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TFS (and, undoubtedly, TFA from which it's cribbed) quotes some music industry flack thusly:

better deal for music artists

Prompting slack_justyb to point out:

In all fairness, this bill has been worked on since Bush II days, around 2006-ish. This whole effort has mostly been decided between private parties and a few key congressional representatives.

It's almost like people forget that important law takes years, compromises between a multitude of interested parties, and bipartisanship.

The fact is that this law is a better deal for artists.

It's also a better deal - a much better deal - for record companies, and "rights holders" (which includes both "descendents who had nothing to do with writing or recording the works on which they're going to be paid royalties," and "people who bought the publishing rights to dead artists' back catalogues" and their descendents, etc.). But that's a baby/bathwater thing. Pay the actual artists more than a tiny fraction of a cent for their work, and those other folks will, inevitably, also get paid.

What this legislation does - beside the copyright extensions that got tacked onto it - is to increase royalties for digitally-streamed music significantly. That's a way-overdue acknowledgement that the method by which popular music is ephemerally distributed to consumers has drastically changed since the days when the only choices were AM or FM. Those 20th-century distribution technologies are increasingly obsolete, and I wouldn't bet on them still being around a decade or two from now (because RF bandwidth is increasingly precious).

Under the old legal framework, radio stations paid a per-play royalty on every song they broadcast - to the performing rights organization which represents the songwriter(s) and publisher of those songs. Performers got zilch (unless they were performing live, and the radio station was broadcasting their performance - it's all very messy and complicated). Each PRO (the two bigs are BMI and ASCAP) calculates its own formula for distributing them, and each PRO takes a rake-off, which, theoretically, pays for its direct expenses to collect, administer, and distribute those royalties.

Now a new administering body will be created to collect and distribute royalties for streaming plays. (Yay?) But - and this really is new and improved - the organization that collects and distributes royalties for which no payee can be located will be controlled by artists, not PROs. That means no more giant, largely-unaccountable slush funds which generally benefit only those PROs. In the new regime, that slush fund will belong to (and, at least theoretically, be accountable to) the artists themselves.

So - just maybe - this will mean a better deal for artists, because (again, in the absence of a functionting administrative body - which has yet to be created), in theory, it will mean the end of the kind of "Hollywood accounting" that for decades has routinely screwed so many working songwriters out of any significant payout for recordings of the music they wrote.

(Full disclosure: I am a songwriter, and a member of ASCAP. I have never seen a dime in royalties for my work, though - and, at this point, I probably never will. Nonetheless, I think this is an improvement over the previous system. I do not, however, approve of the Disney-authored extension of copyright term to the life of the artist plus 90 years. I think it's reasonable that an artist's surviving spouse benefit from his/her work for a relatively-short period after he/she dies, because it is routinely the case that sales of a popular artist's work see a significant - most often short-term - post-mortem boost. If you've ever known or been the spouse of a professional musician, you'll understand the sacrifices that relationship entails, and that loyalty deserves to be rewarded. Without it, there's many a songwriter who would have had to give it up, and get a "real" job, instead ... )

If you aren't deliberately trying to copy something, the possibility space of music is fucking vast.

Let me calculate how vast. There are seven notes in any given key of the Western musical scale, and a note can be short or long, for a total of 7 * 2 = 14 possibilities. The pitch and duration of the last note don't matter because a melody can be transposed to end on any note, and its duration is meaningless without a following onset. Thus the eight-note "hook" of your piece has seven intervals from one note to the next. With 14 possibilities per interval, this gives 14^7 = 105.4 million hooks. And only a small fraction of these will be musically pleasing.

Now compare this to the size of BMI's repertoire alone. It currently exceeds 10.5 million songs, not even counting ASCAP and SESAC. That's a one in ten chance.

Just make something and if it's got some complexity it'll be different.

So in your opinion, did George Harrison lose the Bright Tunes case because "My Sweet Lord" lacked "some complexity"? Or should he have just pulled All Things Must Pass from the market once notified of the mistake?

Both ASCAP and BMI allow people to pay a license to play music. There's also SESAC, though I believe they cover mostly European copyright holders. None of these organizations covers all artists, so you generally have to pay them all or track which songs you're playing to ensure that you're in compliance. If you're attempting to license a single song, you're best served contacting the copyright holder directly.

I see a lot of venting and ranting, but not a lot of info about what actually has or has not happened. No one seems to have noticed some of these Web sites are up and running.

copyright.gov is up
DOJ is up
RIAA seems to be down
MPAA is up
UMG is down
BMI is down

OK, now that we've got those facts sorted out, the next question is who cares?

This isn't like a DDOS attack against Amazon or Google. None of these organizations, government or otherwise, depend on their Web sites to transact business. Copyright.gov is an informational resource that contains reference material you can find in many other places. No one cares if it's down. Did you even know it existed before it allegedly went down? Justice.gov exists to inform the people about what the department is doing. That's it. If Anonymous wants to raise awareness about the DOJ's activities, taking their site down has the opposite effect, and does not hurt the DOJ. When was the last time you visited the MPAA or RIAA site? Is that where you're going to look to decide what movie you want to see tomorrow, or what music you're going to buy on iTunes? And UMG and BMI's businesses don't depend on their Web sites... their music is marketed and sold elsewhere.

We've known for about 12 years now that it's really not that hard in the scheme of things to DDOS even the biggest sites on the Web. Remember the shocking 3-hour attack on Yahoo in Feb 2000? The prevailing thought then was, "If they can shut down Yahoo, they can shut down anybody." This was a legitimate concern because with its site down, Yahoo's business does not exist. But these attacks are being directed at sites where it really doesn't matter. All it does it generate a scary-sounding news headline. Some of Anonymous's other antics have some real world implications for their targets... this does not.

ASCAP and BMI already charge businesses (nigh clubs/etc) that earn revenue from live bands covering music and even music being played in a jukebox. Since this is already in place I wonder why ASCAP/BMI wouldn't go after youtube.com rather than try and make the performers responsible.

Here are their respective links:

http://www.ascap.com/
http://www.bmi.com/

Like this: http://www.ascap.com/about/board-intro.html

Or this: http://bmi.com/about/entry/533112

Personally, I've been giving Paul Williams too much credit for being cool. This stuff shows he might be kind of a dick.

Would mathematics still be copyrightable?

Yes, a sufficiently large number can represent a copyrighted work. It can be represent a piece of music or a computer program. (A program is a list of instructions that describes a mathematical process in a way that a machine can carry out.) A program is copyrighted as a literary work, but the process that the program describes cannot itself be copyrighted in the United States per 17 USC 102(b). That's why some inventors have been trying to use patent law, which is designed to protect processes, to secure exclusive rights in algorithms.

Because any piece of music can be written down as a series of bytes

While we're still on the subject of musical copyright for a moment: Define the "hook" of a musical work as the first few notes of the memorable part. Then the Kolmogorov complexity of a hook can be estimated as having 40 bits or fewer, based on encoding each of the first eight notes in five bits: four bits for the pitch (0 to 15 relative to a standard scale), and one bit for whether the note is short or long. So there are only about a trillion musical hooks, and the birthday problem suggests that collisions start to become likely around the square root of that (a million). The music-theoretic rules of which pitches fit well together reduce the space even further. For comparison, the repertories of the major U.S. performance rights organizations, which have already surpassed 15 million (8.5 million for ASCAP and 6.5 million for BMI). So collisions such as "He's So Fine" vs. "My Sweet Lord" (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976)) quickly become inevitable.

They do, they are called royalties I suppose. One can see a wee bit about BMI's here.

Enter Napster. Kids are copying music and distributing it over the internet. These corporations are now trying to sell a product that is often easier to get for free online. The iPod becomes the Walkman of the 00's. The labels fear P2P and mp3s and demand copy protection, which Apple offers them in the iTMS. Now they can sell their music online, which makes it easy to find, but control how it's copied and distributed. And it will play on the majority of players. Everything is getting back to normal, but they need more money. So they want to raise prices.

But things have changed. The labels no longer control the distribution channel of their product. Apple does. And Apple refuses to raise prices. The labels have tried other online stores, including creating their own (which is probably still their end goal), with little success because Apple will not license their copy protection, nor support other methods of copy protection on the iPod. While some governments are working to legislate this, the labels can not afford to wait for legislation to solve their problem. They are forced to make a choice.

1. Concede to Apple, sell all songs at a fixed price
2. Sell unprotected, iPod compatible files at other online retailers
3. Lose more market share

At the moment, the labels have opted to sell unprotected files on Amazon.com. If the labels can restore the retail market to at least what it was, then they can more tightly control the "authorized" distribution of their product. And for the unauthorized... While it doesn't accomplish their end goal of complete control of the distribution and retail sale of their music, it's a step closer. Apple loses some of its bargaining power, and the labels can call the shots again.

Option A will reinforce a reasonable business model that will benefit the industry, the artist, and you.

I disagree. While I would rather purchase non-DRM'd music over DRM'd music, simply because I like to play music on a number of devices; I don't believe the lack of DRM benefits artists. It may benefit me in the short term, but then again the labels might just be fattening me up to eat me. I would suggest that a solution that truly respects artist and consumer needs would: decentralize the production, marketing, and distribution chain; acknowledge that technology has lowered the cost of bringing an album to market, and pay artists appropriately; and stop intimidating law abiding citizens.

To accomplish this, we must:

1. Stop purchasing music from labels that support the RIAA
2. Support independent and local musicians. Go to their shows, buy their music.

By doing this, the artists get paid more, you often get DRM-free music, and innocent people

You've got it backwards. All stations - Terrestrial and over-the-air - pay royalties to the copyright holder of the song itself. These royalties are paid to organizations like ASCAP and BMI, who then distribute the money to the songwriter. The royalties this article discusses are collected by SoundExchange on behalf of the copyright holder of the "performance" of the song (ie the recording the radio station plays). This copyright is generally held by the record company.

Terrestrial stations have so far been exempt from paying the performance royalties, but it looks like that may change.

It would be BMI. What could be worse than that?

In the music industry, it's typical for the record label to own the rights to the specific recordings while another entity (ASCAP, BMI) administers rights to performances, sheet music, lyrics, etc., usually in conjunction with a shell company set up by the artist.

The copyright for the school pictures usually lies with the person who paid for them. They are considered 'works for hire'. The group shots probably belong to the school, but it would depend on the contract they signed.

Some of the shots were traditional school pictures. These may have been works for hire, but have you read the fine print on any of the kids school pictures lately. They don't seem to be works for hire as they threaten death to your firstborn if you even think of scanning one and e-mailing it to your long lost great aunt.

Other shots which were most likely traditional studio work is formal family portraits and such of the family growing up. These in particular are the photos which would bankrupt me at $5,000 per violation. Between the brides family and the groom, there were a bunch of these. Other pro photos included Winner's circle photos (He raced cars) and studio photos of babies and pre-school toddlers. I no longer have the show, but figure a 15 minute show with an average slide transition of once a second. Some persisted for several seconds and other's piled on a page in rapid progression. Of the snapshots I would guess about 5% were pro. The show had about 900 photos. About 45 were pro, not counting the school portraits. Just scanning the phots at $5,000 per photo is a $220,000 violation. Add in the 4 songs, the public performance, and then printing 20 copies of all that on DVD's and then passing them out. Oh the horror of it. Now do two more weddings....

The music however is an issue, the performance is legal under the mandatory licensing laws (you did pay ASCAP didn't you?), however the permanent copy is an issue - subject to a 3K minimum penalty.

What's so special about the music? Only 4 works were infringed. How is public display of commercial photographs and copying them any less protected?

ASCAP.. One wedding a year for 3 years.. Have you looked into getting the license. I looked into it and found it impossible.

http://www.ascap.com/index.html
http://www.ascap.com/about/payment/paymentintro.html
http://www.ascap.com/about/payment/royalties.html
http://www.ascap.com/siteguide.html

I linked to the site as the site is loaded with don't copy notices all over it.

Nothing on this page covers playing a CD in public.
http://www.ascap.com/licensing/generallicensing.html

I found a whole bunch of junk on reporting copyright violations, sharing the profits of song witers and performers and even how to join ASCAP so I can register my works and pay dues. Finding the page to license the 4 music tracks for the public performance is very difficult to find.

Off to BMI.. Maybe I can find the rate to play 4 songs at a wedding..
http://www.bmi.com/

Aha, a link in the small print at the bottom of the page. Need a license?
http://www.bmi.com/licensing/?link=footer
About Us
Music speaks to the heart. Music also plays an important role in thousands of businesses--from radio, television and cable broadcasts, to streaming music over the internet, to live and recorded music used in restaurants, hotels and retail stores. BMI Licensing clears the performing rights for thousands of business which rely on music to entertain customers and increase profits.

What does this mean for your business? BMI saves you money! BMI represents over 350,000 creators of music, the songwriters, composers and publishers of more than 6.5 million musical works! Licensing makes the process simple, easy and cost-effective to obtain the musical clearance you need.

Aah Ha.. Now we are getting someplace. Lets find the rat

The copyright for the school pictures usually lies with the person who paid for them. They are considered 'works for hire'. The group shots probably belong to the school, but it would depend on the contract they signed.

Some of the shots were traditional school pictures. These may have been works for hire, but have you read the fine print on any of the kids school pictures lately. They don't seem to be works for hire as they threaten death to your firstborn if you even think of scanning one and e-mailing it to your long lost great aunt.

Other shots which were most likely traditional studio work is formal family portraits and such of the family growing up. These in particular are the photos which would bankrupt me at $5,000 per violation. Between the brides family and the groom, there were a bunch of these. Other pro photos included Winner's circle photos (He raced cars) and studio photos of babies and pre-school toddlers. I no longer have the show, but figure a 15 minute show with an average slide transition of once a second. Some persisted for several seconds and other's piled on a page in rapid progression. Of the snapshots I would guess about 5% were pro. The show had about 900 photos. About 45 were pro, not counting the school portraits. Just scanning the phots at $5,000 per photo is a $220,000 violation. Add in the 4 songs, the public performance, and then printing 20 copies of all that on DVD's and then passing them out. Oh the horror of it. Now do two more weddings....

The music however is an issue, the performance is legal under the mandatory licensing laws (you did pay ASCAP didn't you?), however the permanent copy is an issue - subject to a 3K minimum penalty.

What's so special about the music? Only 4 works were infringed. How is public display of commercial photographs and copying them any less protected?

ASCAP.. One wedding a year for 3 years.. Have you looked into getting the license. I looked into it and found it impossible.

http://www.ascap.com/index.html
http://www.ascap.com/about/payment/paymentintro.html
http://www.ascap.com/about/payment/royalties.html
http://www.ascap.com/siteguide.html

I linked to the site as the site is loaded with don't copy notices all over it.

Nothing on this page covers playing a CD in public.
http://www.ascap.com/licensing/generallicensing.html

I found a whole bunch of junk on reporting copyright violations, sharing the profits of song witers and performers and even how to join ASCAP so I can register my works and pay dues. Finding the page to license the 4 music tracks for the public performance is very difficult to find.

Off to BMI.. Maybe I can find the rate to play 4 songs at a wedding..
http://www.bmi.com/

Aha, a link in the small print at the bottom of the page. Need a license?
http://www.bmi.com/licensing/?link=footer
About Us
Music speaks to the heart. Music also plays an important role in thousands of businesses--from radio, television and cable broadcasts, to streaming music over the internet, to live and recorded music used in restaurants, hotels and retail stores. BMI Licensing clears the performing rights for thousands of business which rely on music to entertain customers and increase profits.

What does this mean for your business? BMI saves you money! BMI represents over 350,000 creators of music, the songwriters, composers and publishers of more than 6.5 million musical works! Licensing makes the process simple, easy and cost-effective to obtain the musical clearance you need.

Aah Ha.. Now we are getting someplace. Lets find the rat

"Last I heard, BMI was a record company; If bands want to make money from performances, they should get off their butts and go on tour."

You're not the first person to be confused. BMG (the record company) and BMI (the performance rights organization) sound similar so people think they are related. They are not. It's a coincidence. BMG stands for, I believe, Bertelsmann Media Group. BMI stands for Broadcast Music, Incoporated.

Fair enough to get them confused, but it's essential to stand that they do vastly different things. BMG is a record company (the bad guys). BMI is a performing rights society working on behalf of composers and lyricists (the good guys). If somebody really told you that BMI is a record company, they were mistaken.

"The problem with this system, is that there is no negotiation or posted pricing that can be agreed upon before the music is played. Instead, they send you a bill after the fact in an attempt to extort as much as possible from the establishment. If they want credibility, they need to be more transparent about the process."

Huh?! ASCAP and BMI sell licenses. If you want a license, you call ASCAP or BMI or go to their web site, tell them what kind of business you have, download the PDF (that's the BMI form for restuarants), check the boxes that apply to your business, and if you have any questions, you ask them. The licensing form is about as clear and transparent as you can get. No posted pricing? I'm sorry, but what in the hell are you talking about? Is the form unclear? Did you just make that up?

Remeber -- we are talking about businesses who ignore the fact that a license is required, because they'd rather keep the money for themselves, and they're hoping and/or assuming that they will not get caught. Whether this is an admirable way to treat others is an exercise left to the reader, but I am not surprised at all that the rightholders are upset.

"You ASSERT that it isn't the RIAA. To me they look like the same group of people. Until I see a significant distinction, then I'm not going to differentiate."

The RIAA is run by and for record labels.

ASCAP and BMI -- the "bad guys" in this situation -- are run by and for artists.

If you believe that anybody who demands money for music is evil, then by all means -- you are 100% correct. Both the RIAA as well as ASCAP/BMI deserve your hate. You can stop right here.

For those who would like more information:

Here is information about ASCAP. Here is information about BMI.

As others have pointed out, ASCAP and BMI have been providing performance rights licences for many decades. It's a great way for composers and songwriters to make money without having to rely on record companies. We want artists to succeed without having to rely on record labels, right? Performance rights are the way for us to enjoy music for free, to avoid giving money to record companies, and for artists to make money doing what they love. It's sad that this is not enough for you.

I'm a bit boggled by your statement that the RIAA "purchased the law that this abuse is based on." ASCAP and BMI have been looking out for artists' rights for longer than the RIAA has been around. Please clarify.

"Um...isn't that what the RIAA is technically supposed to be? Not that it actually represents the artists' interests."

No; not hardly. They represent the recording industry. From their "about" page (emphasis mine):

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

Musicians have their own alliances. Somebody's already pointed out the AFM; There are also the ASCAP and BMI; both are performance rights societies run by and for musicians.

Slashdotters often consider ASCAP and BMI to be just as evil as the RIAA, but I should point out that ASCAP/BMI and the RIAA are often at odds with each other, because they represent groups of people who are on the opposite ends of the business deals.

BMI, an organization representing music publishers, controls performance licensing for at least 6.5 million musical works. ASCAP and SESAC control performance licensing for millions of other works but don't appear to advertise the number. Works can be recorded more than once, and many recordings are of pre-1923 works that aren't counted in any U.S. copyright repertory because they don't have a U.S. copyright anymore. Therefore, 11 million works doesn't sound too off-the-wall.

Two examples of such copyright collection societies are: ASCAP and BMI. One issue with them is that they are very expensive - often they will demand a certain percentage of revenue. They were even sued for being trusts - and ASCAP lost. So they are not without their faults.

"No, artists are supposed to recieve a royalty every time there song is played on the radio, jukebox or DJ, but you can imagine how often the lables are forgotten to be paid for the above, and how often the artists are forgotten even when the labels are paid."

I'm guessing you're talking about Europe? Here in the USA, licenses for airplay go through a couple of artists' societies called ASCAP and BMI. They are run by and for artists and the labels see none of the airplay licensing money.

Here's how BMI pays royalties, and here's how ASCAP pays.

Bummer for your countries' artists and songwriters if performance royalties are filtered through the labels. That's the wrong way to do it. Publishing and performing rights should remain with the songwriters.

"Radio stations do have to pay money to broadcast music, but it's not very much, and (IIRC) it's a blanket license to play all of the music controlled by a label. The cut that goes back to the artists is miniscule -- practically nonexistent."

here in the USA, radio licensing is handled by ASCAP and BMI, two societies that are run by and for artists. More info is here:

ASCAP radio licensing

BMI radio licensing

It's a separate money stream than the royalties that the artists earn from record sales. Your use of the word "label" isn't the most accurate. ASCAP and BMI are societies that represent artists, composers and musicians, but they are not record labels. Record labels do not get any of the radio licensing money.

"Practically nonexistent" is a relative term. I've heard that even 2nd or 3rd tier artists can get checks for a couple of hundred bucks a month from radio airplay -- and again, that's money that doesn't even pass through the hands of the record labels. A couple of hundred bucks can make the difference between paying the rent, and not paying the rent.

"Radio stations pay to RIAA and suchlike for broadcasing rights already. This is where the music is sold. If RIAA thinks it is underpaid, it could try to raise the price for the stations."

It's pretty common knowledge that if you want to operate a broadcast station in the US, you get a license from ASCAP and BMI. Somebody else mentioned Harry Fox but I don't believe they handle radio licensing. And the RIAA definitely doesn't get a piece of that pie.

ASCAP, BMI, and Harry Fox are representatives of the artists. The RIAA is the representative of the record labels. See the difference? If one is of the mindset that anybody who wants to be paid for providing music is evil, then I suppose there isn't much difference at all, but this is a vital distinction to understand for those who kneel at the shrine of "artists good, record companies bad."

I once heard a radio program describing how representatives of ASCAP and BMI would go to restaurants and write down the songs
that were played on the PA system. If they did not have a license for public performance for those songs, they would be contacted
by ASCAP or BMI.

You can contact those two organizations and pay for a license for public performance of songs who's music rights are owned by their member artists.

To quote their web site: "And with one license fee, ASCAP saves you the time, expense, and burden of contacting thousands of copyright owners."

According to the BMI web site:

"It does not matter how the song is performed. Be it a live band, radio, CD or tape, the music user must have the permission of the song's owner to perform it in their place of business."

An intersting note is that it is not the DJs problem, it is the club owner's problem. The onus is upon the owner of the venue to have a license
with both of these organizations in case a recorded song in their catalog is played either by a DJ or a musician performing in their venue.

In the same radio program, they talked to business owners who responded by hiring musicians to play their own original music in lieu of paying
ASCAP and BMI.

Each PRO has their own way of determining how royalties are paid. I think they come up with formulas and algorithms to determine the "weight" of each song in their catalog and then pay based off of that. Again this is only for live performances - broadcast plays are distinctly tracked.

You can probably investigate more of the specifics on their websites here:
http://www.bmi.com/licensing/
http://www.ascap.com/about/
http://sesac.com/licensing/learn_more.html

BMI, not BMG.
sorry.

"Listening to music is free, just like looking at this sculpture is free. Playing the music (esp. in public venues where it is part of a business situation: restaurants, shops, radio stations) is where the money comes into it. The RIAA wants to be reimbursed for the use of the music in those situations."

Public performance is licensed by outfits like ASCAP and BMI. Both are non-profit societies run by and for songwriters and composers. They are unrelated to the RIAA and this licensing money goes composers, songwriters and musicians, not the RIAA.

This is vital to understand if one kneels at the shrine of "RIAA bad, musicians good." The fact is, whether we like it or not, many songwriters (from here on known as "fucking greedy songwriters") make much of their money through public performance. I think a good umbrealla sort of philosophy to accomodate this fact is that anyboody who wants to be paid for their creative output is bad. Unless they're a web designer, software developer, or otherwise have another Slashdot-friendly profession!

"Do independent and alternative labels get any of the copyright taxes in countries like Germany and Canada, or does it all go to the RIAA equivalents?"

Not sure what you mean by "RIAA equivalents." In Canada it goes to SOCAN, which is the equivalent of ASCAP and BMI -- that is, composers, lyricists and the like. The record labels largely aren't part of the story. So, when reading about tariffs and levies (whether they're in the US, Canada, or Germany), when you see "greedy record label" substitute that with "greedy composers and lyricists."

The money's distributed according to popularity as measured by airplay, I believe. This is a gross generalization, but popular artists tend to be on major labels, and less popular artists tend to be on indie labels (again -- gross generalization!) so the people who write Celine Dion's music for her will get more of the Canadian levy than the people who write the music for your favorite little-known indie bands.

Anyway, the little labels see little or none of the Canadian levy, but then again, neither do the big ones.

Typical licensees are restaurants, night clubs and radio stations.

Yeah, and you too can license music for your home (at least how I read it). These licenses for restraunts and night clubs do not say anything about acquiring the music itself. In fact, if you go to a record store and buy RIAA CDs personally, you do not have the right to play that in a restraunt or night club without a BMI license.

Anyway, my point being is that for $15 bucks a year (assuming you have less than 250 people regularly come to your home) you can legally license basically all of the recorded music to play in your home and this license does not even mention that you must also legally buy the music from the RIAA. So borrowing CDs or getting them from a p2p source seems to me OK because you have the license to play the music.

Read the PDF license application here.

Am I missing something here, or is this too simple?

"paying more than 85% of revenue collected to copyright owners." Copyright owners = the record company's"

I'm not sure how you made that connection. BMI is a performers' rights organization. They represent (and help collect money for) songwriters and composers, not record companies. Songwriters and composers, on the whole, make absolutely terrible money, and it's organizations like BMI that look out for them.

It's covered here.

BMI is a performance rights organization. They are not part of the money flow involved with buying a CD. They are non-profit, run by and for artists and composers -- the "good guys" according to many Slashdotters.

They handle public performances. Not CD sales..

Again: BMI = good guys. They collect money for artists and performers -- the little guys. And this money does not come from CD sales. It would be a stretch to claim that P2P would have any effect on BMI's revenue stream. It's all explained here.

This has to be the mother of all straw men, folks.

``Using a broadcast radio station as the hold music on a phone system actually requires a copyright license from the station from which the artists/publishers should be seeking their payment.``

I don't know where you got this information, but it's completely inaccurate. In the USA, if you play music in your public space, be it a dentist office, mall, etc, you have to pay BMI and ASCAP, the US equivalents of SOCAN. This has been the case for many decades.

Perhaps your thinking of the subscription commercial music services like DMX or Muzak who provide music and bundle the licensing fees to the retailers- but radio stations are not licensed to resell music for playback in stores or on hold!

(The RIAA has nothing to do with this. BMI and ASCAP represent the performance copyright, where the RIAA represents the sound recording copyright.)

Sorry to sound so crass but /. has a terrible way of amplifying misinformation, and it has to be nipped in the bud.

Take a look at this PDF form. Its from BMI to license music. Its independant of the RIAA, its a broadcast license for a "facility" (a house, apartment, or dorm will suffice) to play music (even recorded music) for less than 10,000 people. Specifically, for less than 250 people (which most of us would fall under) it costs $15 for a blanket license of music which includes recorded music.

Is this a viable loophole to bypass the RIAA?

Public radio is a bad idea:

Just because a radio station has a license (from a major record company, a small record company, individual mucisians, etc) to play specific music or content doesn't mean that YOU have the license or right to further redistribute or broadcast that content. "Public" does not at all necessarily mean "public domain" or "open source".

http://www.bmi.com/licensing/business/groupb/faq/m usiconhold_answers.asp


Q: Our Music-On-Hold System Only Uses Programming From Local Radio Stations. Aren't The Stations Already Licensed?

A: Though radio stations are licensed with BMI to perform the music they broadcast, that agreement does not cover further public performance by those receiving the radio broadcast signal. When radio music is used in music-on-hold, that use is a separate performance under the copyright law.

Yes, you need to license your hold music in America.

BMI Records on Music On Hold


Although, most people buy tapes and CDs thinking they are now their property, there is a distinction in the law between owning a copy of the CD and owning the songs on the CD. There is also a difference between a private performance of copyrighted music and a public performance. Most people recognize that purchasing a CD doesn't give them the right to make copies of it to give or sell to others. The record company and music publishers retain those rights. Similarly, the music on the CDs and tapes still belongs to the songwriter, composer or music publisher of the work. When you buy a tape or CD the purchase price covers only your private listening use, similar to the "home" use of "home" videos. Once you decide to play these tapes or CDs in your business, it becomes a public performance.

Songwriters, composers, and music publishers have the exclusive right of public performance of their musical works under the U.S. copyright law. Therefore, any public performance requires permission from the copyright owner - or BMI - if it is BMI-affiliated music. With a BMI Music Performance Agreement, you can publicly perform all BMI-affiliated music.

Just FYI, to be fully legit, Webcasters must pay fees to copyright holders BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC, as well as to the RIAA.

I want to select songs that I think would go well together and make mix or compilation cds and sell them.

That is pretty much impossible to do legally, unless you restrict yourself to songs by your brother's garage band. The RIAA cartel controls the copyrights to most every artist anyone has ever heard of, and the RIAA has absolutely zero interest in dealing with you.

Is there a difference DJing for clubs versus for private events versus in private homes?

US copyright law has the following definition:
To perform or display a work ''publicly'' means - to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered

If it's a private party of YOUR family and social circle then it's a fair use. You can play your personal CD's at your own New Years Eve party with your crew. You can play whatever your friend's bring too.

If it's open to the public and/or you're hired to DJ's for profit then it is a public performance and you need for pay for public performance licencing...

what a DJ needs to do to be legal

The three major performance rights organizations are ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI. You'd need to sign up with one or more of them. ASCAP is the largest and slightly more expensive than BMI. SESAC is signifigantly smaller and cheaper and only represents European artists. If you only sign up with one then you can only (legally) play the artists associated with that group.

I *think* ASCAP and BMI cost somewhere between $100 and $270 per year each, and I *think* SESAC is under $90 per year.

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At least in the US, musicians pay to join an organization like BMI, which monitors radio stations, TV stations, theaters, etc. to keep track of how often particular songs are played. BMI takes a random sample of the airwaves and divides up royalties accordingly. Stations pay generalized "royalty money" to be able to air X minutes of music per hour, and that money gets passed onto the artists. This avoids the artists having to track their airtime themselves.

Consequently, indie groups get left out of the system - if you don't get enough airtime to show up on BMI's random sample, you don't get paid at all. (BMI does offer a form for artists to fill out if they feel they are getting more airtime than is represented, like niche markets or local play.)

You're thinking of ASCAP and BMI.

"It just that record companies often pay "consultants" to encourage "read: Pay" radio stations to play their songs. They also often sign liberal agreements with stations (Pay us $x a month and you can play anything from our catalog)."

Your use of the word "They" to start the second sentence may give readers the impression that radio stations, et al, deal with the record companies for licensing music. I know you didn't mean it that way, but I'd like to clarify it anyway.

Record companies (and restaurants, and so on) license from ASCAP and BMI. They are not record labels, but non-profit societies run by and for composers, artists and publishers (the "CAP" in ASCAP). The licensing fee does not go to record companies.

This is an important distinction to understand if one kneels at the shrine of "record companies bad, performers and songwriters good." Whenever this licensing requirement comes up, people invariably blame those "greedy record companies," but "greedy songwriters" would be more appropriate. In actuality, a typical songwriter is lucky to have one hit song over the course of their career, and many songwriters rely on licensing royalties to feed their families.

The right to use copyrighted music synchronized with video (e.g. a film, television show or commercial) is called a reproduction right and it's covered by a "Synchronization License". BMI has a good write-up here.

You'll still have to have a license for any music you want to play... assuming that its artists who are covered by restrictive contracts. You'all know about the fees that clubs, bars, and other venues have to pay to the good folks at ASCAP, SESAC and BMI... There really won't be any competition for clearchan-hell. On the other hand, if you've really wanted to see what AXELF sounds like on the "airwaves," this might be just the thing for you.

Broadcasting of copyrighted material is allowed as a fair-use

That's not true. Radio and TV stations have to pay royalties to play music. There are several licensing groups but the biggest are ASCAP and BMI.

Anywhere that there is a public performance of copyright music you must pay royalties to the licensing bodies for the songs that you use. This includes background music in stores, music in bars and clubs, elevators, etc.

no, no, no.

There *is* more than a snowball's chance in hell here. If you read the topic, it says label would pay the PUBLISHER, not the artist. I'm not sure exactly how that all works, or even if that's right, but if you look on a cd, you'll see something along the lines of "All songs published by SomethingSomething/BMI." Where BMI is one of a few publishing houses.

"Traditionally, radio is lesser quality than what the RIAA offers for sale, and previous comments have mentioned that the audio sounds compressed, so the possibility of the RIAA persuing any increased fees for XM or Sirius is slim, in my opinion."

Very slim, because the fees that radio stations pay go to artists, not the RIAA or even record companies.

The fees are paid through licenses from BMI and ASCAP, non-profit societies run by and for artists. And you can be sure that these licenses were negotiated with BMI and ASCAP long before the first satellites were launched.

"But this is because the RIAA is too busy chasing after the digital pirates, and don't have time for the "small time" operations of bootleggers, like Napster/KaZaa/etc. is the first time piracy has ever occured."

They bust CD pirates, counterfeiters and bootleggers quite a bit:

• http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/111703.asp
• http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/121603.asp
• http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/111303_2.asp

...it's just not discussed on /. much.

"Listening to the radio spew out song after song at no cost to me other than the time spent dealing with (listening to or avoiding) commercials, I hear no legal notices explaining that the songs were used with permission from the relevant parties. Stations have to pause periodically for identification. Perhaps it would clarify to the general public that the music is used with permission if they would pause from time to time in a similar manner to explain whose permission allowed them to play such music and to remind the public that the music is a tightly controlled resource."

Great post overall, but one clarification: radio stations generally need not get permission to play music (the instances where they must get permission is beyond the scope here). However, they do pay for the priveledge of playing the music. The money goes to ASCAP and BMI, two non-profit performance rights societies that distribute the money back to the composers. The record company does not get this money.

Also, your post may infer that the RIAA is the permission-giver for all music. For instances such as using a piece of music in a film, permission of the copyright holders must be obtained. The copyright holders can range from the record company to an engineer or two to the composer to the lyricist to the performer, but it's never the RIAA. The RIAA is a trade group that represents many but not all record companies. To that point, if I release a song on my own, or with the help of a record company that's not affiliated with the RIAA, I still get all the rights you've described above. Copyright law protects everybody.

Maybe you don't call them royalties, but they pay licensing fees to ASCAP and BMI for each song played, just as any venue with live music, a jukebox, or karaoke is required to do, and these funds are distrubuted to copyright holders.(Some bars don't pay, and hope not to get caught, but that's another discussion, and a long one.)

While these fees are a pittence compared to the payola radio recieves from promoters, they do exist. Either you misunderstood the article you read about webcasters, or someone who doesn't understand how it all works was directly quoted. Webcasters can't afford to pay the fees because they don't have the massive revenue streams of traditional broadcasters. That's why they were crying foul. I agree that webcasters are getting screwed, and I you make a valid point about payola, but you are wrong about radio not having to pay out royalties.

"One exception to the above: a subsidary of the RIAA, whose name temporarily escapes me, is responsible for collecting the fees and redistributing them for all music played on radio where the station operator hasn't negotiated directly with the copyright holders. That's the only place the RIAA could be said to have a "monopoly" in any meaningful sense of the word. But that's barely relevent here."

Your post was otherwise excellent but the above absolutely needs to be corrected.

Radio royalties are collected by two non-profit agencies, BMI and ASCAP. BMI and ASCAP are run by and for composers, songwriters, and publishers. And they are not part of the RIAA.

As there are two independent agencies that handle this in the US, I guess one could call it an oligarchy, but if one is of the "RIAA is bad" mindset, then BMI and ASCAP are definitely the good guys. Again: they are non-profit agencies run by and for songwriters, composers and publishers for the purpose of getting radio royalties to the composers, songwriters and publishers.

Collecting radio royalties is one of many things that they do in support of the individuals who work hard to create the music (royalties based on public performance, such as in bars and restaurants with live bands or jukeboxes, is just one other thing they do). These royalties, too, go to songwriters, composers and publishers, not the RIAA.

In anticipation of the next question, "aren't the publishers the record companies, so doesn't that mean that the RIAA gets more money, RIAA DIE DIE DIE DIE," the answer is: typically not. In this context, publishing refers not to the actual recording of a piece of music, but the rights to the music and lyrics. This includes, but is not limited to, printing the lyrics in the liner notes, quoting them in a book, covering a song, and using an original song in a commercial (for which multiple rights holders may have to be consulted -- including the owner of the recording, which is often a record company). Nowadays, the publisher is a smallish company, often just one or two people. One can sell or transfer their publishing rights; perhaps the most famous example is Michael Jackson's buying of much of the Beatles catalog. Michael Jackson owns the publishing rights. Here's more info.

By the way, typically for a song to be available on a legal download service, approval must be acquired from both the owner of the recording (the record company) as well as the music publisher. This is why you might see eight out of ten of an album's ten tracks available on buymusic or itunes -- for the other two, perhaps the songwriter or the composer simply did not give permission. This is one reason why getting legal services with large catalogs has been so tough... all those permissions to obtain. This is precisely why many folks have advocated extending the concept of compulsory royalties for downloads -- under such a system, the download service would not need to seek the composer's permission before making the song available for download, as long as the composer was paid a fixed fee set by law.

Even more information is here and here.

"But, the world does not take your view of the law. There are exceptions. The major one is radio. Did you know that radio is not obligated to pay for the music it plays. (And actually, it gets paid to play the music it plays!)."

In the United States, radio stations do indeed pay for the priveledge of playing music. Two non-profit organizations, BMI and ASCAP, handle the collection of these airplay royalties. BMI and ASCAP are run by and for composers and musicians, and the money collected goes to them, not the RIAA.

"Did you know you that's it's perfectly legal to make music complications to share with friends and family? Obviously not. You think that every copy demands a lawsuit."

There's no law which explicitly makes this legal; ie. there's no "friends and family" clause. However, this sort of casual copying is so far off the radar that nobody really cares.

Lots of people who break laws find a way to justify them. Many people steal because they need to feed their family. Or perhaps one might speed to the hospital to save a life. For every law on the book, there is probably a good argument for breaking that law on a situational basis. But, nonetheless, laws are laws. Because you can think of justification to break one -- in this case, we're talking about Title 17 -- may not be the best evidence that it needs to be changed.