Warner Bros. Sues New York Bar For Playing 80-Year Old Song

TF ^ | 8/29/2014 | TF

[Dallas59]

Warner Bros. has filed a lawsuit against a small bar from Amityville, New York, for playing one of their songs without permission. The track in question is not a recent pop song, but the 80-year old love song "I Only Have Eyes for You" which first appeared in Warner's 1934 movie "Dames."

giacomoMany bars, pubs and restaurants like to entertain their guests with live music, with bands often playing covers of recent hits or golden oldies.

As with all music that’s performed in public, the bar owners are required to pay the royalties, even if there are just handful of listeners present.

Royalty collection agencies take this obligation very seriously and drive around the country visiting local bars and pubs to check whether they obey the law. Those who don’t usually get a bill in the mailbox, and if they refuse to pay up it gets worse.

[TangoLimaSierra]

A single iTunes purchase allows up to 5 individuals to share it privately at will. That is all.

I'd love to see some RIAA enforcement types pulling over carloads of 6 or more thugs listening to their
rap at 120 decibels to check where they bought their "music". Really, I would.

[jiggyboy]

Are they sure it wasn’t a recording of the lesser known parody song, “Eye Yonly Half Ice for Ewe”?

Could be, just blame the jukebox people.

[Vigilanteman]

We explained it privately to the firm which represented this particular licensor. He knew enough about the Japan market to warn them off, but they wouldn't listen.

They ended up hiring another firm to sell that which was no longer salable. That firm even approached us a couple of years later to make us a good offer, but we politely told them our staff was too busy with other characters and had no interest in bringing back a failure. I have no idea what happened after that.

Do you remember Popeye the Sailor Man?

Yomiuri Shimbun, one of the leading daily papers, signed on to represent Popeye in the 1950s. The fellow who was assigned to the project semi-retired in the 1980s. But he still had a desk at the paper which he shared with another retiree and came in a couple of days every week to do the Popeye business . . . a fairly remarkable example of how long continuity can be in Japan.

Another example is the RCA Victor dog. Japan Victor Company bought the world rights to the dog when RCA decided he was no longer worth much of anything. He still appears in JVC ads from time to time.

Moral of the story is never, ever p*ss on the people who generate your royalty check.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Again, that’s private use. As long as the music is not used for public performance where commerce is taking place with the music as an enhancement, the administrators of royalties are not going to get involved. Even if you were occasionally to take the music to a public park and play it loudly amidst a larger population, it would be a long shot to see any repercussions legally. The RIAA governs an angle different from public performance, namely copy distribution. They undoubtedly had some say in limiting the amount of sharing with iTunes product. If you have an iTunes library, you do not own it. You’re renting it indefinitely.

[xjcsa]

I thought that only applied to playing a recording.

Nope, live performance is included as well.

[cva66snipe]

To me, the issue isn’t the protection. If someone produces a popular song, that is intellectual property and should be paid for. The crazy part to me is how long Congress keeps the protection going. They keep extending and extending, primarily at the behest of Disney, to the point where it goes on forever.

A limit of protection of 20- 25 years maximum should suffice for any product whether intellectual or produced with ones hands IOW an invention. That would be more in line with the founders intent of these laws. It was to reward the original craftsman work but also too promote sciences. There should not be any more protection time allowed for someone who pens a song than for a company who pours hundreds of millions of dollars creating a new medication.