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Bar Performer Arrested For Copyright Violations
Edis Krad writes, "An elderly Japanese bar manager and performer has been arrested for playing copyrighted songs on his harmonica. From the article: 'Investigators accuse Toyoda of illegally performing 33 songs such as the Beatles' songs "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Yesterday," whose copyrights are managed by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. He allegedly performed the songs on the harmonica with a female pianist at the bar he operated between August and September this year.' This is for all those kids who are learning chords on their guitars — be ready to pay fees for practicing 'Smoke On The Water.' This story seems to be legit, though it reads like an Onion piece. It's only being reported in the Mainichi Daily News via MSN.
It appears as though the threading code has broken since the comments went over id 16777215 (ie limit of 24bit numbers)
The comments themselves are being added, but the internal link back to its parent has gone up the swanny.
Is a 24bit value an acceptable database field length or is this a code problem?
liqbase
Now that there's international precedence, expect to see the RIAA lobbying for similarly harsh enforcement of copyright law around here (OK, maybe not this bad). The trouble with copyright infringement cases like these is where to draw the line. Logically a band covering another song in a large venue for a paying crowd should pay some type of usage fees, while little Johnny shouldn't need to pay anything for playing the Star Wars theme at his small piano recital. But everywhere between those two extremes it gets pretty murky.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Stealing from poor, hardworking, underpaid, struggling artists like mulit-multi-millionaire Sir Paul.
The difference here is that this guy plays the tunes in his business establishment. One could reasonably argue that he does derive financial benefit from having music as a perk for his patrong.
...for now.
Unless the guitar-playing kids are imposing a cover charge when playing for Aunt Sally, I think they are free from worry...
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Every cloud has a silver lining....
Oh arse
Denied!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
This story seems to be legit, though it reads like an Onion piece. It's only being reported in the Mainichi Daily News via MSN.
This sounds too much like a joke. In theory, this is supposed to be impossible. In the USA, and one would presume Japan as well, bars/nightclubs are responsible for paying fees to composer societies (this includes ASCAP and BMI in the USA) to cover exactly this sort of thing - a performer performing copywritten material. In the USA I've heard of ASCAP and BMI going after bars and nightclubs who didn't pay them money, but never performers. Again, I can't speak for Japanese law, but in the USA it is clear that it is the owner of the performance venue, not the artist, who has to pay this fee.
Bars in the United States pay either ASCAP or RIAA (I think it's ASCAP) a flat rate for playing songs in their establishments. The association actually has undecover monitors that check out bars and other venues and then sue if the establishment isn't paying royalties. I really don't have a problem with this part ... but arrests seem to go overboard.
seg fault
Apparently parody is not protected under Japanese law.
;)
An old geezer on harmonica and a underage Japanese school girl on piano?
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
I have noticed (to much LOLing this morning) that nearly every article on /. is tagged with "itsatrap"... what gives? Doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose of the tagging system in the first place? At the very least, it was highly amusing to see every article tagged with "itsatrap." Maybe we should lobby slashdot to legitimize it with an admiral ackbar icon.
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
What exactly was he 'stealing' here? An idea?
It's not like if he recorded what he's playing and then sell it on it would risk losing sales to the original artists.
His actions had zero impact on sales for those artists/labels in the unlikely event it had any impact at all it would have been slightly positive (e.g. someone gets tune stuck in their head and seeks out the original).
If the story is true, even if this guy didn't pay his licensing fees, does he really need to be arrested? The last time I checked copyright infringement was not a criminal offense but a civil offense. Large scale bootleggers are usually charged with something more substantial like fraud, mail fraud, etc which make their actions criminal. IANAL. Somebody inform me on this.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This story shows up at least once a month. It's a hoax. Last time, it was a bar being sued into bankruptcy for letting a local band play covers.
C'mon, Slashdot should know better than to fall for these things...
This happens all the time. ASCAP & BMI have reps that go around to bars and start billing the owners for public performance. I have been told that they rarely approach bands but almost every bar that has live or even recorded music, juke box etc get hit by bills from the song publishing companies.
My god I haven't seen threadless articles in slash since I last delved into the real archives.
I think people aren't noticing it, but they will.
Damn annoying when a technical fault occurs, and no I don't know why its marked as troll either.
liqbase
As the conviction rate in Japan exceeds 99%, we can be almost certain that this dangerous international economic terrorist is going to be kept off the streets for a long time. At last, Japanese listeners can be assured of hearing only 100% approved covers by the latest Pop Puppet of the Hour!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Simple solution: stop listening to this newfangled "rock and roll" stuff and just focus on classical. Haydn and Mozart's copyrights ran out long ago, so you can practice and perform their work for free. (Granted, some of the newer classical stuff is still under copyright, but it mostly sucks anyway.)
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
As has been pointed out, this particular case is covered by bars paying ASCAP fees.
But this brings up an excellent point. In a culture where all intellectual "property" is owned, can we be far from though crimes by just humming a song?
The irony is thick here. George Harrison, a member of the Beatles, was sued and lost for unintentionally copying "My Sweet Lord" from the Chiffons' song "He's So Fine". It was a major blow to Harrison.
The problem is that the record companies that own the copyrights own monopolies on rights, and can conceivably charge as much as they want for these rights. The arms race has already started for movie licenses for songs. In the commentary for the Blues Brother's, John Landis comments that a movie of this type will probably never be made again, because the astronomical cost of music licensing.
The only conceivable long term solution is free culture. Society will still find ways to reward authors for their contributions without the current licensing nightmare. That is the only way culture will be able to keep evolving. The mix-ups, mash-downs, movies and cultural references in the future depend on having unencumbered source material. And the more the copyrights holders squeeze, the quicker this will happen.
Pretend you're a composer and you have just written the piece that is the pinnacle of your career. The New York Times says that your piece is the most musically perfect piece of classical music every played. Orchestras around the world want to perform your work. Do you have a right to charge them for it?
Of course you do. If you didn't, then why would you write the music?
"Copyright" is not a monolithic right -- it is a bundle of individual rights that includes the right to copy, the right to prepare derivative works and, important here, the right to perform the work publicly. Non-public "performances", like playing in your garage or humming, are excluded.
There was a post questioning whether the performer or the bar should be liable. In general, the performer is directly liable for the infringement -- he's performing it publicly. But, because the bar owner could have prevented the infringement, but didn't and instead profited from it, the bar owner is probably liable as well. (It's called 'vicarious infringement.') Mainly for convenience, ASCAP and others typically deal with the bar owners rather than the performers.
Nice one, dipshit. It's genuine. The original Japanese article has his full name and address, and it's been on all the major Japanese news services since this afternoon (he was arrested this morning).
...George Michael was arrested for playing "Come Together" on a pink oboe in a public lavatory.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Well, with a name like "Toyoda," he's lucky they didn't add a charge for Trademark Dilution.
What?
In the US, bars and other venues for live and recorded music "performance" (playing in public) usually pay a blanket subscription fee to ASCAP and BMI, which each collect royalties for the different artists they represent. They record a random setlist, either one day a month or so, or one hour a day for several days, depending on the royalty agency, to send to the royalty agencies. Then the agency sends fractions of the subscription for the whole month to the artists in the random playlist. The artist's pay has the royalties already deducted before being paid.
Of course, that's the way it's supposed to work. In practice, many venues, especially smaller ones, don't even bother sending in their royalty subscriptions. And BMI/ASCAP don't represent all artists - SOCAN represents lots of Canadian artists, there are other even tinier agencies with their own exclusive artist list, and of course many smaller-producing artists don't register with any agency. The venues that do report usually don't report the random samples. When they do, they often just make them up. And of course those samples are not really random, or represent their total performance lists, except in venues which play the same 5 songs over and again (there are certainly too many of those). But artists with fewer repeats get left out of the sample, and the biggest artists obviously get even more favoritism, and therefore much more royalties - the little ones get some random trickle, if anything. And then the agencies often don't pay their artists, who have no way to know how much they're being cheated, while the agencies keep a much larger percentage of the collected royalties than necessary, for supporting their fat, lazy, lying, cheating, stealing corporations and shareholders. And then there are the gangs that blackmail venues by threatening them with "royalty enforcement" (which can stop their music activities), no matter what their compliance, if the venue doesn't pay the gang the extra bribes - while the gang pockets any legit payments instead of sending it to the agencies.
I've worked in and with the music industry for over 20 years. Including some of the biggest promoters/producers in the US. Some of my best friends still make their living in the criminal music industry, mostly musicians, but some venue owners/operators and some even label execs. They prefer the European model, which is mostly the same, but which at least requires the venue to report every song played. Which at least starts with a more fair requirement, but which is abused about as much as in the US.
The industry wants everyone moved to a blanket license - covering everyone, even if not a "bulk rate". Their holy grail is music recognition software, which reports every person/place's performance for network royalty payments. When they can, they will make everyone's phones monitor everyone all the time, reporting any music we perform and taxing us. That includes playing recordings, pianos, singing in the shower, "Happy Birthday"©, gospel in church, probably even air guitar. All tracked, charged, stored, datamined, and used to micromarket everything to you, along with your favorite songs.
--
make install -not war
...there's a lot of stupid replies saying "it must be a hoax", "copyright infringement isn't a criminal offense", "why should he be arrested for playing a couple of songs", etc., and since replies seem to be broken...
- The guy arrested had been running the bar and doing live performances there since 1981.
- JASRAC had approached him repeatedly since 2001 to cough up the required fees for his performances (just like every other bar, club, pub and watering hole in Japan).
- He had continually refused to pay those fees.
- In Japan, copyright infringement is covered by both civil and criminal law.
- JASRAC went to the police and asked them to enforce the law.
That's about it. He knew what the law is, and he kept on breaking it, so he got arrested.
"Yesterday, Rife was such an easy game to Pray..."
Sig? - yeah, whatever.
Investigators accuse Toyoda of illegally performing 33 songs such as the Beatles
Toyota motor company sued as well, claiming that playing bad harmonica under the name "Toyoda" qualifies as defamation of character and slander.
Latewire
Now I don't know anything about law in Japan, but I don't see how this could hold water here in the states. First of all, has no one ever heard of a 'cover band'?? Seriously, if every band out there paid royalties to play covers, than it is doubtful that any unsigned bands ever would perform them. As a matter of example, Tucson, AZ hosts a yearly event called The Great Arizona Coverup, where local bands all pick a group and perform covers. People pay to come to the event, and I can again guarantee that all of those clubs and bars are not paying royalties to anyone in order to host such an event. Nor could they be sued over it. Fair use standards apply here. If I'm not mistaken, in order to record covers, bands need permission from the copyright holder. Whether or not royalties are paid are determined through the permissive agreement between the copyright holder and the user. /.ers don't get out enough if I have to point out this simple fact that is commonplace on the live music scene (both local and beyond). *sigh*
It pains me everytime people start squawking "ZOMG copyrights!! RIAA is out to get us!!" People have been permorming other peoples' works for years, both live and recorded, and will continue to do so.
Sadly, it is a sign that most
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
Actually this story reminds me of a similar one, that just occured in France about 6 months ago.
During the departure party of a retiring school teacher, a choral of 6 years old kids sang a french song which title would litterally translate to "Goodbye mister professor" (the choice of this song was for obvious reason).
No money was ever involved in this case and the only audiance was composed of parents and teachers. Unfortunately since it happened in a very small town, the story was related in a very local newspaper and reached the hear of the music copyright nazies around here, the SACEM.
The school was fined a couple of hundred euros for having performed "copyrighted" music in public without authorization.
Ironically, when the very writer and performer of this song heard of this sinister joke he decided that he'd be paying the fine in place of the school...
PS: Appologies if this post ever appears a second time but threaded answers seem to be foobar.
I'm strongly against police raid to curb copyright violators, but I agree that if a restraining order is in place, then you better think twice before you do it again.
The issue here is if a court should ever grant restraining order on copyright violations, but it doesn't look like Toyoda bothered to contest it at all.
I once had a signature.
So a harmonica has become an instrument of copyright infringement now? And at a criminal level? If he were passing out sheet music or recordings of the original songs that's one thing, but just (as per the featured article) playing music himself? Even though much of that music wasn't even arranged for the harmonica? There's gotta be something more to this. Failure to pay royalty fees or some such ...
Woody Guthrie once put the legend "This machine kills fascists" on his guitar, amazing how things have changed since them...
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
I thought only the lyrics could be copywritten not musical notes. Is this not true? I seem to remember Weird Al getting into hot water from the Chili Peppers for taking their music and putting his lyrics to it but there was nothing they could do about it. So relating to the story if he was only playing the music not singing the lyrics how can he be in violation of anything?
O.K., I give up. Man breaks law, man gets arrested. Happens every day.
/. editors. You believe that, since you're entitled to make a copy of your legally purchased CD, that means no musicians anywhere should ever get paid. Got it.
Is this somehow different because he's Japanese? Elderly? Using a harmonica? Someone clue me in here.
Oh, right, it's because of some vague, imagined connection to DRM or some other fantasy of
ASCAP is almost 100 years old, and BMI is nearly 50. They have *thousands* of court cases, based on hundreds of years of precedent in common law, that solidify their rights. The right, for example, to collect fees for performance of its members' works. You have a problem with that? Go live somewhere it ain't so. Somewhere like... well, nowhere, really.
Tom Geller
practice .ne. perform