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ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings
gerddie notes a piece up on the EFF site outlining the fairly outlandish legal theories ASCAP is trying out in their court fight with AT&T. "ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by 'publicly performing' it without a license. At least that's the import of a brief (PDF, 2.5 MB) it filed in ASCAP's court battle with mobile phone giant AT&T."
-Patents should be 70 years or 30 years after the creator's death
How about not? Make them 10 years. You have 10 years to cash in on your ideas. You want to screw the whole world over in a fit of selfish "VIEW ME AS THE ARTIST I AM!" tantrum, enjoy your 10 years, but the government should not support you after a decade of your decadence. This isn't the industrial revolution or some atomic age. This is the information age where ideas are a dime a million. Today, unlike 20 years ago, everyone has access they need to sell an invention within a few days. Exposure is almost instant, and someone will do it better than you did in one year or less, anyway.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
If a ring tone counts as a public performance then does playing it so loud on your earphones that everyone sitting nearby can recognize the tune also count? If so could ASCAP come after them as well....please!
I've often thought that someone should come up with a Public Domain "Happy Birthday" song to replace the covered-by-copyright one. Since "Good Morning To You" (the song that Happy Birthday is based off of) is in Public Domain and is only 1 note away from Happy Birthday, we could base it off of "Good Morning To You." Of course, there would be more of a chance of the RIAA opening a torrent search site than of the new Happy Birthday song catching on.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.