copying it onto your hard drive.
  • If the ASCAP can (hypothetically so far) legally force webmasters to pay fees for indicating where to find content, this can have much wider repercussions. After all - slashdot also indicates where to find content - much of it provided my reuters, zdnet, cnn, bcc - and other companies.

    It raises questions about portal sites, search engines and homepages. Search engines can spew out links to musioc that doesn't take you off the search engine's site. It woudl seem that they'd be liable for fees to the ASCAP.

    It also brings up questions about where end-users really are. is a site such as slashdot an end user as well as a provider?

    Rikard

  • Par for the course (Score:4)

    by Analog ( 564 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @07:18AM (#1820726)
    A small electronics repair shop I worked for several years ago (and I do mean small; I was the only employee) used to play a radio station that was owned by a friend of the shop's owner. ASCAP sued him for $50,000. He settled with them for about 20k.

    I've never understood how this works, legally speaking. The radio station pays a licensing fee to broadcast the music, and if I'm in a commercial environment, I have to pay a fee for receiving it?

    I guess maybe now I know where Microsoft got some of their ideas for their licensing practices from. ;)

  • Protecting against companies who would manufacture CDs, tapes, records, etc., then distribute them is one thing but hassling mom 'n pop businesses for playing the radio is silly.

    I've no sympathy for the music industry. For decades, they've screwed musicians. Now they are going after fans.
  • Check out U.S. Code Title 17. [cornell.edu]

    As you can see, they mention ASCAP specifically.

    ASCAP is a little more old-school and technophobic that BMI, which is why my songs are represented by BMI. They at least seem to *want* to have a clue.

    Don Nego

  • Given their history, I'd guess that the only reason they don't go after people singing in the shower or 'listening' to a song in their head is that they can't police it. Any organization that would demand money from a bunch of kids for singing at camp deserves to be scrapped.

  • How the word piracy got co-oped to mean violating someones copyright's is beyond me. Piracy involves boarding someones ship (or plane), taking control of said vessel, killing everyone on board in some cases, and then stealing their stuff. To use the word piracy to refer to something as non-violent as copyright violations is an affront to all the people that STILL die at the hands of real pirates.
    --
    Python
  • >But now we have ASCAP stepping in and saying that
    >if I'm setting up a little page saying how
    >much I like They Might Be Giants, and I want to
    >link to emusic.com where they have some
    >sample clips of TMBG music that they sell
    >(legally), I have to pay a license fee, or be
    >faced with a lawsuit that I can't afford,
    >regardless of whether or not the lawsuit is >frivolous.

    No, it doesn't. Read the article. They're *quite* clear that a link to another page is not what they're talking about.

    >>If you would like to link to ASCAP's Site,
    >>please read and comply with the following
    >>guidelines and all applicable laws. A Web site >>that links to ASCAP's Site:

    >>May link to, but not replicate, ASCAP's content.

    ...
    >>Should not create a browser or border >>environment around ASCAP content.

    ...
    >OK, These are actually perfectly reasonable
    >requests. There are a lot of issues with framing
    >other people's content, especially if you put ads
    >in those border frames.

    Read the article. This is the situation where they're asking for license fees.

    hawk, esq.


  • It's the letterhead they're printed on, not the contents, that matters.

    And this works in the little guys favor, too. I saw many situations where a record club, or homeowners group, collection agency, IRS, or whatever, was steamrolling the little guy.For about $100, they could have me send out the hostile letter, often *with the exact same information*, and the problem would suddenly go away.

    The letter from a lawyer gets looked at by someone further up is part of it, I suppose. And it also adds a bit more credibility to the threat.

    No, it's not fair that someon has to pay the $100. I might have been willing to work for free, but my secretary and kids weren't willing to skip meals :)

    hawk, esq.
  • You don't have to go that far. Just have a link rather than a frame, and you're fine.
  • ASCAP is thinking about things backwards, they should be paying stores to play music since the store is,in effect, advertising the artists for free, no? The artists are not being exploited, they are being advertised. It's similar to grocery stores advertising products on the "on-air radio", IMHO.

    Another point, does this mean I have to pay a licensce fee everytime I have a block party and people have to pay to get in, we have the radio on?

    --shdragon
  • This is nothing new, and there have been numerous cases involving this.

    If you are going to link to another site, then the other site should show up in the entire browser, or you should open a new browser. You shouldn't embed it into a frame.

    Well first of all, it makes it painful for the end user to bookmark the site.

    And second of all, it gives the impression that your site is responsible for the content in some capacity, and frankly I agree it is a violation of copyright law.

    This is a non issue, why the slashdot article for it?
  • This post confuses many things.

    1. Copyrights are about art. Ideas cannot be copyrighted. A copyright provides potection for specific expression (in words, music or visually) of some "idea" in a very broad sense of the word. The moral basis of copyright is to protect the financial interests of artists (and their estates) to encourage the development of artistic expressions. I find it fascinating that copyrights were used as a tool to protect software. This puts software into the category of art, as oppossed to technology (see 2).

    2. Patents are about technology. Ideas cannot be patented. A patent provides protection for a specific implementation of an invention (e.g. your specific drug to cure cancer). Again, the moral basis is to encourage inventors to recoup years of R&D and to encourage the development of technology.

    [3. Just for completeness sake, trademarks are about marketing]

    To cut to the core issue of IP, the question is how to compensate artists and inventors while balancing the rights of society to a rich and open cultural heritage and technological benefits to all. Digital technology creates complications on both sides (its both easier to copy and also easier to protect). But these issues have been around for couple hundred years or more (until relatively recently, there was no concept of ownership of intellectual property). I recently read that in the early 1800s British books were printed in the U.S. without royalties to the author (i.e. pirated) making them cheaper (and hence more popular) than books by American authors, who, being here, could demand and get their royalties.


    There was a recent post by the FSF's lawyer (noted in a /. article) which provides a very thought provoking discussion of the issues around IP and digital technology. Far more illuminating than most of the posts in this thread.

    The moral outrage around the issue of IP is that in fact the law has long ago moved from its original basis of protecting the interests of artists and inventors. It is now used to protect the interests of the distributors of artist productions and inventions, which tend to be greedy corporations. Artists and investors usually end up getting very little compensation. Digital technology, by changing the means of distribution and allowing a direct connection between creator and consumer, may restore some balance where the legal system has failed.

  • Before we get too excited: (Score:5)

    by Mawbid ( 3993 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @07:26AM (#1820738)
    Cook argues that links to music stored elsewhere on the Net shouldn't make a Web site liable for fees, but Amenica said that the issue is cloudier than that. "Linking does present certain issues, no doubt about it," he said, adding that the group is currently pursuing only sites whose musical links appear to be local to the site, even if those links actually lead to a different server. "If [the links] take you off a particular Web site, right now we're not pursuing that at all," Amenica said.

    Hoping to prevent flamage, I just wanted to point out what "linking", as emphasised in the story, actually means in this case. When Amenica talk about links appearing to be on the site itself, he's talking about frames whose content is not on the site in question.

    Note that I'm not siding with the ASCAP, I just think the wording of the article is slightly misleading in a way that creates more outrage than is called for. It happens a lot here on slashdot.
    --


  • Hello

    What country is friendliest to someone with the perspective modern scientist/geek? I have about had it with this censorship driven, encryption restricting, scam supporing, lobbiest centric, let's buy winmodems by the millions because I don't have a clue fest.

    A minimum of loopholes created by ancient legal spaghetti would be preferable.

    Maybe if everyone with an IQ over 100 and a moral center bigger than a peanut, moves out to this imaginary-land the crew in Washington (who will still be there) will get it.

    Or did I somhow miss the point of the American Dream?

    Well anyway the question was where can I move, or at least where could I base a business?

  • That's a very reasonable plan, and I wanted to do something along those lines myself. The start-up fees (mostly liscensing) and the head-ache of needing to contact EVERY artist who's music you wanted to sell makes it prohibitive. If you charged $0.25 per mp3, the artist will still receive more than TWICE their royalties (with the exception of a couple artists who can command upwards of $1.00 or more per 5 minutes of a song).
  • If they have to pay, yup.

    Even if it's at a church function (no payment necessary).

    The only two times you don't have to pay (in a public forum) is when it is PART of a school curiculum, or PART of a worship service.

    I suppose that if you had your block party to worship the moon, and claimed the cover charge was an offering to the god (lower case), you might get away with it....

    But I wouldn't try that.
  • The way their web licensing contract is written, in its current form, that is exactly what can cause you to have to pay the royalties. According to the article, they aren't pursuing that right now.

    It is a current work in progress, so expect it to change. Maybe with a little bit of pressure, it can happen.
  • >What gives them that right?
    By entering into contract with one of these three companies, an artist liscences them to police their copyrights. With the standard license, the artist basically says "do whatever you need to protect my music".

    >What law provides them that power?
    Contract Law.

    >If there's no law authorizing such a right, then why are they allowed to do it?
    Contract law is a very convoluted form of law practice. I only know enough to whatch for certain clauses, and to take ALL contracts to a lawyer to review BEFORE you enter into any contract and contest every clause you disagree with. If you can't reach agreement, then don't enter into the contract.

    >As far as I can tell, this is a civil matter, there're no laws actually involved. Or does US copyright law specifically appoint ASCAP/BMI/whoever as copyright police?
    The record companies basically force the artists hand in this regard. Basically, if you are going to be signed, you must have your work protected by one of the three big companies (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC). ASCAP is big in pop music, BMI is big in alternative/Christian music, and SESAC is big in world music. In effect, the record companies refuse to play policeman--it takes up too many resources. If they left it to the artist, they run the risk of the artist being too permissive (and thus they lose revenues) or too restrictive (and thus they lose market share). By using these companies, both the artist and the record company operate under a known set of rules that they can build a business with.

    If an artist refuses to be signed, and protects their own rights (which is a whole lot more work), then we probably wouldn't have all this crap going on today. So what do we do? If we have a band, control your own destiny--you may not make millions per year, but tens of thousands is ok if you can gain the following for it.

    Remember, an artist makes most of its money touring and royalties are secondary income. Record companies are big machines, and they can offer you an easier access to radio air play, a video on VH-1, and a big tour with lots of promotional support behind it. Record companies came into business not to get artists heard, but to sell records and create a demand for the phonographs. They have since grown, and many artists simply give up rights they should protect in order to get heard.

    If we could set up a Artist and Repetoir company that catered to unsigned bands, providing a lobbying system for air play, and bringing in money for both the artist and the promoting companies, then we could have a competing model that would totally change the business operates. Unfortunately, I have no clue on how to do this. Otherwise, I would. Music is one of my passions. That is why I went to school to learn how to record and mix it (unfortunately, the starting pay wasn't enough to support me).

  • I'm not surprised (Score:4)

    by bear1 ( 5658 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @07:40AM (#1820744) Homepage

    Alot of people don't realize the power that these companies wield (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC). They have the legal right to enter any store, club, resteraunt, or place of business and demand to see proof of current licensing (with their company, of course). Let me qualify place of business: any retail or business site that plays music covered by ASCAP (& etc.) to generate revenue or productivity. In other words, if the store or office pumps the music over the phone or intercomm, then they are liable. This now includes web sites (you can check out their web licensing contract and fees at their respective sites-- ASCAP [ascap.com], BMI [bmi.com], SESAC [sesac.com]). As you can see, they are rather steep--and you have to be careful who you link to.

    I find that this truly bites for a couple reasons. The first, I wanted to set up a web site akin to mp3.com that you paid legitimate fees for copyrighted music so I could pay the artists royalties (a cause I deeply believe in). The licensing not only forbids that (I would have to individually contact every record company individually to do it), there fees are prohibitive. Especially the up-front fees. Secondly, it bites because if someone you directly link to decides to distribute music (in any format) on his site, I am liable. I think there reasoning behind it is that I generate revenue (?!) because of that link. I am glad that they can't make you liable for some moron who decided to do the same thing links to you site (you have no real control over that).

    I have attempted to contact these companies for alternative liscensing agreements that would permit the site I wanted, but received no response. So, unless you can be assured that you can use GPLd music, you are SOL (remember, a band who does a cover of protected music cannot release their version under GPL, FPL, or any other open distribution license).

  • so that it gives me the right not to enter his bedroom!

  • IIRC, it's American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.
    No mention of the actual performing artists in there anywhere.
    I suspect that they concentrate on seeing to it that those holding the publishing rights to the songs get paid first and most, as publishing rights tend to be owned by big corporations.
    If your band played original material on that tour, then they (ASCAP)probably weren't too concerned with making sure that you payed yourselves. If you did covers of ASCAP licensed stuff I'm surprised you didn't have to pay them.

  • Actually, that song is copyrighted. It wasn't composed until late in the 19th or early in the 20th century, so it's not really "folkmusic" or in the public domain.
    Next time you go Christmas Caroling you might want to avoid the non-religious numbers as these are by and large 20th century commercial endevors.

  • What happens is that the lawyer has a guest that evening who is also a lawyer, but for a publisher, and the kid who said "Bah Humbug!" winds up sued for infringing on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" where that particular phrase appears.

  • For a better idea of whatr ASCAP is and how it came to be, there's a book I suggest you read: Rockonomics. (Or maybe Rocknomics?) It goes into a lot of the legalities of the music business in an enduser friendly way (and a lot of you guys seem to be endusers of music, especially asking why ASCAP can do this).

    It's not the best book on the subject, and it's not great on its own, but it'll get you in that direction.

  • Re:BOYCOTT web links (Score:3)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @10:58AM (#1820750) Homepage
    Hell, just boycott web links. No links to bands. No links to band sites. No links to CDnow. No links to anything that has anything to do with the music industry. (Ok, true indies can stay) I mean, between MP3, the lyrics database, and this, I say screw 'em.

    Give 'em what they want:
    "Hello, music industry - Don't like the web? Feel threatened? Ok, fine. No web for you."

    Sheesh.


  • So basically you are saying, that in my office, we listen to Oldies 98 -- www.wtry.com, so we could get sued for playing and listening to it?

    You mean just because us and are clients listen to that? That's total bullshit. Heck, they call this radio station, listen to us all day in the office. And guess what we do.

    Is it illegal to listen to the radio in office, through the intercom? We are not selling radio or the intercom system. We just like listening to some good old grooves while we work.

    I might be able to understand a TV/Radio store selling a TV displaying a show, but a small office is stupid. Is it now illegal to listen to radio?

    I though Radio was a free technology for all that listens to it. Come on, we don't block the commericals, the whole office hears them throughout the day. So we are 'paying' for the music, in listening to commericals.

    I guess bringing CDs to the office to play on the system, is a true crime!

    How many offices do you know that plays music durning work?

    Heck, even most of the NYS offices I have been in do. Is the goverment horribly breaking the law? I don't think so.

    Is a radio station breaking the law, by encouraging people to put their radio station on during the work day? I think NOT.

    When I go back to work today, if anybody comes in waring a uniform, I will have to turn the radio off (just in case)..

    Really, I am selling the Radio, the radio is still free outside of the office, all I am doing is playing it for our enjoyment and for the enjoyment of the office people.

    ASCAP is a bunch of B.S. Face it, if they ever call up my office in my life time I would be shocked!

    I better let those people know at the local TV shop, they are not paying their dues to this ASCAP crap.
  • Get him to use the RICO act against these people. As the article already mentioned, there's been one RICO suit against ASCAP. I bet if you find a tough on crime prosecutor, he could put a serious dent in this sort of crap.
  • I wouldn't be proud of that...
  • oops.

    that's what I get for assuming plain text.
  • but my grandfather is. and he's not a bad guy, and hates what all the crazy lawyers do.

    and for most of them, it's just a job. hate the ones who tell them what to do, if you're feeling so aggressive.

    no, I don't think it's right, but it's not so wrong as you make it seem.

    Lea
  • a bit more feasible, I think...

    check out the Mars Society, if you want one of those little radical plans :)

    Lea
  • metacrawler does this (but from several engines) and though (I believe) they've been challenged, they're still up... (though acquired by go2net)

    Lea
  • I was just telling myself the other day, I need a goal that's unrelated to anything else going on in my life. I think I found it.

    I find the actions of this group highly reprehensible, offensive, and in very poor taste. If someone is willing to donate some web space and a domain name to me, (Not a lot...maybe 10 megs or so) I would gladly put up a site that links to every online musical resource anyone can think of.

    See, my best friend's uncle is a lawyer...he and I have an agreement...he never pays for computer services, and I never pay for legal services.

    Unfortunately, I lack the resources right now to go about this myself. But, if anyone wants to donate a little space for the good fight, I'd be all about going to court and trying to set a good precedence for the rest of the community at large.

    Considering the great resemblence of this to a protection racket, and the legal skills of my lawyer (the guy is GOOD), I think a milestone could be set here. Might always fail, too, but it's worth a shot, and it's only a little web space, eh?

    Send an email if you're interested.

  • It sounds like they are intentionally ignoring the obvious fact that the music is coming from somewhere else. In effect, charging someone a royalty just over the look and feel of their site.

    I don't think they're ignoring the fact that it's coming from somewhere else -- I think they're claiming it's not obvious it's coming from somewhere else, and therefore, TravelFinder is essentially repackaging the content as their own.

    Mind you, I don't necessarily agree that ASCAP is the entity that should be getting their panties in a bunch, but I understand their viewpoint.

    The concept of Web rings (at least as far as music related ones) would be shut down. Effectively killing the free advertising they provide.

    No, web rings (and what we mean by "links") only point you to content elsewhere -- not provide that content for you.

    To limit that, of course, would be amazingly stupid on ASCAP's part, and I don't think they're stupid.

  • This sounds like charging the people who make radios because it appears like the radio is broadcasting the music.

    Only if the radio automatically replaced the call letters of the radio station with, for example, "Panasonic".

    It's more like if someone set up a search engine with their logo, their name, their advertisers, but all the form did was pass stuff to AltaVista or Google, collect the results, and display them with, again, their logo, their name, and their advertisers.

    Or, look at it this way. Suppose you developed a cool on-line game. You buy some servers, get a T-1, line up some advertising to pay for it all. All is going well. Until you notice your T-1 is jam-packed but no one's seeing your ads.

    Turns out, someone else put up a front end page to your game, with their own ads. You did all the development, bought the server, and are paying for the bandwidth, but they're getting the profits. They're using your resources for their own personal gain.

    It's the same as SPAM.

    Only, with IP theft thrown in.

    This is a sore point for me, as I know of at least one site that does this with one of my sites [sinasohn.com], and it's going to start happening a lot. Unless you can afford to pay lawyers all the time, there's not a lot you can do about it.

    Of course, as I said before, I'm not sure ASCAP is the one that should be getting their panties in a bunch about it. They're just greedy.

  • No, I wouldn't. [get pissed about stolen IP]

    I suspect you would if you made your living off the stolen site. Or, perhaps you're already independantly wealthy, and you wouldn't.

  • Well, now, here's a reasoned response...

    I imagine it should be just a simple case of ASCAP SHUTTING THE FUCK UP. Who gives a shit about ASCAP. What do they do to benefit society? NOTHING, they aid in destroying it for everyone except those with deep pockets. I can only think of a few ways to deal with groups like this, leave the country that supports these assholes, or blow their goddamned brains (if they have any, yeah right) out. That's what eventually happens when you bully someone. Look at Littleton.

    Well, to answer what ASCAP does, here's a quote from their web page (I wasn't entirely sure before, though I had sort of a vague idea):

    ASCAP's function is to protect the rights of its members by licensing and paying royalties for the public performances of their copyrighted works.

    So what does that mean? Well, let's say you're a guy with a guitar, and you really want to be a rock star. You write some songs, dump 'em to CD, and give some to your friends. Maybe you even play a couple of gigs at the local pub.

    Okay, so now your parents (who wanted you to be a doctor or a lawyer) say that it's time you moved out and got your own place (after all, you are in your mid-20's.)

    So you and a couple of buds get this really rocking place downtown. You're playing and having a great time, until the landlord asks for the rent. So now you have to get a job, and you don't have much time for playing.

    But you still listen to the radio at work, right? Well, one day, you hear your song being played on the radio! Cool! Now you can quit your job and get that limo with the hot tub in the back. Only, the radio station isn't paying you anything.

    They don't have to, because they're a big corporation, and you're just a nobody making minimum wage. They've got lots of lawyers, you don't even know any lawyers.

    Then a record label hears it, and gets one of their house musicians (or some soap opera star) to sing it and they have a huge hit on their hands. And they pay you nothing. Their lawyers say they wrote it, and they'll happily go to court over it.

    So you wander the streets telling people that you wrote that hit song, but the record company stole it, and they just shake their heads and cross the street. Your parents call once a week to remind you how they said you should become a lawyer...

    ASCAP purports to be a grouping of composers, authors, and publishers that has banded together to prevent this sort of thing happening.

    Perhaps they've gotten too big for their britches, and perhaps they're not doing a good job, but to say they offer no benefit is ludicrous and inane.

  • I'm glad you stretch before doing all that typing...

    It appears that that ["ASCAP wants to shutdown the WWW"] is their eventual aim.

    And how do you come to this amazing conclusion?

    But now we have ASCAP stepping in and saying that if I'm setting up a little page saying how much I like They Might Be Giants, and I want to link to emusic.com where they have some sample clips of TMBG music that they sell (legally), I have to pay a license fee...

    No. What ASCAP is saying is that you cannot put a link on your page directly to those sample clips and pass them off as if they were your own. To do so, you would need to pay ASCAP licensing fees for distributing their member's music. As you said, "There are a lot of issues with framing other people's content, especially if you put ads in those border frames." ASCAP is claiming that one of those issues is that you need to pay licensing fees for those other people's (ASCAP members) content.

    We could have online newspapers demanding you pay a fee to post links to their stories on your web page.

    Actually, I believe there was a case wherein the Wall Street Journal sued another site which was posting WSJ stories within their frameset as if they were the other site's original work.

    This, by the way, is what ASCAP is claiming is happening here. But you don't care about that, or you would have spent a smidgeon of time reading the actual article, instead of a whole lot of time shooting your mouth off.

    As for ASCAP's guidelines for linking to their own site, most of them are just nice wordings of existing laws (copyright and others). btw, when they say false, they're talking factually false, not your inane opinions.

    The last two, dealing with infringing and offensive sites, are probably not legally enforceable, but entirely understandable. What they're saying is that they would prefer you didn't say something like "these songs stolen from ASCAP [ascap.com] members!" on your warez site, or similarly link from a porno site.

  • The problem here is that nobody violated any copyrights.

    Copyright ownership gives you control of how and whom your intellectual property can be used. Generally, this means that if you write a cool song or paint a spiffy picture, Microsoft can't just come along and use it in their ads.

    If you want, you can let anyone who wants to use your IP any way they want, or you can pick specific entities that can use it. You can even say "I'll let you use this, but you have to pay me X dollars." (You can also say "I'll let you use this, but your entire board of directors has to take a mud bath with me, buck naked" but I doubt they'll go for it.)

    If they go ahead and use it anyway, or use it without asking, that's a copyright violation.

    ASCAP is claiming that because the content was framed with TravelFinder's name (and advertising) rather than the original licensee, then TravelFinder was not just pointing and saying "you can find a spiffy song over here," but saying instead, "Here, listen to this spiffy song we've got for you."

    The first requires no licensing; the latter does. (According to ASCAP)

    Whether there is or isn't a copyright violation is still up in the air. ASCAP is claiming there is.

  • What does it matter in this case if Framing someone elses site is a violation of that sites copyright? The ASCAP doesn't represent the radio stations, whose copyrights are the ones being violated by this definition.

    It's not the radio stations' copyrights, they're only the licensees. The copyrights belong to the artists (and/or ASCAP). If I'm not mistaken, ASCAP's job is (supposedly) to protect the rights of its members.

    Of course, it sounds like ASCAP is more interested in protecting its revenue streams than its members rights.

  • It's not a simple link... (Score:4)

    by UncleRoger ( 9456 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @07:59AM (#1820766) Homepage
    It's not quite that simple...
    ASCAP said it appeared TravelFinder.com was hosting the musical broadcast, since Cook linked to the sites through a frame on his page. While the outside menu bar was TravelFinder's, the actual broadcasts were from elsewhere.

    ASCAP is claiming that TravelFinder was displaying the broadcast within its frameset, giving the impression that the broadcast originated from TravelFinder.

    Imagine if you made, say, a really spiffy Got Milk [tiktok.org] parody featuring Yoda, and someone else displayed it on their site, within a frame, so that although the image was coming from your site, it looked like it was their's. You'd be pissed, right?

    To a lesser extent, this is what ASCAP is claiming. I suspect their position is that if you are going to broadcast "their" music, you have to pay the licensing fees, whether you got it as a free promo CD, from the local record store, or as an internet feed from another site.

    Mind you, I'm not saying ASCAP is entirely correct, but it doesn't sound like it's a simple case of "you put a link to my site on your page, so you owe me."

  • Gak .... sounds like the story going around several years ago about the song "Happy Birthday" being copyrighted.

    if you have a lawyer to write scary letters, you are in the right unless the person getting the letters is also sitting on a pile of cash to hire his own lawyers.

    Someone had a book out once, about how to write your own scary letters - maybe one of the cheapo home legal kits at the office supply store might have some std boilerplates.

    Chuck

    Your tuned to the BDI network.
  • Hmm... this just re-emphasizes the point I've seen on other /. posts... that what we need is a big, fat pipe to a server in a foreign country without these silly monopolies and regulations.

    Then we need ubiquitous e-cash so we can publish there anonymously and tell the ASCAP, crypto-export, and other thought police to go chase themselves.

  • Software does have such an organzation. It's call the SPA. It has done nothing to curb "piracy".

    As far as the price of software being a determinate of piracy, you obviously have never been involved ina retail software business venture. Never is there a calculation of how much we'll have to add to the price to compensate for pirates, it's always based on what the market can bare, and what covers our expenditures. The notion that software prices are high because of piracy is a convenient lie.

    Sheeit, even calling it piracy is a piece of rhetorical bullshit. Noone is harmed, it's non-violent. Nothing is taken away from the author except for a theoretical sale to a person who almost dfinelty would have not bought the orgiginal in the first place.

  • > Alot of people don't realize the power that these companies wield (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC).
    > They have the legal right to enter any store, club, resteraunt, or place of business and
    > demand to see proof of current licensing

    What gives them that right? What law provides them that power? If there's no law authorizing such a right, then why are they allowed to do it?

    As far as I can tell, this is a civil matter, there're no laws actually involved. Or does US copyright law specifically appoint ASCAP/BMI/whoever as copyright police?
  • You can't link to something that outside your own site....

    1. Free speech is shot down.
    2. The whole purpose of web-based technology is compromised.
    3. In the end, lawyers make all the money.

    Hmm, I can't think of one thing this would accomplish for the greater good of mankind.
  • What if you simply posted the web address without the href so people could cut and paste it into the address bar? You're not actually linking, you're simply mentioning a radio station. And you could say you are not linking to any music sites.

  • i disagree with the framing issue. mostly because there are very simple ways to prevent that exact type of situation. you can configure a web server to restrict certain content only if the referer is your own page. if it comes from some other page put up something like "you can't access this material blah blah blah"

    for an example click here http://www.antionline.com [antionline.com] (asuming the site even works at this point)

  • I really don't see how they have any right to say who can and cannot link to their site. imho by putting a site on the www you are granting people the right to link to it, whether you like it or not.

  • USA is number one. Sad, huh?

  • Collecting from whom for whom? (Score:3)

    by HadMatter ( 15646 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @08:54AM (#1820776)
    In some ways this looks like more of the same tempest in a teacup about commercial identity and framed content, and if that's all it was, who'd care? It's not like I ever spend time at framed sites. There's another issue lurking here, though: the appropriate use of the appropriate technology, whether it be sophisticated systems or just the right contract language, to channel the flow of money from listeners to the correct artists.

    That is, after all, the whole purpose of performing rights associations - to provide the service of collecting revenues for their members. They are a bit like governments that way: *everyone* complains when overhead and administration costs rise, the fair shares that everyone wants add up to more money than there is coming in, and no matter how the policies are set, they can never, in the real world, be completely fair or accurate. And it's the small fry who can't afford to lobby and are considered hard to count that tend to get proportionately less of the revenue.

    OK, so the system can never be perfect. But can't it get better?

    When you buy a CD, the correspondences are exact. Aside from overhead, the correct artists and publishing companies get all of the performing rights fees collected from the maker of the CD.

    Concert performances fall in the same category. A fee gets paid based on headcount, and the bulk of that revenue goes to those actually responsible for the selections of music heard at that concert.

    In radio, the correspondences are less exact. Each radio station pays blanket fees, and is also periodically audited in the simplest possible way: a list is made of every piece of music paid during a period of time. Those lists are the basis for the apportionment of revenues collected from the radio stations. This could never be perfect, and the artists that could most use just a bit more income are the very ones who tend to disappear in the statistical noise, but the system works, and it could always be incrementally improved.

    But what ASCAP is trying to do here seems to be to collect more money from additional parties who have no possible way of providing useful data for the apportionment of that revenue.

    Ability to pay disregarded, it is quite apparent that most people will willingly pay reasonable fees to listen to the music they prefer. CDs are bought and sold at a more-than-reasonable price, while listeners catch as catch can for any music that they don't prefer to buy at a premium of 1000% or more than the composers and performers will get paid.

    It's easy to envision the administrative nightmare that would arise if performing rights tried to collect accurately and directly from each listener for each piece of music enjoyed or endured. Reductio ad absurdum, compromises must be made.

    But can't we do better than this? After all, regardless of whether a link to an internet radio station appears to be part of another site or not, music that gets to a listener came from the radio station, not the site providing the link - regardless of all other considerations. The station can presumably provide the straight goods on what music was played and how many were listening (at least on average). Rest assured that all countable listeners, regardless of how they came to listen to that station, will be included in the formula for the amount the station must hand over.

    If I read the Wired article right, what ASCAP is doing here is the equivalent of double taxation.

    Before trying to collect twice for the same listener, perhaps it makes more sense to collect from those that proxy streaming media. They serve actual *additional* listeners, and besides, they are the most of the ones that get a good enough signal to bother listening nowadays.
  • he he. It warms my heart to know that the ASCAP is just trying to protect musicians all over the world from meanies, not just to make money for itself!
  • There are, of course, probably some legitimate cases where you wouldn't want others linking to your content. The right to control (or at least influence) the destiny of your content is a debatable issue, but many folks on /. would probably agree there is a case for it.

    Still, sticking something out in the open on a web server is invitation to have it indiscriminately linked to and copied. Your first effort should be to make some technological effort to keep from linking. (Not hard. You read /., you probably know there's a number of ways you could do this.) Your second effort should be a friendly reminder on your site _not_ to link whatever you want linked, and friendly contact with anyone you know has overlooked that (deliberately or non). Legal action, with all its financial requirements and precedent setting potential, should be last.

    Much of the complaint I have (and other posters seem to share) is that it doesn't seem like ASCAP is looking out for anyone but themselves. The Wired article notes that they showed up to collect fees from TravelFinder.com, but it doesn't say they were representing anyone -- not even the radio stations. Not the artists. It doesn't even say whether ASCAP knew artists that were part of ASCAP were part of the content of
    TravelFinder.com. And from the account, it sounds like the links told viewers where the content was coming from. This doesn't sound like the case of some poor content producer/provider getting robbed blind by deceiving links.
  • But nobody does anything about it. I fully expect to see an article on Slashdot one day with a picture of Einstein by it on how someone IS doing something about the weather. But I've been following slashdot for a while now, and I don't see a whole lot about people doing anything about IP issues.

    This is interesting, considering the fact that I see the Open Source community as very self-reliant. Cooperative, yes, but also, self-reliant.

    I have seen some insightful posts now and again. And some folks have pointed out that there are, in existence, several organizations that exist to work with these issues.

    I'm going to list some of these at the end of my post. If you know of others, I'd be interested to hear about them. I'd also be interested in knowing what you folks think of their efforts & effectiveness. And I'm also interested hearing other ideas about what we could DO about this problem. The law system seems to have been designed to be adversarial, with each side of an issue to be represented by an advocate. We've got to have some good advocates, or the law system will fail us.

    Organizations:

    FSF, of course (http://www.fsf.org)
    The Electronic Frontier Foundation
    (http://www.eff.org)
    Digital Future Coalition
    (http://www.dfc.org/)
    Web Media Advisory Council
    (http://www.com-prod.com/wmac.org/)
    Home Recording Rights Coalition
    (http://www.hrrc.org/)

    Maybe that Ralph Nader guy is even doing something.

    Other Online Resources:

    Cyberspace Law Center
    (http://www.cybersquirrel.com/clc/index.html)
    Nolo (DYI law stuff, mostly)
    (http://www.nolo.com)
    FindLaw
    (http://www.findlaw.com)

    All these links are listed simply on this page:

    http://sun.he.net/~uvm/links/ip.html

    And feel free to email me (weston@byu.edu) if you're interested in working on this problem, have insights onto who really is, or if you have other comments.
  • I don't know, (and I've been looking) but if you find out let me know too.

  • Sorry, the whole planet is taken. You'll need to move on. Perhaps the moon?
  • Let this be serve as a warning to you work-at-home people. Don't play your radio too loud. This also goes for drug dealers playing loud music in their cars with the windows open

    "when they kick at your front door, how you gonna come? with your hands on your head or on the trigger of your gun"
    -the clash, "guns of brixton" (oops, did I just tempt fate?)
  • ASCAP artists shouldn't care if their song is being played in a store for free -- it's free advertising.
  • Christmas Eve: Happily caroling along, the group of children and adults knocks on the door of an ASCAP-employed music licensing lawyer. The lawyer cuts them off in mid song and asks them for their names, also telling his wife to get a camera. He informs them that the company is willing to negotiate a reasonable licensing fee for the public performance of copyrighted Christmas Carols, in lieu of taking legal action against the group. Someone starts to laugh but stops short. The group is quiet for a moment. One of the children in the back says "Bah Humbug!" and they all start walking away, while the lawyer runs back inside to see what's taking his wife so long to get a picture of these music pirates.

    At least in this case, there would probably be some psuedo-justice as, later that night, an overly hormonal teenager from the group throws a huge plastic Santa Claus through the damned snake's picture window (laughing all the way, ho ho ho).
  • Iliad is the cartoonist who draws User Friendly [userfriendly.org], a wonderful little strip. Artur is a Terminator-like character who has appeared in recent strips to (physically) attack Microsoft.

    -Imperator
  • It's also the reason why you never hear happy birthday too you on any TV show in America

    think hard --- you probably won't come up with a single occurance

    .om out.
  • Make no mistake about it, ASCAP is merely the enforcement branch of the music industry crime family. Any artist that fools themselves into believing that ASCAP does anything at all for them than make the labels more money is fooling themselves.

    ASCAP hasn't done anything for anyone in the music industry outside of the owners of the record labels. If you are Adman Duritz or Matchbox20 then yeah they are your friends, but anyone else, they're just a tax collector.

    Be lucky you do not own a small club at all, these mafiosos will demand several hundred dollars a month from you under continuous harrassment on the premise that any live music venue MUST be hosting coverbands. Hell, if you're anywhere near their offices they will even send out spies to see if any band would have the gall to play a cover.

    ASCAP epitomizes the current commercial music industry. The industry now uses artists solely as tools of profit. There is little or no artist development, and signings are treated like futures trading. Sure you may wind up the recipient of a million dollar publishing deal after a bidding war, but if your one-hit-wonder song doesn't do 10 million copies you are now tied up via your contract to the label that signed you and are tossed away with the trash. The only way to return is to reform the band and use all new material. The biz is disgusting these days quite frankly, and ASCAP is merely the enforcement branch. Think of them as the collectors for a bookie or a shylock. Afterall Mariah Carey has to get her alamony on time ;-).

    Oh btw, I work in the industry. I'm speaking from experience, and the current environment is what is driving me to leave the music biz for other work.

  • ASCAP is what keeps music piracy at a minimum. If sowtware had an orginization like this, software piracy would be at a low, and software would be less expensive due to it. Games would cost 20$ because they don't have to compensate for you buying it and burning 13 copies for all of your friends.


    This is debatable. Pure economics says that piracy drives the cost of products DOWN, since it provides an identical product for less money. Add to that the fact that I GUARANTEE you that at most one of the thirteen of your hypothetical friends would buy the stupid game at $40 bucks if they couldn't copy it.

    I see this stupid myth over and over again. Don't buy it. Its total garbage.

    The information economy is a sham. In case you havent noticed, its a SELLER's market. They choose what price is optimal, since they can always drop the per unit cost arbritrarily low until it reaches manfacturing costs, which, for a non-material good, is basically zero.

    If i see one more llama bleating that piracy is costing software manufacturers' money, im going to scream.
  • The legal SYSTEM is not necessarily out of control, rather, it is the LAWYERS who are out of control. I'm not aware of much that ASCAP has won, most of it has been settled out of court and never been before a judge.
  • Thanks Aron, I knew I had mixed up copyrights, patents and trademarks terribly. Ok, so all of the above cover "specific" instances and not the "general" case of the "idea."

    Thats better, but I still think it should be limited somehow, for the overall benefit of society.

    And yes, the money should go to the inventor/creator not some money hungry distributor who benefits from an artificial monopoly.

    New proposal:different time limits on patents depending on the industry involved. e.g 1 year for tech(computer), 5 years for drugs etc. This could/should encourage faster innovation.


  • 1. OK, IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) but I believe that copyright law will have to be seriously adjusted in this digital age. Simply put, copying and transmitting most information is now WAY too easy. Its hard to regulate it and any attempt to do so causes major inconvenience.

    2.I think a solution is reducing some of the rights of copyright holders and then rigidly enforcing those rights that remain. I think the whole concept of "owning" ideas is pretty strange anyway. So if I think up a cure to cancer that means I "own" this idea? And people can die left and right if I don't feel like letting them use "my" idea?

    3. Certainly you should be allowed to profit from your idea, but I propose copyrights should be limited to 1 year. After that all bets are off. This will be a much cleaner implementation and during that year the copyright can be rigidly enforced and stiff fines levied.

    4. OK, this idea probably has a lot of holes in it, but the concept of anyone owning an idea "forever" is deeply troublesome. I mean even if you are the creator, if you didn't want to share you could have taken your idea with you to the grave. Lets see how much profit you would have gotten then...
  • First of all, I am an ASCAP member. The ASCAP has the basic job of defending intellectual property rights for musicians and composers. While I do not always agree with their methods, I am glad that they are around.

    If you play music in your business, you use that music to make money. ASCAP sees that the artists are compensated for that. It really is that simple. When my jingle becomes the McDonalds commercial, I get compensated. If I open the Carly Simon cafe, all Carly, all the time, Shouldn't Carly be compensated for using her music in the restaraunt??

    The web site in question used their links to radio stations in such a way as to make it appear local. Hence it is the same situation as any restaraunt that might use a stereo to play CD's while you browse. He could have simply made the links open a new window to another site.

    Microsoft sells ads on their "Radio Guide" page, and hence they pay a licensing fee. As the web develops you will see more "portal sites" that center around mp3 and internet radio. They will be using the music as a draw to sell advertising in the millions. (M$ radio guide takes in a million dollars every month....)

    While some of the ASCAP's practices may seem strange to normal people, there are usually ways around these rules. Case in point, if this guy would just have a pop-up window that made it known that the stream was not local, his site is business as usual.

    And if the music is not useful to the retailer, he always has the option of doing without, as is the case here. But obviously music is important to these people.

    ASCAP is what keeps music piracy at a minimum. If sowtware had an orginization like this, software piracy would be at a low, and software would be less expensive due to it. Games would cost 20$ because they don't have to compensate for you buying it and burning 13 copies for all of your friends.

    I am typing this at work... I could do with less interruptions... *SIGH*
  • I find the last line of the article to be the scariest.

    "If [the links] take you off a particular Web site, right now we're not pursuing that at all," Amenica said.

    It's the "right now" that bothers me. Who's to say they won't pursue it at some future time?
  • I agree. I hate what the ASCAP is doing. It kinda makes you want to buy into everything RMS has been saying all these years.

    However, I also think the web site developer is getting what he deserves for lazily using frames. Sorry to sound harsh, but anyone putting up a commercial web site should take the time and expense to do it right.

    Frames suck. They make printing, viewing source code, and bookmarking ambiguous, and they break the traditional "page metaphor" of the WWW. To avoid the gratuitous framing of someone else's web page, even an amatuer should know how to target the _top frame!
  • this is the exact reason every chain restaurant now has their own (lame) happy birthday song.
  • Hmm, does this mean that yahoo or altavista has to pay too? Perhaps we should retaliate. No, I'm not talking about hacking. I'm simply talking about something everybody can do. Remove all links to there ENTIRE website on their pages and get others to do the same. Imagine if we were succesfull enough to remove links from everywhere, including directories and search engines. They would be completely isolated in cyberspace.
  • Now that he's available, I think Artur needs to make a visit to ASCAP HQ.

    I am tired of the music industry behaving the way they have been. I hadn't realized until I read the article that they were after restaurants with televisions & such. The article implies that noone has ever really challenged them about this. This looks like another example of a disturbing pattern in the U.S. - if you have a lawyer to write scary letters, you are in the right unless the person getting the letters is also sitting on a pile of cash to hire his own lawyers.

    *Something* needs to be done about the runaway legal system in the U.S. - this is out of control...



    *(Something is kinda vague, I know... my suggestion would start with tar & feathers, tho)
  • I work(ed) for a company that has media, video and audio that we have to protect from others linking to. Other than financial reasons of linking a particular video to a particular page, there are legal reasons to do this. It's similar to public viewing of movies and licensing. There are licensing issues where a video cannot look like it is linked to some random site, because it causes confusion of ownership and/or who has the right to host it on their website. Think of it as some knucklehead on NBC broadcasting a CBS tv show and it has the CBS logo on there. It's clear to the more intelligent where it came from, but otherwise it's an NBC show. It's silly on the outside, but for ownership problems, it's quite relevant.
  • Tunnel farming off Luna City anyone?
    Reserve my room at the Grand Raffles now please...

    andy
  • Sounds like the old MP3 problem.

    I think the advent of MP3 has provoked a necessary debate about the pricing of music media to the general public.

    Given I have a few CDs and tapes lying around in my flat, and occasionally have visitors seeing them, will these folks next want to charge for these? (An analogous situation to putting up links to sites which merely contain music links.)


    I think the whole music industry needs a hefty review. Who's up to the job? :)


    ~Tim
    ~Tim
    --

  • Bandwidth
    When consumer bandwidth is high enough for the proliferation of high quality net radio stations playing the music of independent musicians that are in no way affiliated with the traditional music industry, we will start to see the first truely independent net "mega stars". The record companies and publishing companies will weep greatly as they watch their potential revenues slip away.
    No more Record Companies
    Instead of trying to slip your tape to a friend at a local station, an independent band will get it on the net and everyone in the world will hear it, and download their MP3, then pay 5$ for the CD if they like it.
    No More Ticketmaster!
    Best of all, there will be turnout for touring bands because peole will have signed up for tickets on the net directly (NOT using Ticketmaster!). Once a city gets enough interested audience members that have put in a request on the net, a tour date will be announced, and the credit cards of interested people will be automaticall charged. All the $$ will go to the jukebox hero and his ex-wives, not to ticketmaster or any of the other music industry pimps. There won't be any $4 extra charge for using your credit card, or any of the other silly charges that make the actual price $6-10 more than the price they announce on the radio.
    No More Incentives to Play Their Game
    The downsides of the music industry are well known to many musicians. Unfortunately some find out about these issues too late - they are already owned by the company. Portable digital studios are getting quite cheap. Distribution can now be done yourself. As a critical mass of upcoming musicians figure this out, they will vote with their feet. There will be several places on the net that will take them through the steps without screwing them. Artists will keep the rights to their material. There will no longer be any incentives to submit the the industry's unfair terms.
    MP3.com: is it an Amazon?
    The record companies and their buddies really are ripe for an Amazon-like internet presence to rock their world. Will MP3.com be the focal point for artists, who are the key in this revolution, to converge? When this happens, all of the record companies' SDMI crap, and ASCAP nasty letters will become moot. We'll pipe free, excellent, and popular music into our homes, cars, phones, intercoms, restaurants, websites, and out our asses while the pimps who used to harass us mop our floors and flip our burgers as they listen to free music.
  • Even if you had signed on with ASCAP years ago, you still can't quit your new day job. There are many washed up pop stars who watch their "where are they now" segment on VH-1 and listen to their "one hit wonder" tune on the oldies station, yet some struggle to scrape up rent. Why? Bad management of their finances? Sometimes. More likely though, it is because they get very, very little from record company sales or ASCAP royalties.

    With a few exceptions, rich musicians got that way by performing live (touring), not from record companies (who not only take the rights to their song, but also make the artists pay back all of the production expenses,etc) or ASCAP. Anyone who is getting played enough to generate significant ASCAP royalties would be popular enough to make quite a bit more touring.

  • The publishers don't directly benefit from ad sales by the radio station, so the extra exposure doesn't help them--notice that the stations don't charge you to play their signal publicly.

    Yes, but ASCAP did extract payment from the radio station broadcasting their songs. The store owner is simply receiving the broadcast from the radio station that has already paid ASCAP. If the "performance" actually began with the stores, then the radio stations shouldn't have to pay.

    Do stores have to pay ASCAP a percentage of total sales? Do they have to pay based on the average census of customers in the store? What if business is bad and nobody is buying anything (perhaps because of the offending music) - do they still have to pay ASCAP. Or, in this case, does ASCAP have to pay damages for lost sales?

  • I'm sick of mononpolists defending their "rights". This is such a bunch of crap. Going after the girlscouts..this is a very community minded organization. I think it's high time we figure out some new copyright laws. The ones we have don't have a snowball's chance in hell to deal with the Internet and digital distribution.
    All we'll get is a whole lot more lawyers, who already represent the scum of society (both in court and in person).

    How 'bout this as a plan.
    50/50 -- Half for the makers, and half for the sellers. If I sell, make more off of broadcasting, or do anything that generates revenue with your music, I have to split it with you, 50/50. This allows for HUGE distribution and, the mark of a good web business plan, multiple revenue streams. Now the lawyers and accountants can come in and make sure the artists get their share, not to make sure the public doesn't get their music.
    This is a MUCH better deal than most major label artists get and works much better with our modern means of exchanging music.

    Bash away

  • That's why you go with an open license (of sorts) it allows everyone the right of distribution with the clause of having to share any revenue. It puts the burden of proof on the part of the license holder, but the right to see a distributors books would be part of the licence. It might not work on a small scale (teenagers) but any major corporations that did it would be easy to police.

    We basically a wide open marketplace right now (I have yet to have trouble finding any mp3 I want). Controlling it is an impossibility, adapting to it is a necessity.

  • And I thought the RIAA was a bunch of zipperheads. What a bunch of technically illiterate creeps.
  • I remember reading about that a few years ago. It even went so far that parents wouldn't allow the group to sing happy birthday to a child in that environment because the "happy birthday" song, believe it or not, is under copyright and would be subject to licensing fees. There was some research, and apparently the law is on the side of the ASCAP, sucks tho it may. Its absolutely slimy, but don't think that won't stop them.

    So restaurants will pony up the dough because they don't want to risk a lawsuit. Girlscout groups simply choose to ablige by not playing the music at all, as a non profit organization, the licensing fees don't fit will into their budget.

    But there is a solution. A lot of music is getting released outside the territory o fthe ASCAP. Granted, the selection is still a bit sparse, as is the quality in some cases, but give it time. Restaurants cater to a great many people, and if they wouldn't have to deal with this crap, they may be tempted to seek alternative solutions.

    -Restil
  • It doesn't make any sense! Why would they not want you playing the radio in your place of business? That's free exposure! More people will hear the ads!

    The fact that someone would have to pay to put a commercial radio station on in the work place is completely ludicrous and illogical!
  • This moderator doesn't have a clue why it's flamebait... Perhaps because of the naughty language? :)
  • Why are /.ers so protective of copyright violators? Copyright is the only protection free software authors have. Musicians have just as much right as programmers to determine what happens with their creations.

    And let's get this straight: framing someone else's content is piracy, just as surely as copying it onto your hard drive.


    What if I say Hey, I think this site is cool and you need to check it out. and they have ASCAP protected music. Why in the hell should I be forced to pay ASCAP because I linked to a site that just happened to have music? Hmm?

    As for the framing issue, maybe, maybe not. A lot of times it is completely obvoius that it comes from another site. If it isn't obvious, then at least a note should be made that it is a 3rd party site. Personally, I launch new windows when linking. Keeps my site open and their site.

  • This case reminds me a lot of the case involving a news site that linked to many national newspapers. The news site kept their name and advertising in a frame while linking to the non-affliated new sites. The courts ruled against the news site because it was unclear to consumers that the news that they were viewing was not part of the original site they visited.

    The article's description of the problem was very poor. It's more than just linking.

    As long as the ASCAP limits its scope to organizations using frames in this manner, I think they are completely right. Like everyone else, I am skeptical of them given the music industry's history and the comments made in the article. However, I'm to hesistantly agree with them.

    Besides, if it convinces people to stop using frames, we'd all be better off. I'm proud to say the only html tags I have never used are for frames.
  • Imagine if you made, say, a really spiffy Got Milk parody featuring Yoda, and someone else displayed it on their site, within a frame, so that although the image was coming from your site, it looked like it was their's. You'd be pissed, right? But it's not the original content site that's complaining. ASCAP don't make music. They don't broadcast music. They don't sell music. They just hastle those who do.
  • >What law provides them that power? [To enter premises]
    Contract Law.

    The person signing the contract (The artist or more likely the record company) isn't the person controlling the access to premises. If I sign a contract with you then that doesn't give you any rights to enter CmdrTaco's bedroom.

    The only power they have to enter arbitary premises is due to waving threating lawyer letters about.

  • This sounds like the (unfortunately canned) Atlantis Project, the idea of which was to assemble a country in international waters out of modular floating hexagons. The laws of this country were to be pretty much Randian, 'thou shalt not initiate force,' etc.

    I have been asking the same question for a couple of years, though, and haven't found any country better than the US for general respect for rights, despite the constant gnawing threats and diminishing freedoms here. Some parts of the US seem freer than others when it comes to letting people alone, but there are enough Federal laws which crush state sovereignty that this is small comfort.

    Anyone want to start lashing rafts together like in Snowcrash? ;)

    timothy

  • it doesn't matter to us. we made our money independently of ASCAP beforehand, and we continued afterwards. we are hobbyists, anyway.
  • obviously, we're not a cover band, or we would not have been invited on tour.

  • as a member of ASCAP, (Score:3)

    by Josh Picker ( 44294 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @07:52AM (#1820817)
    i can assure you that they really do suck. my band was invited onto some of the dates for the Warped Tour last year, and needless to say, we were excited. until we learned that we had to join ASCAP. at first, i thought it was some kind of shady racket to shake down musicians. instead, it turns out it's a shady racket to shake down their fans.

    the ASCAP monthly newsletter is delivered monthly to my house. as of late, seemingly the sole focus of the magazine has been MP3 and how it threatens the music industry. last month, there was an extensive article on how bands and labels can attack fan sites.

    i guess that, were we being sued, or was my band getting actual radio airplay, ASCAP fight be slightly helpful, but i even doubt that.

    it's also worth pointing out that we were NEVER paid for our Warp Tour dates. it's normal to get little or nothing playing a small club to 50 people, but when your band plays to 15,000 people, you might expect to get a little something. you'd be wrong. (the reason i mention this is because it's supposed to be ASCAP's job to see to it that we get paid.)
  • So when ASCAP sues someone, how much is kept in attorney fees? How much goes to the Artist(s)?

    I'm sure everyone can see where I'm leading.
  • Thanks for the explanation. I can see what they are saying, though I disagree with it. It sounds like they are intentionally ignoring the obvious fact that the music is coming from somewhere else. In effect, charging someone a royalty just over the look and feel of their site.
    The concept of Web rings (at least as far as music related ones) would be shut down. Effectively killing the free advertising they provide. Only 'Portal sites' would have the money necessary to link to sites(maybe thats the real long term goal). Strike another blow against net freedom.

    I hope they come to their senses.
  • Lets say I have a link to a music site. When you click on the link, it automatically launches a new browser window (effectively taking you from my site to another that actually has the music). Does this mean I am supposed to pay a royalty?

    Wouldn't that be akin to charging royalties from people for putting bumper stickers on their cars displaying their favorite radio station?

    Any answers from knowlegdeable people would help.
  • Their reason? If you're doing it at a store, you've got some commercial purpose for doing so (making people buy more, enticing a certain demographic into your doors, keeping employees more productive, drowning out the union striking outside your door, whatever). To their eyes, any commercial benefit from this music should be shared with the publishers (ASCAP's main constituency) of the music. The publishers don't directly benefit from ad sales by the radio station, so the extra exposure doesn't help them--notice that the stations don't charge you to play their signal publicly.

  • So ASCAP wants to shutdown the WWW (Score:5)

    by signe ( 64498 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @08:45AM (#1820832) Homepage
    It appears that that is their eventual aim. The basic structure of the World Wide Web (WWW) is Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). THe basic transport for the WWW is Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Shall we just look at this word "hypertext" for a moment.

    According to Webster's, hypertext is a noun meaning "a database format in which information related to that on a display can be accessed directly from the display." That's a rather convoluted definition. But if we break it down we can see it's not really that bad. We start by calling it "a database format," which is not exntirely false; we can consider a HTML page a record, making the WWW a form of database. Then we say that the nature of this database is such that "information related to that on a display can be accessed directly from the display." This means that the nature of the WWW is such that if I'm viewing a web page on music, I can directly access other pages dealing with music from the page that I'm viewing. So the definition isn't a bad one.

    So by extrapolation we see that the nature of the WWW is such that such that pages link to all sorts of other (related) pages, forming a sort of web. This is part of what makes the WWW so useful: if I'm reading a page and I want more information on a particular topic, I just click on it and go there. And as someone making web pages, I don't have to reasearch and compile information and store it on my site if someone else has done it already. I can just link to their site.

    But now we have ASCAP stepping in and saying that if I'm setting up a little page saying how much I like They Might Be Giants, and I want to link to emusic.com where they have some sample clips of TMBG music that they sell (legally), I have to pay a license fee, or be faced with a lawsuit that I can't afford, regardless of whether or not the lawsuit is frivolous. So what's next? We could have online newspapers demanding you pay a fee to post links to their stories on your web page. And then every Joe Clueless with a web site starts demanding payment for being able to link to his site.

    But why should they stop with the web? Why not sue people for putting links in their Usenet posts telling people where to get some more information on a topic? Or email? I better not put a link to ASCAP's web site [ascap.com] in here, or they might sue me! This goes against everything that the World Wide Web is. The WWW was developed for sharing information and making information avaiable to everyone easily.

    But I suppose we better make sure that we're in compliance with ASCAP's rules regarding linking to their site....


    Third-Party Web Sites Seeking to Link

    If you would like to link to ASCAP's Site, please read and comply with the following guidelines and all applicable laws. A Web site that links to ASCAP's Site:
    • May link to, but not replicate, ASCAP's content.

    Oh shoot. I'm violating that right now by copying their copyright agreement, aren't I? Damn. Better notify my lawyers.

    • Should not create a browser or border environment around ASCAP content.
    • Should not imply that ASCAP is endorsing it or its products.
    • Should not misrepresent its relationship with ASCAP, its members, officers or directors.

    OK, These are actually perfectly reasonable requests. There are a lot of issues with framing other people's content, especially if you put ads in those border frames. And as far as misrepresentation goes, that ends up falling into other legal areas.

    • Should not present false information about ASCAP, its services or activities.

    Who determines what false is? If I say that ASCAP is a fascist organization, that's my opinion. Sure, you can say that it's false, but that doesn't mean you get to tell me to change it. However, if I was to hypothetically say that ASCAP's board of directors has a predilection for child pornography, that would be slander and you'd have legal grounds to sue me.

    • Should not use the ASCAP logo, screen shot, splash screen or any ASCAP Marks displayed on this Site without permission from ASCAP.

    Again, perfectly sound restriction against using your intellectual property without your permission. However, if I was to use your graphics as part of a parody, you wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on. Parodies are protected under fair use.

    • Should not be a Web site that infringes any intellectual property or other right of any entity or person, including, but not limited to violating anyone's copyrights or trademarks, violating any law or advocating illegal activity.
    • Should not be a Web site that contains content that could be construed as distasteful, offensive or controversial, and should contain only content that is appropriate for all age groups.

    These two really come down to a matter of opinion. And frankly, if ASCAP really expects to be able to enforce them, I suggest they make sure they go to every major search engine and demand that all links to ASCAP be removed. Because there's not a search site I know of that doesn't return either warez or porn sites in their searches.


    Any Web site that creates a link to ASCAP's Site which ASCAP discovers violates these terms and conditions, ASCAP expressly reserves the right to request that such a link be removed and to undertake whatever other action it deems appropriate.

    I suppose for the items that actual have some legal basis, this is entirely acceptable. But it's still not illegal for me to say "You can find this information over there." You can sue me for slander, you can sue me for copyright infringement, but you can't sue me for pointing at you.

    ---

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