Slashdot Mirror
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."
...needs a cup of tea and a lie down
No sig for the moment.
Even if ASCAP doesn't win, the RIAA will sue for your phone to see if you have any illegal downloaded ring tones.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Does this mean if I have a radio with speakers in a public place I need to pay some kind of fee? I know that businesses which have radios that their customers can hear pay a license fee, but what about people, say, on the beach listening to a boom box? If they don't have to pay a fee, why should people with cell phones or their providers pay a public performance fee?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
. . . why these people have not been struck by a meteor. If there were a God in this universe, there would be a meteor.
The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufacture, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
-Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
I'm an independent musician, and hate the RIAA, but ASCAP is more of a musician's union than anything else. They are one of the only groups that truly helps artists get paid for their work, in situations where money is already supposed to be set aside for the artists themselves. I have made a fair bit of cash in royalties from tracks that have appeared on networks like VH1 and A&E -- that is money that would have never been reported to me otherwise. If some network wants to use my track in some show, and generate advertising money off of it, then I think the artist deserves their rightful share. FYI: I am not signed to a major label, and I don't have the resources or connections that those acts have. They also help in situations such as radio reporting in places where I don't even speak the language -- as one example, they discovered my music playing on a commercial radio station in eastern Poland, and were able to retrive the royalties I had earned.
So, please don't instinctively tar them with the same brush as the idiots at the RIAA. I don't agree with everything ASCAP does, but in general they are a positive force for trying to help the actual creators of content, not the big labels and corporations.
I once fell down the stairs and the next day I recieved a bill from ASCAP and RIAA for performing a Lars Ulrich drum solo ... ok, maybe I do mean to be ridiculous.
Do we just let AT&T and ASCAP fight this one out? This is like Iran and North Korea going at it.
Initially I thought they were on crack. Then I realized what would happen if they actually won. Consider the implications for a minute or two and then see if you don't agree...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
-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!
Sure, anyone has the right to their day in court. On the other hand, it is most certainly the fault of the law if the cost of failing in a malicious or frivolous lawsuit is so minor and the rewards of success are so great that there is every incentive to flood the system.
The system must protect itself if it is to fulfill its alleged role of protecting society. The moment corporations can DDoS the legal system for fun and profit is the moment the legal system stops protecting anyone.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's a tricky issue. That said, ASCAP's position in this case seems to be utter crap in a lot of ways. For example, they claim that ringtones are streaming because like streaming, "AT&T maintains a continuous connection to your phone." Of course, none of the audio data is sent through that connection, which makes it decidedly not streaming. They're trying to twist this after having their backsides handed to them in another case in which music downloads were declared to not be a public performance.
However, this case is not really about whether ringtones are a public performance. This case is because AT&T has been selling ringtones at extortionate prices under the premise that it covers a public performance license, but has never paid those licensing fees for all those ring tones. They've been pocketing the extra money above and beyond the usual cost of a digital music download. If you ever needed proof that AT&T are a bunch of leaches, you now have it. In order to bring this case to court, though, ASCAP has to get the courts to agree that AT&T triggering music that they explicitly sold as a ringtone constitutes a public performance by AT&T. That's a very tricky legal issue. They're right that it isn't the same as a download the moment AT&T triggers it. AT&T is also right that it isn't streaming.
Ultimately, I suspect the courts will rule that it is public performance, but that it is public performance by an individual, at which point ASCAP will likely drop the issue. However, that will also open up AT&T to lawsuits by consumers who have been fraudulently overcharged for ringtones under the false belief that they were licensing the right to its use in a public performance. Either way, AT&T is potentially screwed because they didn't pay those fees. If, however, the courts rule that triggering the performance of a musical work constitutes public performance, then AT&T is screwed solely because they sold the music that was being used as a ringtone. In that case, AT&T would be legally better off opening up the phones for users to put in any arbitrary audio file as a ringtone. That way, at least in theory, they cease to be culpable.
Either way the decision goes, there's next to no chance that this will impact the consumer in any significantly negative way, and a decision against AT&T might actually encourage them to open up their phones more. This is strictly a lawsuit filed by ASCAP against AT&T for breaching contracts by selling ringtones and then pocketing the licensing fees. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.