Posted on 03/12/2003 10:48:04 AM PST by mhking
Musicians sue South Beach
By JIM McBRIDE
jmcbride@amarillonet.com
Attorneys representing singer-songwriters Madonna and Lenny Kravitz are suing the owner of an Amarillo nightclub, alleging the club infringed on their federal copyrights by playing their songs without authorization.
The copyright infringement suit was filed in federal court March 4 against Scott Williams Elkins and Pickerington Bicycle Club, which operates South Beach, 2600 Linda Circle. The suit says the club is owned by Elkins.
The Globe-News was unable to reach South Beach representatives for comment on the suit Tuesday.
According to the suit, the various plaintiffs secured exclusive rights and privileges to copyrights for various songs.
The suit claims the club infringed on the plaintiffs' copyrights by giving public performances of copyrighted songs on the club premises.
The suit claims the defendants have not sought or obtained a license agreement from the plaintiffs or the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, known as ASCAP, a performing rights licensing organization that the plaintiffs belong to.
Plaintiffs claim ASCAP representatives contacted the defendants and sent numerous letters informing them of their liability under federal copyright law and that the defendants have continued to perform copyrighted music without permission during business hours.
Songs named in the lawsuit include "Justify My Love," written by Madonna Ciccone and Lenny Kravitz; "Erotica," written by Madonna and Shep Pettibone; "Nasty," written by James Harris III and Terry Lewis; and "Get the Party Started," written by Linda Perry.
Plaintiffs are seeking between $750 and $30,000 in damages for each of the five counts of copyright infringement named in the suit.
The suit also asks that the club be barred and permanently restrained from publicly performing the songs named in the suit.
Harry Fox licenses mechanical licenses. That means if I'm a recording artist and I want to record one certain song, I can buy a license from Harry Fox.
On the other hand, if I'm a nightclub owner I'll play about 23,000 songs a year. Is it worth my trouble to itemize each of the thousands of songs I might want to play, submitting an application to ASCAP for a license to play each and keeping a record of each song I play every night. Or would it be easier to simply buy a blanket license and play whatever I want whenever I want and not worry about it at all?
There are reasons why the business models have emerged as they have. That you can't see that is only because you only have an inchoate understanding of the business of music.
The blanket license is not a racket and ASCAP would not disappear if they no longer used the blanket license. The blanket license is merely a means of cutting out red tape and giving a music buying complete access to every song under ASCAP's administraion. In those countries where clubs have to document their music usage, as you suggested would be a better way to go, the PRO's still do the administration, but it's much more of a bureaucratic hassle for club owners. Again, you're speaking from ignorance.
Obscene expense ratios and uncertain payouts to artists...
Baseless conjecture. ASCAP and BMI pay out 95% of collections. There are mutual funds that charge more than 5%. You're blowing smoke.
... based on a corrupt (the current system of "promoters" is just payola retreaded - another instance of music industry racketeering) system.
Now you're just showing that you've got an axe to grind. ASCAP has nothing to do with a record company's use of independent radio promoters. The two are only tangentially related.
tdadams may claim all the ASCAP horror stories on the Web are all fabrications by IP thieves, but I would just invite anyone who wants to know ASCAP's true nature to google them and read the facts that are presented about ASCAP and make up your own mind.
For about the fourth time now, you've opted not to post anything of substance about these supposed ASCAP horror stories. If you make an assertion and the best you can do to substantiate it is to tell people to do a Google search, do you realize how incompetent you look? Do you realize how cowardly that looks? You made the assertions, the onus is on you to provide some weight to it. Why do you expect others to do your homework when you can't be bothered to do it yourself?
Please note you are the only one complaining of being inconvenienced. You may think you are plural, but you are the only one claiming what is obviously an extortion racket is a legitmate business.
You assert I am speaking from ignorance in the face of hundreds of firsthand accounts of dealings with ASCAP. Those hundreds of accounts paint a picture of racketeering, corruption, dubious interpretation of what constitutes a "contract," and anti-competitive practices.
ASCAP is an entertainment industry racket that sucks money into a corrupt, 99.9% lesftist pinko anti-business mafia. It deserves the scorn it gets.
tdadams may claim all the ASCAP horror stories on the Web are all fabrications by IP thieves, but I would just invite anyone who wants to know ASCAP's true nature to google them and read the facts that are presented about ASCAP and make up your own mind.Just because I happen to be the only one carrying on this conversation with you at the moment doesn't negate the fact that you did "invite" others to do your research for you.
Again, if you make an assertion, the onus is on you and you alone to provide some credibility to that assertion, something you've continued to evade.
Again, let's see your evidence. All I've seen so far is one baseless assertion on top of another, with no corroboration whatsoever. Where is a single major exposé from a national publication? Hell, I'll settle for a small regional newspaper. Show me anything other than your repeated conjecture.
ASCAP is an entertainment industry racket that sucks money into a corrupt, 99.9% lesftist pinko anti-business mafia.
You know, at first I thought I had to come on this thread and demonstrate how wrong and bizarre your allegations are. But after this, I think you're doing a better job of that than I could ever do.
Nonetheless, you're determined to go down in flames insisting that we should believe you despite a complete lack of substantiation and going on the record making demonstrably false accusations.
Please, feel free to add as much gasoline to your funeral pyre as you like. It's becoming quite entertaining.
Your assertion that there is a "Web-load" of damning evidence against ASCAP, contrasted with your inability to post a single example, is more than a bit curious.
The value of your painting, car, etc. are built into the sale price. The value of music to a business (hundreds? thousands?) is not built into the price of a song (about $1.70 at retail). The value is paid for on the installment plan called a performance license. That's hardly extortion.
The newspaper makes it's money from advertising, so the more eyes that see it, the better the paper does. I'm sure they'd be happy if you wanted to pass it around as much as possible.
As I said earlier on this thread, if you want to pay the full value of a song up front in a lump sum, there are many songwriters who would no doubt like to hear from you.
Faulty reasoning. If a retailer sells CD's and makes it possible for people to hear before they buy, they are not breaking copyright law, because if the people hear the CD and then buy it, the artist gets a royalty from the sale of the CD. In a bar or restaurant, the music is played to enhance the atmosphere, making the place more appealing to patronize. The artist got a royalty off the sale of the CD, but copyright law states that public performance (playing the CD in a public area where many people can hear it) requires a fee to be collected to be distributed to artists under a formula that has been worked out and agreed to by the artists, the recording companies, and the publishers as a fair compromise to compensate the artsist and publishers for the use of their work in the course of doing business to increase sales and therefore profits.
I am a performing musician myself, and I know that the bars and other establishments I play in pay the ASCAP (and/or BMI) fee, usually in conjuction with the lease of the jukebox they have on premises, and that fee also covers bands playing cover tunes, such as the band I play in. It's just a fact of business.
Oh yeah, the ever-so-clean jukebox industry. Nope, no mob connections here, nosiree Bob! Clean as the Bulger brothers.
I have read that ASCAP royalties are divided based upon radio airplay. Is this not true, and they are in fact divided some other way?
If a particular composer's work is very popular at nightclubs but gets minimal radio airplay, how would this get taken into consideration when divvying up royalty checks?
I assume you're talking about album sales? How does that relate to a business using the song? The one has nothing to do with the other.
If I sell widgets and Bob buys 200,000 should John get 10,000 for free just because I've been paid enough by Bob?
Posting common keywords from Google is absurd. Surely you know that. You don't really want to go down that road, believe me. I tried that using your screenname. Here's what I got:
Eno + Communism = 817 results
Eno + murder = 10,700 results
Eno + Nambla = 32 results
Eno + heroin = 2740 results
Eno + genocide = 999 results
Really makes a convincing argument, doesn't it?
Read the original article on this thread again - a club being sued by ASCAP artists - and then ask yourself if there would be any point if ASCAP only paid based on radio airplay.
It's true their royalties are more weighted towards radio than BMI or SESAC, but if you're an artist that gets more club play than radio play, you'd probably decide to affiliate with one of the PROs that provide better coverage of the venues where your music will be used.
If you'll post an example of my "circular logic" I'll address it, otherwise, you've made a meritless assertion.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.