Slashdot Mirror
ASCAP Starts To Act Like the RIAA
Scott Lockwood writes "Below Average Dave, a Dr. Demento style parody artist, has been shut down by the ASCAP. This collective, acting as badly as the RIAA, is now attempting to ignore the 2 Live Crew Supreme Court decision that parodies are new derivative works. Just like the RIAA, ASCAP seems intent on misrepresents the law. If you know anyone who can help BA Dave in his plight, please contact him." This artist doesn't have the resources to fight the ASCAP, even though the law is pretty clearly on his side. Anyone at the EFF or the ACLU interested?
More like "ASSHAT".
If you know anyone who can help BA Dave in his plight, please contact him.
Number of certified lawyers that read Slashdot: 5.
Number who actually give a shit: 1.
Paging Ray Beckerman alias NewYorkCountryLawyer.
My work here is dung.
BMI and ASCAP have been thugs for a long time, threatening bar and club owners for licensing agreements for offering live music. For this reason, AS220 in Providence no longer allows musicians to perform any cover songs!
-mkb
Once the animal rights people get involved, it's game over.
ASCAP has been in this much much longer than RIAA.
Will the ASCAP be targeting Weird Al now?
I can't say I'm surprised, from the limited knowledge I have on the subject, these guys along with BMI have been on the bullies for years. For a good example from a couple years ago, check out The Richard Phillips vs BMI Story in which an independent artist, who only performed his own music (no covers, etc.), which he owned the copyright to, was pushed out of a job.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Bankrupt you with costly legal fees. Which is why these conglomerates go after people who don't have the financial ability to defend themselves.
ASCAP charges both for lyrics and melodies. If you make an instrumental version of a song, you have to pay, and if you create alternative lyrics over that instrumental, I don't think it changes anything. I suspect Dave isn't going to avoid the bill.
They can file a lawsuit. Do you have any idea how expensive those are, even if you settle before any substantial court apperances? Lawyers don't stop charging just because you're in the right.
The guy needs to contact the EFF himself. They don't often just pick up cases because they get reported on Slashdot. They might take a look if he contacts them though. It doesn't take much effort to do so: http://www.eff.org/about/contact
Incidentally, the ASCAP has a long history of doing dumb stuff. Back in the mid 1990s they got a lot of public flack for trying to sue the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications/ASCAP.html
If he'd cited it as Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., he might have done better in the letter.
I'm never one to stand in the way of a murderous rampage (in fact I stand as far away as possible) but I think perhaps you're overreacting just a bit. Why not just boycott them? No one is forcing you to use them or any of their "properties". Just leave them to drown in their own cultural dregs.
Why is it that the music industry seems to be so corrupt? I mean, I'm sure crap goes on in all industries, but the music industry in particular is just blatantly messed up. You've got groups like the RIAA suing their customers, all major venues are pretty much owned by Ticketmaster who add ridiculous fees to shows, while ClearChannel controls the airwaves, and then you have groups like ASCAP/BMI who push licenses on small business owners because the alternative are law suits where the minimal fine (or just lawyers fees alone) would drive them out of business. To make matters worst, the artists who are the base of the industry are frequently getting short end of the stick despite in many cases providing the largest contribution which makes the whole industry possible.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
What the Supreme Court said was that if a parody was sufficiently transformative, this would operate in its favour when weighing up the fair use factors. BA Dave is taking the position that because he created a parody, fair use applies, but the Supreme Court stamped on that theory pretty sharply:
"Like a book review quoting the copyrighted material criticized, parody may or may not be fair use, and petitioner's suggestion that any parodic use is presumptively fair has no more justification in law or fact than the equally hopeful claim that any use for news reporting should be presumed fair."
Now I've no idea how transformative BA Dave's parodies are, but this quote should at least show him that he needs to do a little more than cry "parody" if he's going to convince them to back off. Let's hope he can. And let's be grateful he is in the US where parody is given some recognition as a fair use. In the UK, for instance, it's viewed as being no more legitimate than any other form of copying.
What a totally unbiased article summary. It doesn't automatically take a position or make assumptions about anything. I expect a fully qualified, objective discussion to follow presenting both sides in a fair and factually-based light.
There is no other way out.
I don't know, suicide worked pretty well for me - you should try it!
which is totally what she said
It's easy.
STOP consuming their products. All of them.
Don't pirate (ANY support that keeps their products available is market chumming), don't buy, don't bother.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
One distinction I would like to point out is that ASCAP is *not* like the RIAA -- ASCAP actually pays the artists they represent when they force someone to pay up for licensing purposes.
I don't agree with their stance on this particular issue, or their attempts to charge people who are playing radio (stations that have already paid the ASCAP fees).
But it's an important distinction that they are actually defending the rights of artists, even if those rights are overblown. It's a far cry from the RIAA who will never be handing down a penny of the handful of successful lawsuits they've filed.
The reality of the situation is that there is basically no such thing as a Composers' Union in the US, so ASCAP/BMI association is the only way a composer or songwriter can get reimbursed for the use of their works on an international level.
have you been seen on slash?
Why boycott when I can "deprive" them of money through pirating?!
But then they sue over that too. Loose Loose. I give up. They can have my money. I'm sad now.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
Research the artist. Research the label. If it really means that much to you, take the time to learn who, by your definition, is a tool and who isn't*. Even a simple Wikipedia search might net you some information.
*: Note that this does not mean you have to learn who Tool, the band, is if you don't want to.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
Or you could just use this.
http://www.riaaradar.com/
There is a war going on for your mind.
Then, what should I do if I'm an aspiring musician, and I'd like to draw on some of my cultural heritage -- and yes, copyright lasts so insanely long that we are talking about cultural heritage here -- and these thugs come and sue me?
In other words: What do we do about The Grey Album?
For that matter, as part of my "boycott", should I stop singing Happy Birthday?
Fuck no. I will not spend my life avoiding our culture because it happens to be owned by a few corporations. I will continue to assert that this is our culture, not theirs.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Actually parody only covers the words that you change. If you use the original music you must pay for that privilege. Weird Al has gotten permission from the artists to use their music and when he didn't he ceased and desisted from performing that song. This is a considerably more dicey challenge than simple pirating.
Why bother
any sufficiently advanced extortion racket is indinguisable from a government
If someone takes you to court and YOU win, it means they had no reason to sue you in the first place.
Or it could mean that you had better lawyers, or had enough money to pay off the judge, or that the judge was ignorant of the law as it applied to your case, or any number of other things that happen in a courtroom that have nothing to do with whether you're right or wrong.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
There sure are, but that's not germain here.
I think you (and others) may have been tripped up by the "the law is pretty clearly on his side" text in the summary. The submitter apparently took what BA Dave wrote at face value.
What BA Dave apparently doesn't understand is that 2Live Crew ended up paying royalties.
Thankfully, you can create a parody without getting permission from the original author -- the law gives us this right, although court cases usually come down to what's defined as a parody.
However (and this is the crucial point that BA Dave and the submitter missed), if you use a melody written by somebody else, then you must pay a license. This is accomplished through what's known as a "blanket license" or a "mechanical license," which means that you need not get explicit permission from the particular songwriter.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
In a case of this nature, the guy's best bet is, in my opinion, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts or EFF.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Actually, anyone is allowed to cover or parody any published song without any permission needed so long as they pay the songwritering royalties. In the case of a parody, those royalties are usually split between the original writer and the writer of the parody, in other words Weird Al himself gets a check from ASCAP or BMI (I'm not sure who he is registered with) for performance. As for his CD's those are covered by the mechanical royalty, which is also split in a very similar way by and handled by the Harry Fox Agency.
To point out why this is so confusing for people:
When you play a song off a CD, you are implicating two sets of rights: those of the sound recording and those of the underlying musical composition.
If you were to play a sound effect off a CD, you would only be doing something related to sound recordings and nothing to do with any musical composition.
In the first instance, you'd be doing things related to both (1) artists and (2) composers. In the second instance, you'd be doing things related to only (1) artists.
Case 1 implicates ASCAP. Case 2 does not.
Until very recently, there was no public performance right in audio recordings, and so making your own version of the audio recording would only implicate rights of the underlying musical composition. Thus, if I covered some Coldplay song, Coldplay would have no standing to sue unless they also were the composer of the underlying musical work.
However, within the past decade or so, a new law came into force that creates an exclusive public performance right for sound recordings. However, this only applies when dealing with digital audio transmissions, not with analog/playing-over-your-boombox-speakers performances.
Now that I've written this, I'm not sure where I was going with it. I'll just post it for those interested in the history and development of copyright law.
There is no other way out.
I don't know, suicide worked pretty well for me - you should try it!
so you're telling me you created a highly advanced artificial intelligence to respond to /. articles before you killed yourself? and all that from your basement?
and you did not make the code open source? shame!
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
(1) Take down the website. This stops their claim of damages. They probably have no damages anyway.
(2) Study the law of copyright and federal civil procedure. This could take awhile. Find a lawyer to help explain the rough spots to you. Study up very carefully about Rule 11 sanctions, because the SOBs are going to accuse you of Rule 11 violations if they decide to fight you. You may also be able to claim some damages from them for abuse of copyright--research that too.
(3) File a declaratory judgment action in federal court asking that your rights be determined to be fair use, and seek any damages you are entitled to.
(4) The industry must then respond to your lawsuit. This is VERY expensive to them in relationship to the damages that they can recover (probably zero). It is a bad business decision for them to hunt you down. In THEIR best scenario, they'll have to pay at least a few thousand dollars to kick your ass in a situation where they can't get any money out of you. (If you're a mean, vindictive, son of a bitch, you can get your musician-friends to file their own declaratory judgments actions after your case is over).
(5) If they fight you, do your best. If you win, you're a demigod and you get a federal judge ruling that your use is a fair use. If you lose, what the hell--you fought and you made the corporation pay. If they don't fight you, you get your order saying that your use is a fair use. After you file your lawsuit, they may very well be willing to negotiate (a copyright lawyer is very useful here).
(6) You can keep your costs way down if you represent yourself. They have to pay a lawyer a few hundred dollars an hour. That's your edge.
You can torture those sons of bitches if you know the law and if you're in the right. They know that. They'll sing a different tune when faced with litigation costs.