Eye of Tiger Composer Sues Gingrich To Stop Campaign From Using Song

First time accepted submitter Joe_Dragon writes "The composer of the Survivor hit Eye of the Tiger has sued Newt Gingrich to stop the Republican presidential candidate from using the Rocky III anthem at campaign events. The lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in Chicago by Rude Music Inc., the Palatine-based music publishing company owned by Frank Sullivan, who, with Jim Peterik, composed the song and copyrighted it in 1982. The lawsuit states that as early as 2009, Gingrich has entered rallies and public events to the pulsing guitar riffs of the song. In a lengthy section of the five-page complaint, Rude's attorneys point out that Gingrich is well aware of copyright laws, noting he is listed as author or co-author of more than 40 published works and has earned between $500,000 to $1 million from Gingrich Productions, a company that sells his written work, documentaries and audio books. It also notes Gingrich's criticism of the 'Stop Online Piracy Act' during a recent debate in South Carolina, where Gingrich suggested the law was unnecessary because 'We have a patent office, we have copyright law. If a company finds it has genuinely been infringed upon, it has the right to sue.' The suit asks for an injunction to prevent Gingrich from using the song, as well as damages and attorneys' fees to be determined by the court."

Comments

Get a real job

[Anonymous Coward]

You heard me! Do some work people will pay you for. Why should somebody profit indefinitely from a work they produced years ago? It makes no sense.
Yes, some works require decades of research. These need intellectual property rights. A song does not.

Re:Get a real job

[Kenja]

By the same logic, Gingrich should write his own song.

Re:Get a real job

[X0563511]

I don't follow.

Re:Get a real job

[Dave Whiteside]

I was born in the USA .....

Re:Get a real job

[FatdogHaiku]

How long before a law gets passed that exempts politicians from copyright restraint?
It's a standard procedure to pass a law and then exempt themselves anyway.
In the mean time, any of them can feel free to use the following:

(to the beat of "I like Big Butts")

I'm a rich, white guy and I sure can lie!
I don't talk to brothers (you know why!)
A lobbyist walks in I gotta get a little taste
of the cash that's in my face,
I get sprung, wanna pull in the dough
It gets me so hot you know!
It's for power and cash that I'm caring
I'm hooked and I won't be sharing
I'm a real Good Ol' Boys fixture,
So now do ya get da picture?

Massive apologies to Sir Mix-A-Lot...

Re:Get a real job

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Why should somebody profit indefinitely from a work they produced years ago? It makes no sense.

Umm so why should the publisher profit indefinitely from that same work without the creator getting any of it? That makes even less sense.

Some work generates revenue for decades. Sorry, but it does. That money's going to flow somewhere, so who is better entitled to it?

Re:Get a real job

[pixelpusher220]

Umm so why should the publisher profit indefinitely from that same work without the creator getting any of it?

Perhaps the creator should have demanded better compensation from the publisher when providing said work to the publisher? Or better yet, perhaps the creator shouldn't plan to make money selling copies of their work, but on actually 'creating' work.

You pay a lower price to see a Pink Floyd Tribute band than you do Pink Floyd. Why? Because one is more valuable than the other. A copy isn't the same thing as the original creation.

Some work generates revenue for decades. Sorry, but it does.

Yes, the issue is whether it should be locked up/monopolized by one party or allowed to the greater society for use by anyone to further expand on it. All works will create revenue for as long as they exist whether they are 'free' or not.

That money's going to flow somewhere, so who is better entitled to it?

Perhaps the greater good of culture and society...which is what copyright is supposed to be supporting?

Re:Get a real job

[jimbolauski]

Once the copyright has expired on the recording couldn't anyone publish it?

Re:Get a real job

[Anonymous Coward]

That money's going to flow somewhere, so who is better entitled to it?

I am. Just make that check out to "Anonymous Coward," address as follows:

1 Apple Pie Lane
Anytown USA
Real America
94659

Re:Get a real job

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Perhaps the creator should have demanded better compensation from the publisher when providing said work to the publisher? Or better yet, perhaps the creator shouldn't plan to make money selling copies of their work, but on actually 'creating' work.

Umm... okay, that doesn't account for the fact that some content generates revenue for years.

Yes, the issue is whether it should be locked up/monopolized by one party or allowed to the greater society for use by anyone to further expand on it.

I agree with shortening the copyright term. It's silly. However, the "it's not a real job" argument is, for lack of a better term, dumb. Cut him out of the profits generated from the content he's created and all you've done is hurt the little guy and give more money to the corps. Brilliant.

Re:Get a real job

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

If the argument is supposed to be that copyrights are too long, then arguing that authors/songwriters/etc should get a real job is downright confusing.

Re:Get a real job

[tompaulco]

You're right. Whenever someone writes a new song, we should just pay them millions of dollars up front and make it public domain immediately.

Re:Get a real job

[Reverand Dave]

This.
In this specific case the issue isn't whether copyrights would be infringed upon since this work would still be covered under the original copyright before it was extended out to the ridiculous term is currently sits at. If this were an issue where the great grand children of the composers were coming out and saying "stop using pappy's work" then that point about "get a job" might we valid, but since this is about the actual creators saying "this asshole can't use our song" then it's less a matter of them not having a job or content creation and more a matter of "we don't want this douche to give our song a bad name while we have something to say about it"

Re:Get a real job

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea; I'm going to write me an RV this evening!

Re:Get a real job

[pixelpusher220]

The profit from a copy argument is still a vestige of the pre-digital days of music labels controlling everything. There are no profits from copied digital works. They cost nothing to create and and can be infinitely created. They have no value in and of themselves.

There are profits to be made from 'convenient delivery' of digital works...see iTunes. There are profits to be made using digital works to drive people to buy scarce physical things like concert tickets, t-shirts and other merchandise.

See xkcd.com. A free online comic that built up enough fans to be able to sell physical copies of something that is widely available for free. LOLCats is another site doing fairly well by providing something for free.

The little guy has never had it so good as today. The old gate keepers (RIAA/MPAA/publishers) that controlled who would be successful and who wouldn't are becoming irrelevant.

Re:Get a real job

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

They cost nothing to create...

This is not true.

Re:Get a real job

[datavirtue]

Eye of the Liger? hmm...hmmm?

Re:Get a real job

[pixelpusher220]

Show me any significant cost in creating a 'copy' of a digital file, that wouldn't already have been spent by the computer already being turned on. Any cost of electricity or wear on the equipment is so small as to be utterly meaningless.

Original content certainly costs money to create, but digital COPIES of that content do not cost anything to create.

Re:Get a real job

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

My bad, I thought you meant the cost to create the content.

Re:Get a real job

[Anonymous Coward]

By the same logic, Gingrich should write his own song.

Ah, no. He should use this version (Warning: NSFW).

Re:Get a real job

[HybridST]

What would you do If you were asked to give up your dreams for freedom? What would you do If asked to make the ultimate sacrifice?

Re:Get a real job

[dangitman]

Perhaps the greater good of culture and society...which is what copyright is supposed to be supporting?

Jesus Fucking Christ, this is a retarded argument.

Generally speaking, copyright does support the greater good of culture and society. The money that's not going to the artist at least goes to a publisher who was willing to support the artist at some point.

If it's just a free-for-all, then who does that money go to? Even shadier individuals and the viagra/online dating/porn/gambling scumbags that enable them.

That diversion of money does not enrich culture and society, it impoverishes it.

Re:Get a real job

[pixelpusher220]

Jesus Fucking Christ, this is a retarded argument.

No it's not. It's literally the very definition of copyright. It is a limited time monopoly so that after such time passes society reaps the *entire* benefit of it being freely available for use by anyone however they see fit.

The definition of 'benefit' are not limited to 'money'.

That diversion of money does not enrich culture and society, it impoverishes it.

I would fully agree that RIAA/MPAA are impoverishing society by their very existence yes.

Re:Get a real job

[dangitman]

No it's not. It's literally the very definition of copyright. It is a limited time monopoly so that after such time passes society reaps the *entire* benefit of it being freely available for use by anyone however they see fit.

Huh? Where did I say it shouldn't be time limited. What I was responding to was your argument that the money shouldn't be flowing to the creator/owner, but rather some undefined "somebody else" for the benefit of society.

My argument is that without copyright law, that "somebody else" who is benefiting is likely to be shady actors like Megaupload, etc. So, how does that benefit society and the arts?

I would fully agree that RIAA/MPAA are impoverishing society by their very existence yes.

When did I mention them? You are aware that one can copyright works without being involved in the RIAA/MPAA cartels, right?

Re:Get a real job

[gmhowell]

I was born in the USA .....

I wonder if anyone ever told Ronnie what that song was really about.

Re:Get a real job

[pixelpusher220]

What I was responding to was your argument that the money shouldn't be flowing to the creator/owner, but rather some undefined "somebody else" for the benefit of society.

Then you misunderstood my point. I didn't say the money would flow to 'someone else' I said the 'benefits' would go to society as a whole. Benefit does not have to equal money. Moreover, the artist can make plenty of money without selling 'copies' of his work. If he goes this route there can be no money flowing to other people because copies of his work can be freely available and infinite - in the digital world. And this actual 'work' can't be pirated at all. It's a scarce resource unlike infinite digital copies.

The musician actually plays music for a living.
The photographer actually takes pictures for a living.
The artist paints works of art people commission.
Writers can get their works widely known with little to no monetary investment. See xkcd.com as one example of moving from free to making money.

ThePirateBay site recently offered to freely advertise for artists. How much is being publicly shown on the tpb home page to a millions of people a day worth? That kind of advertising normally costs real serious money. It no longer does.

When did I mention them? You are aware that one can copyright works without being involved in the RIAA/MPAA cartels, right?

You mentioned that siphoning off money does not enrich society and I simply pointed out that the 2 biggest proponents of copyright maximalism themselves siphon massive amounts of money out of the system. When the 'defenders' of copyright completely meet your definition of the bad things that would happen if copyright didn't exist, it sort of makes you wonder whether they are actually helping. Sort of like how the LucasFilms literally claims Star Wars - Return of the Jedi was not a profitable movie. Seriously they claim it 'lost' money based on their accounting tricks.

Copyright has been extended to a permanent monopoly. Literally *no* works entered the public domain this year. That's not benefiting society. Heck they are retroactively removing works currently in the public and putting them back under copyright.

Copyright is fundamentally broken. It has been broken by greedy corporations Disney chief among them. The idea of copyright is reasonable. What we have for copyright today is a perversion of what it is supposed to be.

Re:Get a real job

[drsmithy]

Some work generates revenue for decades. Sorry, but it does. That money's going to flow somewhere, so who is better entitled to it?

You're begging the question. You have not demonstrated why any work should generate revenues for decades, which is the question that must be satisfied before any consideration of "where should it go" is undertaken.

Re:Get a real job

[dangitman]

The idea of copyright is reasonable. What we have for copyright today is a perversion of what it is supposed to be.

No fucking shit. So, why not make that argument, rather than the trollish rubbish you first advanced?

Re:Get a real job

[pixelpusher220]

So, why not make that argument, rather than the trollish rubbish you first advanced?

Rather ironic coming from someone who jumped into this thread with

"Jesus Fucking Christ, this is a retarded argument." ;-)

My guess

[Krojack]

Deep down inside they are suing because they don't like Gingrich. Just my guess though.

Re:My guess

[Talderas]

My guess was that the Slashdot collective was going to have an anuerysm over deciding which side to pick. On one side of the ring you have despicable Republican Newt Gingrich. On the other side you have evil copyright.

Re:My guess

[countertrolling]

...despicable Republican...

:-) Is there another kind?

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

The joke stops being funny when you point it out.

Re:My guess

[jaymzter]

Agreed. Without trying to be prejudicial, this comes across as a case of the artist trying to control how their work is interpreted by the observer (i.e. they don't want it associated with Gingrich). I think this type of mindset only serves to compromise the work.

Funny you never hear about Democrats being asked by a musician to stop using their music.

Re:My guess

[sycodon]

Indeed, Most of Slashdot will suffer the same fate as Norman

Re:My guess

[Dhalka226]

Oh, I'm sure you're right. Copyright law gives them the right to control distribution and public performance, however, and it makes no mention of what motives they may use to do so.

Frankly I consider it win-win: Either a judge finds copyright law absurd and lets Gingrich keep using it in pretty clear violation of copyright, or he orders him to stop and Gingrich gets spanked for his double standard. (Or he stops using it voluntarily, which I basically consider to be a non-judicial spanking in this case.)

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead ones?

Re:My guess

[Digital Vomit]

The outcome of this lawsuit is somewhat akin to the actual presidential race itself: whoever wins, we lose.

Re:My guess

[Moryath]

Funny you never hear about Democrats being asked by a musician to stop using their music.

Actually, yes you do. Most famously, Sam Moore asked the Obama campaign not to use the song "Hold on, I'm coming" at rallies. There was threat of a lawsuit if the campaign didn't desist.

The larger part is that most of these songs have lyrics and intentions to protest against common GOP policies and political positions. Having the refrain ripped off to further GOP election chances is spitting on the artist and the meaning of the lyrics themselves.

I'm sure that if he were still alive, the sculptor who crafted the Statue of Liberty would be aghast at the racist GOP's stance towards immigrant latinos today, and Emma Lazarus would be likewise horrified at the racist anti-immigrant sentiment stirred up by people who regularly plaster the face of the Statue of Liberty on their campaign posters while ignoring the meaning of the poem sitting at her feet.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got a point. People regularly turn a blind eye to illegal and immoral acts done by people we like or agree with. It's the reason so many people supported the misleading information about Iraq WMD's, or are threatening a 16 y/o girl for objecting to an illegal prayer in a public school.

That doesn't change the fact that Gingrich knowingly used the music illegally. If he happened use music from a supported, they would have likely just given him a free pass.

Don't try to minimize Gingrich's crime by suggesting the rights-holder has a vendetta. It's entirely irrelevant and intellectually dishonest.

Re:My guess

[spire3661]

Wanting to control our population numbers is NOT RACIST. Wanting to impose controls on how many bodies we let into the country is NOT RACIST. Dont you think as a sovereign nation, we have the right to say who can and cannot come here? We dont have a vast frontier anymore, we dont need nor want a flood of unskilled dregs added to our society. The poem at her feet is old, outdated and DOES NOT APPLY TO THE MODERN WORLD. I fucking hate people who think that if desired, the whole world could move to the US.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, the composers signed away performance rights to the song and are only entitled to standard rate reimbursement. Radio stations, for example, don't need to clear their playlists with all the composers. Politically, though, Gingrich will have to back down.

Re:My guess

[TheRaven64]

No, this one is easy. If we want both to lose, there's no problem. It's only when you want one side to win that there's a problem...

Re:My guess

[afabbro]

Funny you never hear about Democrats being asked by a musician to stop using their music.

Chrissy Hynde sued Rush Limbaugh to stop using "My City Was Gone" as his show theme. Then when she won, she offered to license it to him and donated the money to PETA.

So now you've been given two counter-examples. Funny, you never hear Slashdot student posters admit they were wrong...

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Rush Limbaugh is not a Democrat.

Re:My guess

[Rockoon]

:-) Is there another kind?

Yes, there are also despicable Democrats.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead ones?

Given the age of most of them? That seems unlikely. Undead, perhaps...

Re:My guess

[houghi]

I agree, but could you PLEASE keep the Americans you have over there and NOT let them out. This includes all you laws and products (Yes, including Internet. We just would like to have Hyper Text Markup Language and thus the web part back, thank you.)

Re:My guess

[X0563511]

Then you'll be interested to know that the publisher who holds the rights is the one who sued, not the composer.

Sure, the composer may have been the one to initiate the process, but the publisher went ahead with it. As bad as things are, you can still ask nicely the folks you signed your rights away to.

Re:My guess

[Widowwolf]

If you think Rush Limbaugh is a democrat, then that just shows why so many idiots get elected this last round of elections

Re:My guess

[Ogive17]

My wife is a foreign national and we had to go through the immigration process for her to receive her green card. We didn't use a lawyer, the process cost us about $2000 in filing fees and took about 9 months from filing until she had the card in her hand.

I'm typically more liberal when it comes to social issues but not on immigration. Name me one other developed nation that has such leniency for undocumented aliens.

I don't want to keep people out if they truely want to be here, they just have to follow the rules and do it the right way. If they sneak across the border and live in the shadows or under a false name and credentials.. I have no sympathy if they get caught and shipped back to their home country.

There are cheaper ways to gain temporary legal residency if $2000 is too much to apply for the green card. In that time money could be saved to eventually go through that process.

Re:My guess

[Nadaka]

I am very much pro copyright. Though I am a purist who believes in fair use and and that limited duration should never have been extended past 14 years.

Re:My guess

[Burning1]

Wanting to control our boarders is not racist. Wanting to close our boarders to anyone with brown skin is racist. Policies to make it more difficult for people who don't know English to travel our country, while we enjoy multi-lingual support pretty much everywhere else in the world is racist.

Re:My guess

[ForgedArtificer]

I really don't know about that, considering that the Statue of Liberty was a gift to America from France.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Captain Obvious, for that insightful comment!

Lol, if all Americans are as blind as you, regarding such things, I'm not surprised anymore, that there is so much fraud going on in the US.
(While watching home shopping:) "Hmm, maybe, possibly, perhaps, deep down inside the makers of that tricycle with four-wheel-drive and that $500 water-tight sundial just want to trick me... Naaah, seems legit!"

Re:My guess

[jittles]

I prefer to call them "Republican'ts and Democraps." But I am moderately childish... and I think they are equally effed up these days.

Re:My guess

[Nadaka]

HTML was created at CERN in Switzerland. Damn foreigners can't even get their history right. ;)

Re:My guess

[superdave80]

...GOP's stance towards illegal immigrant latinos today

I went ahead and fixed that for you.

Re:My guess

[geekoid]

Not currently.. there used to be, but religious nuts being what they are have polluted the party.

Re:My guess

[Aryden]

The same shit was said early in the 20th century as well. American citizens didn't want the unwashed masses of Italians, Greeks, Irish, Scots and Chinese coming here either. Guess what, they did, and they are your ancestors too. Could we handle 300 million people coming here? No, not all at once. Could we handle more than what we do allow in? Yes.

Re:My guess

[Moryath]

Wanting to control our population numbers is NOT RACIST

Wanting to make people leave because of the color of their skin, or because their family still has members who primarily speak spanish rather than english, is what exactly?

Wanting to impose controls on how many bodies we let into the country is NOT RACIST

Wanting to base those controls on making sure we bring in more people from "white" countries instead of "brown" countries is what, exactly?

Dont you think as a sovereign nation, we have the right to say who can and cannot come here?

Does that somehow absolve us of the duty and responsibility to have immigration policies that aren't made by catering to the "get them fuckin mexicans outta here cuz I'm tired of seeing taco trucks and pressing 2 for english" racist lunatic fringe?

We dont have a vast frontier anymore, we dont need nor want a flood of unskilled dregs added to our society

Intriguing. Why is it that you are mad at "unskilled dregs"? People tend to gain skills as they work. We still need carpenters. We still need plumbers. We still need electricians. There are a lot of latinos going into these SKILLED professions that whites have decided are "beneath them" lately. There are a lot of latinos going to college in the USA right now, are they "unskilled dregs"?

The poem at her feet is old, outdated and DOES NOT APPLY TO THE MODERN WORLD.

Then we should melt the statue down and sell the copper for scrap, too. I for one find it humorous when you right wing racist loonies always want to talk about "american exceptionalism" and "land of opportunity" and then want to shut the door to anyone who isn't sufficiently pallid of complexion.

I fucking hate people who think that if desired, the whole world could move to the US.

And I fucking hate assholes like you who think that just because someone's skin isn't the same color as yours, or because English isn't their primary language, they shouldn't have a fair chance at immigrating to the US.

Re:My guess

[fahrbot-bot]

Gingrich gets spanked for his double standard.

If he ever got spanked for his double standards, he'd never be able to sit down again. :-)

Re:My guess

[geekoid]

That's an excuse for the racism. Pay attention to how things are worded. Pay attend to who they wont to through out.

Most importantly, pay attention to the fact that's it's impossible to do most of of the immigration reform the repubs. want to do.

Phrase like " flood of unskilled dregs " show clear racism and ignorance of the immigration situation.

"DOES NOT APPLY TO THE MODERN WORLD. "
You could not be more wrong. In fact it's more critical then ever. Clearly you don't understand the poem.

And I fucking hate ignorant assholes like you that let the pundits do your thinking for you.

Re:My guess

[oldspicepuresport]

The larger part is that most of these songs have lyrics and intentions to protest against common GOP policies and political positions.

What lyrics would those be exactly? I suggest you google 'eye of the tiger lyrics'... maybe I'm completely missing the meaning, or perhaps you are just pulling s#it out of thin air to support your political biases...

I'm sure that if he were still alive, the sculptor who crafted the Statue of Liberty would be aghast at the racist GOP's stance towards immigrant latinos today

Wow, you really don't know your history do you. The designer of the Statue of Liberty (Frédéric Bartholdi) was a Frenchman living in a time when France was horribly subjugating people all around the world. During Bartholdi's life France was in control of vast sections of Africa, a few countries in the Caribbean and South America, and large possessions in Asia and the Western Pacific.

I'm not trying to justify racism or discrimination of any kind. I am simply pointing out that the designer of the Statue of Liberty was almost certainly a racist himself, as were most people of that time. I don't know if you were being sarcastic or are seriously naive enough to believe that people in 1886 weren't horribly racist, either way, I think the hyperbole detracts from any valid arguments you might have had.

Re:My guess

[Aryden]

Cause I'm sure that all those people at Ellis Island had $2000 in their pockets to make that happen... I do agree that you should follow the legal process, but the cost can be prohibitive to many foreign nationals.

Re:My guess

[Moryath]

In that time money could be saved to eventually go through that process.

Tell that to someone currently living in a country where the average yearly wage is about $200.

You got lucky. American immigration policy has been run by the racist fringe for far too long. The quotas on who can come, from where, the various payment schemes are ALL designed to ensure that more Euros/WASP's move to the US than anyone else.

Open the quotas. Stop setting up these ridiculously racist quotas where essentially unlimited immigration is allowed from European countries (whose limits are set so high that 10% of their population would have to move in a single year to hit it) while deliberately choking off quotas from the nations where people want to come to the US to seek jobs, but happen to not be white-skinned enough.

Re:My guess

[spire3661]

By a Brit, on an American designed computer (NeXT)

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, the Statue, as you may or may not know, was created by the French to be sure that all the tired poor refuse came to the USA and not France. Secondly, the GOP has zero policies that are aimed at Latinos (unless they are also lawbreakers). Immigration law is universally applied to all races and nationalities. If you think that only Latinos enter the country illegally then you are a racist. Lastly, I hope Gingrich has to pay though the nose.

Re:My guess

[Lyrata]

Oh, the irony.

Re:My guess

[Moryath]

Secondly, the GOP has zero policies that are aimed at Latinos (unless they are also lawbreakers). Immigration law is universally applied to all races and nationalities.

You've obviously never been to a Tea Party rally, or been driving in a car late night somewhere with a latino friend to get pulled over by a white cop in Tex-ASS.

GOP doesn't give a shit about "illegal" Canadians, or Chinese, or other demographics. You can see it in their rhetoric. It's about "close the border (with Mexico), we have too many Mexicans, all these Mexicans are sending money out of the country, all these Mexicans are driving down wages and stealing jobs from Amurrikkans, all these Mexicans mean I have to put up with Spanish radio stations and press 1 for English, damn these Mexicans."

Re:My guess

[Chris Burke]

I prefer to call them "Republican'ts and Democraps." But I am moderately childish...

You sound like a perfect match for the Slightly Silly party. Vote Kevin Phillips Bong in the general election!

Re:My guess

[baegucb]

Oh really? It was apparently invented in France. http://davidgalbraith.org/uncategorized/the-exact-location-where-the-web-was-invented/2343/

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

...despicable Republican...

:-) Is there another kind?

despicable Democrat ;)

Re:My guess

[spire3661]

Unskilled dregs actually comes from our H1B requirements for visas. YOu dont get an H1B without having a skill we need. (technically anyways). I do not see the point of allowing unskilled people into our borders. Why would we do that? For what purpose?

Re:My guess

[jdgeorge]

Deep down inside they are suing because they don't like Gingrich. Just my guess though.

Certainly. If the composer liked Gingrich, he would have simply granted Gingrich permission to use the song for free under certain circumstances.

As it is, the composer probably thinks Gingrich is a hypocritical blowhard who is illegally reaping the benefit of someone else's labor.

Re:My guess

[crmanriq]

As your spouse, your wife literally got to walk to the front of the line for her green card. As an immediate relative (spouse) she fits the category with no waiting period, and for which 226,000 green cards are allotted each year. In fact, she gets to step in front of every other category, including - child of citizen - 2 year waiting period, unless you are mexican - 4-5 year waiting period, or Filipino - 11 year waiting period, and then every other possible relation with increasing waiting periods just to get paperwork processed (up to 19 years in some cases).

Everyone else who wants to come here has to put their name into a lottery, from which only 55,000 are chosen each year.

It's easy to talk about how everyone should just do it the right way, when you are able to walk to the front of the line in front of those you are lecturing.

Re:My guess

[DJ Particle]

Good point. When was the last time you heard of someone complaining about illegal immigration coming from Canada?

Yes, it exists. But you rarely ever hear about it.

Re:My guess

[thebigbadme]

Is it wrong to oppose both sides of this argument?

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a racist. Anyone who talks like this:

"Someone on /. posted the scoring breakdown for that competition. The team from MIT had a lot higher score on solving and peformance of the problem, but the team of undocumented Mexican immigrants won each presentation category by a small margain. End result, they win by 1/2 point or something like that.

Just goes to show, you get more credit for making it look good than making it work good ;)"

Great, you brought a person from a country that has civilized immigration, or is rich. Well done.

You were a racist at UC, and you still are now. You always bring up the phrase 'Illegal' 'dirty' 'undocumented' when anything involves mexico, even when ti isn't relative to the conversation.

And the worse part, you let racism cloud in logical and practical argument about immigration.

Re:My guess

[Attila Dimedici]

Most people who strongly advocate against allowing illegals into the country and/or allowing them to become legal would be perfectly happy with laws that make it easier/cheaper for people to legally enter the country. What makes the problem worse is that the Mexican government actively encourages its citizens to illegally enter the U.S. as a pressure valve to release societal unrest over its policies that make advancement difiicult for many members of its society.
To summarize, most people who are calling for more stringent enforcement of immigration laws would be perfectly happy to accept increasing the quotas on the number of people allowed to enter the country legally. Interestingly, most of the opposition to expanding immigration quotas comes from within groups that favor lax enforcement of immigration laws (I have not done enough study of it to know if it is different subgroups that oppose expanded legal immigration vs those that favor lax enforcement of existing immigration laws or if it is that those groups want to keep the number of illegal immigrants high for other reasons. I suspect that it depends on the groups).

Re:My guess

[Belial6]

Just because your a racist doesn't mean everyone else is.

Re:My guess

[s73v3r]

So? They are the copyright holder, correct? So they have been given the right to decide how the song is distributed. If they don't want their song associated with a particular campaign, then that's their right, isn't it.

Should the creator of a work be forced to give implicit support to a candidate they don't agree with, because that candidate decided to use their song?

Re:My guess

[Miseph]

Maybe... but the Statue of Liberty was also originally sculpted to look like an African woman. It was changed after arrival because a large and politically powerful portion of the population strongly objected to the idea of an African breaking free from the chains that bind them in a display of ultimate literal liberty.

Re:My guess

[uigrad_2000]

Um, many of the biggest voices in conservatism are either legal immigrants, or they are eager to point out that they are children of legal immigrants (Erich Mancow Muller, Mark Steyn, Glenn Beck are all good examples).

It's the conservative voices that keep harping on the difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.

Your understanding of conservatives is very, very shallow. Even Craig Ferguson, who starts out each night's show with "It's a great day for America", talks frequently at length about his legalization process.

Re:My guess

[Petaris]

While I agree with your notion that people need to come here legally I think we can both agree the system is fairly broken. Like you, my wife is an immigrant and I found the process to be full of red tape, have no accountability (on USCIS's part), expensive (your paying ~$2000 for them to process your forms and more to get other documents and notarizations that you need), and leaves you wondering for months on end what is happening with your application and that's only if your lucky enough not to get stuck in some queue for extra background checks where it can disappear for months on end. They do have a website that gives your very basic info about what stage your application is in but I found that it was not updated very often. They also send your notices in the mail for some things but other then that your just left wondering what is happening. Calling for information is almost pointless and like calling the IRS, if you call three times and ask the same question you will likely get three very different answers. The process needs to be streamlined, made more transparent (at least to the applicants and their specific application), and have the time to process and the fees reduced.

As an aside, for anyone currently going through the immigration process the website visajourney.com was very very helpful! Its free and it can help answer many questions and guide you through the process and give tips for filing the paperwork.

Re:My guess

[hackwrench]

Nah, I figure that if Newt loses, he might actually gain an appreciation of what improper copyright laws do to people. Might, that is.

Re:My guess

[Sarius64]

Well I for one easily see how Mexico uses their moral imperative to rape, murder, and torture immigrants from their southern border. Anything is justified if you take at least one Chicano studies class.

Re:My guess

[Sarius64]

How does someone win stopping a consumer from using a product they have purchased legally? Confused.

Re:My guess

[GameboyRMH]

If every Mexican was white and culturally relatable, or perhaps even just the latter, I bet there would be very few to no complaints about immigration.

Re:My guess

[Sarius64]

But if I walk into a store where they are selling the work and purchase it have they (the copyright owners) not already decided how the song will be distributed? You guys seriously advocate the Disney police state? Sheesh

Re:My guess

[GameboyRMH]

What makes the problem worse is that the Mexican government actively encourages its citizens to illegally enter the U.S. as a pressure valve to release societal unrest over its policies that make advancement difiicult for many members of its society.

But how is this possible, Mexico has such light regulation, it should surely be a utopian land of opportunity devoid of sprawling slums!?

Re:My guess

[khallow]

I'm sure that if he were still alive, the sculptor who crafted the Statue of Liberty would be aghast at the racist GOP's stance towards immigrant latinos today, and Emma Lazarus would be likewise horrified at the racist anti-immigrant sentiment stirred up by people who regularly plaster the face of the Statue of Liberty on their campaign posters while ignoring the meaning of the poem sitting at her feet.

So what? Why should naked propaganda only be used for its original purpose? If someone comes up with a way to misuse old Nazi propaganda, should we care that Joseph Goebbels might be horrified?

The US's current stance on immigration may not be particularly sound, but it was arrived at democratically and there are good reasons for that choice not having to do with "racism".

Re:My guess

[Ogive17]

Maybe that line of mine wasn't very clear. There are temporary statuses that are much easier to obtain and don't cost nearly as much that would allow a person to work, legally, in the US. It is in that period a person could save up money to eventually apply for permanent residency.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

At most, the 'A' tag was created at CERN. The rest of HTML is nothing more than SGML, which had been in use for decades before HTML was 'created'. SGML, incidentally, was create by IBM - in the good old USA.

Re:My guess

[Attila Dimedici]

I am not quite sure where you got the idea that Mexico has light regulation. In Mexico, basically everything is illegal unless you are politically connected and/or can afford the bribes to get the regulators to look the other way (sort of where the U.S. is heading).

Re:My guess

[Moryath]

So you're admitting that the problems the GOP have with latinos are:

- skin color
- they speak a different language and don't conform to WASP culture

And this is somehow not racist?

Re:My guess

[Ogive17]

That is true except that she has been living in the US for a 6 years of student visa and then 2 more years on a work visa before we were even engaged. A few months after we started dating she actually lost her work visa and had to leave the country before they would issue her a new one.

I don't deny the entire process is a pain in the ass. Some of the questions they ask on the forms are if she is or ever has been associated with the Communist part. Was she ever in a militia or a drug cartel. All I could think was if a person should answer yes to either of those, they'd probably lie about it anyway.

I guess my whole point is that if they were more strict at the beginning, zero leniency, hopefully the entire process would be easier. Right now most people in the US are against illegal immigration, how to solve it is where the arguments begin. It's a big mess right now, we need a concerted effort to find out who is in our country as well as a clear process for those people to take to make it "legal".

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Implying Limbaugh is a democrat is not ironic.

Re:My guess

[mosb1000]

The last time I went to Mexico, I just drove across the border. No paperwork. I didn't pay anything. I barely even had time to make eye contact with the Mexican border guard. Getting back in to the US, however, does require a passport.

Re:My guess

[Jawnn]

Yeah, so? That's what's so nice about copyright. You have the "right" to do with it as you choose. If you don't want some radical Tea Bagger to use your property, you can appeal to the judicial system to stop it. Copyright is not inherently evil (as some believe, or would have you believe). The abuse of copyright, however, is a very big, very real problem. Rude Music, Inc. is doing it right. RIAA, not so much.

Re:My guess

[Moryath]

Erich Mancow Muller - Hmm, white guy.
Mark Steyn - Hmm, white guy.
Glenn Beck - Hmm, white guy.
Craig Ferguson - could you get any whiter?

I wonder why they would want to slam the door in the faces of latinos? Why you get shit like Glenn Beck going off on a racist rant the other day about the "illegals" being the reason the new Spider-Man is a half-black, half-latino kid?

Your comment just makes me laugh. GOP/Conservatives use "illegal immigration" as a cover for their racism, nothing more.

Re:My guess

[flimflammer]

Using the song in political campaigns constitutes a public performance, something that simply buying the disc in a store doesn't afford you the right to do.

Re:My guess

[Moryath]

So the fact that the Mexican government is corrupt and horrid is an excuse to treat latinos in the US badly, since "well it would be worse for them in Mexico"?

And you CAN'T see how that's racist? Just... wow.

Re:My guess

[GameboyRMH]

No you misunderstand me entirely. I think most of the opposition has a problem because they speak a different language and don't conform to WASP culture, and that skin color is likely a factor as well.

Re:My guess

[Moryath]

but it was arrived at democratically

Ahh, yes, "Democracy", the art of two wolves giving a sheep the choice of being barbecued or spit-roasted for dinner.

Re:My guess

[rock_climbing_guy]

As a sponsor of a foreign born wife who immigrated to the United States, I will attest that according to my own research, it is correct that there is a multi-year long waiting period to be considered for a green card. However, I am not aware of any nationality-based determination of the waiting period.

Source, please?

Re:My guess

[ceoyoyo]

Since Frédéric Bartholdi, the sculptor of La Liberté éclairant le monde (Liberty Enlightening the World) was French, and the statue itself was a gift from France, he might have a few other reasons to be aghast at developments in the last decade or so.

Re:My guess

[Sarius64]

Yes, but if you purchase that from the appropriate sales arena how does the artist then invalidate that sale? If you do not want it sold to someone then do not put it in the public market for sale.

Re:My guess

[painandgreed]

Deep down inside they are suing because they don't like Gingrich. Just my guess though.

My guess is that they want to be paid. From what I understand talking to my musician friends, making records and playing music is not where the money is in the music business. The real money is in licensing. The amount of money that the Republican party would pay for use of a song (or a company for use in an ad, tv show, or a game) is more than they would ever make off of record sales or doing concerts.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

> You sound like a perfect match for the Slightly Silly party.

Are they for the compulsory serving of asparagus at breakfast, like the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party?

Re:My guess

[Sarius64]

No, the racism is where you expect Americans to allow someone from Mexico to break laws, steal property, murder citizens, and subvert the Constitution in the name of some boogey man treating them fairly. On top of that, you ignore the blatant racism their source country applies to its own citizens in a class society still based upon who looks the most like the Europeans that raped their ancestors. Fool.

Re:My guess

[gfxguy]

It's not a good point, it's a terrible point. When 75% of all illegal immigrants come from south of our border, it doesn't take a genius to figure why people from south of our border bear the brunt of complaints. And you DO hear, if you pay attention, complaints about illegal Asian immigrants, too, who make up 50% of the rest.

Wanting to stop ILLEGAL immigration is NOT RACIST.

Re:My guess

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

No no no. Cast your vote for Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel. I vow to implement a better character set for usernames on this POS website, for a start!

Re:My guess

[DigiShaman]

Tell that to someone currently living in a country where the average yearly wage is about $200.

Tough shit. It's not our burden bear. That goes for you too. They have two, and only two options. I'm willing to assist if asked however. But no free unchecked passes.

1. Immigrate through the proper legal channels like my relatives from Europe did. My wife whom is Chinese came over on a K1 Visa as well.
2. They can reform their own government south of the border. Exactly how is entirely not our problem. As long as their revolution and/or reform doesn't spill over to our border, all is well.

The idea we should have porous or non-existing borders is absolute bat-shit insanity. Do you not realize that the concept of a Nation State is a recent Western invention. It provides and maintain cultural cohesiveness and legal sovereignty. Essentially what your asking for is a nation without defined borders and control. That's purely anti-American despite your well meaning of good intentions. Unless of course turning back the clock to a pre-columbian era is your absolute goal, at which point we have nothing further to discuss.

One last point. Racism and culture are two distinct aspects by which people are judged. They are *NOT* one in the same. Only the ignorant judge people based on race. The intelligent among us will judge someone based on their culture (religious, political, philosophy of life...ect).

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail.

Despicable was the adjective, not the noun nor the subject. Thus is there any other kind of 'republican' is the correct interpretation of the above. Your post was not funny, it was shameful.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

As your spouse, your wife literally got to walk to the front of the line ... Everyone else who wants to come here has to put their name into a lottery, from which only 55,000 are chosen each year.

Or marry a US citizen and literally walk to the front of the line.

Re:My guess

[Nos9]

You are mixing correlation and causation again. Poor people from say Africa or even Eastern Europe cannot just walk across a border and arrive in the United States of America. Yes there is a correlation to one being a poor, unskilled and illegal laborer in the USA and being "brown". The republicans would love to toss all of the former group out, regardless of the amount of pigmentation in their skin.

Re:My guess

[BatGnat]

Screw that: I vote for Kodos!

Re:My guess

[Chuckstar]

Maybe not even deep down inside. Possibly right up at the surface. Totally within their rights under copyright law to select who may or may not public perform their song based on politics.

In other words, they have every right to say to Gingrich "Because I disagree with your politics, please do not use the result of my hard work to further your political career."

Re:My guess

[Rockoon]

I do agree that you should follow the legal process, but the cost can be prohibitive to many foreign nationals.

To quote Milton Friedman:

"I have always been amused by a kind of a paradox. Suppose you go around and ask people 'The united States as you know before 1914 had completely free immigration. Anybody could get on a boat and come to these shores and if he landed on Ellis Island he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?'

You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. ‘But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?’ ‘Oh, no,’ they’ll say, ‘We couldn’t possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We’d be driven down to a bare subsistence level.’

What’s the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There’s a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?

Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promised a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.

If you have free immigration, in the way we had it before 1914, everybody benefited. The people who were here benefited. The people who came benefited. Because nobody would come unless he, or his family, thought he would do better here than he would elsewhere. And, the new immigrants provided additional resources, provided additional possibilities for the people already here. So everybody can mutually benefit.

But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a pro-rate share of the pie, to take an extreme example, or even to a low level of the pie, than the effect of that situation is that free immigration, would mean a reduction of everybody to the same, uniform level. Of course, I’m exaggerating, it wouldn’t go quite that far, but it would go in that direction. And it is that perception, that leads people to adopt what at first seems like inconsistent values.

Look, for example, at the obvious, immediate, practical example of illegal Mexican immigration. Now, that Mexican immigration, over the border, is a good thing. It’s a good thing for the illegal immigrants. It’s a good thing for the United States. It’s a good thing for the citizens of the country. But, it’s only good so long as its illegal.

That’s an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it’s no good. Why? Because as long as it’s illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don’t qualify for social security, they don’t qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket. So long as they don’t qualify they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take. They provide employers with the kind of workers that they cannot get. They’re hard workers, they’re good workers, and they are clearly better off."

Genius. R.I.P.

Re:My guess

[tompaulco]

Everything was invented in France. Occasionally, it was invented in France before it was invented elsewhere.
In keeping with this thread, the Statue of Liberty was invented in France, and was not commissioned having anything in particular to due with immigration to the U.S. It was a symbol of recognition of the alliance between the French and the American colonies during the American Revolution.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Zombie Reagan 2012!!!

Re:My guess

[gfxguy]

Sales arena?

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but if you want to use a song in a public performance you have to get permission and/or pay royalties. If Gingrich's team had done that, this would not be an issue. If Gingrich's campaign got permission from the publisher, then the artist has no say in it, really.

I do find it ironic that, although copyright law is of concern to the technology community, and slashdotters in particular, how this makes a "news for nerds" story for anyone that isn't pushing a political bias trying to make Gingrich look bad (or worse).

Re:My guess

[Ghostworks]

The larger part is that most of these songs have lyrics and intentions to protest against common GOP policies and political positions. Having the refrain ripped off to further GOP election chances is spitting on the artist and the meaning of the lyrics themselves.

You may have noted that never, in the history of the country, have we cared about the artist or the meaning of lyrics. Yankee Doodle? An insulting song by Europeans about those silly American bumpkins and nabobs. And since Lexington and Concord it's been inseparable from the truly patriotic anthems. The Star Spangle Banner borrowed music from a number of songs before a old British tavern song finally stuck and it eventually became the national anthem. American Woman, Fortunate Son, Born in the USA, and a slew of other protest rock songs are played on campaign trails, at the superbowl, and in over-the-top "America Wins"-themed movies. It is impossible to insult America -- or any institution which perceives itself as fundamentally American -- in song. Everyone just fixates on the fact that, "hey, they're singing about us!"

(As a side note, this is generally due to a massive cultural inferiority complex. American society was looked down on for so long and so hard by Europe that every little bit of news about America was considered a win. Dr. Franklin, the discovery of Dinosaurs, hell, even particularly large moose available for taxidermy. Again and again in American history, you see people screaming, "look at this! See, we have things too! Our nature is even wilder! Our industry is capable!" China seems much the same these days, though it's hard to say if that inferiority complex lies with the people as a whole or just the state media. Naturally, after World War II, when America was the only world power not absolutely crippled economically, we went from being the little brother screaming to be recognized to being a dominant world power, with only the USSR comparable in resources, manpower, and the ability to project power globally. This is probably the worst way for inferiority to be remedied, since you go straight from being ignored to deciding that you really are better off without everyone else. Coupled with a "good fences make good neighbors" protestant ethic, this pretty much guaranteed we as a people would never care what any other country thinks ever again.)

Re:My guess

[Aryden]

Bravo sir, Bravo.

Re:My guess

[GreyWolf3000]

I would say both arms of the Corporatist Party are pretty terrible. I don't think the word "capitalism" actually means anything anymore.

Re:My guess

[Curunir_wolf]

Not currently.. there used to be, but religious nuts being what they are have polluted the party.

Technically, they are not nuts. They are a type of fruit.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Friedman probably didn't remember the Know-nothing movement or the Exclusion Acts. Anti-immigration has long been a running undercurrent in American politics.

Kinda discredits his reasoning though. It's easy to present your own narrative but sometimes the story is false.

Re:My guess

[Curunir_wolf]

At most, the 'A' tag was created at CERN. The rest of HTML is nothing more than SGML, which had been in use for decades before HTML was 'created'. SGML, incidentally, was create by IBM - in the good old USA.

That's what they tell you - when in fact it was stolen from the poor.

Re:My guess

[SockPuppetOfTheWeek]

Over 50% of "hispanics"/"latinos" are white.

Re:My guess

[uigrad_2000]

I think you just proved my point. Legal / Illegal immigration is not a race-based issue. People that don't understand the issues try to turn it into one.

The hatred towards Latinos today is actually mild compared to the hatred towards Swedes and Norwegians 50 years ago in the north.
The hatred towards Latinos today is comparable to the hatred 70 years ago against Italians and Irish in New England.

Here's a good question for you. Now that Scandinavians have taken over the North (ie. Minnesota, Wisconsin), and Italians and Jews have taken over New York, would you say that those people have "won"?

In a way, both sides have "won". As you just pointed out, we're all just "white guys" now. We may have been enemies once, but not any more. Anyone with half a brain can see that we are dealing with the exact same situation today, only with different nationalities. For you to think it is different, because skin color is now an issue, is frightenly naïve.

The issue is no different today with Latinos. There's a greater than 50% chance that I (and you too) will have great-grandchildren that are partially Latino, and I'm very proud of this. 60 years from now, it would be silly to think of Latinos and whites in America as different. Sure, back in Europe, the races may still be segregated, but here in "everyone has an opportunity-America", we'll all be very well blended.

The kind of opportunity this country has to people of all races is something that the conservatives have always been for. It was a conservative republican from my home town (Peoria, IL) that introduced the Civil Rights Bill of the 60's to congress. The people that I listed above all represent that same viewpoint. Mancow even staged a "Legal Immigrant" rally in Chicago, and got many of his (legal) Latino friends to march in it.

Your characterization of these people as racist, just because they are white and conservative, is ill-informed and bigoted. I hope to God that I never hate anyone as much as you hate conservatives.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer to call them "Republican'ts and Democraps." But I am moderately childish... and I think they are equally effed up these days.

I disagree, they are not EFFed at all. I would be happy if they became more supportive of online privacy and so on.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you -- we shouldn't allow blanket amnesty unless they pay a fine at least as much as what they would have paid for legal immigration; this is a basic issue of fairness and incentivizing proper behavior. What's funny, though, is that no one talks about it in these terms. It's always either 1) Mexicans take jobs from hardworking Americans (not true, and there are unplowed fields full of produce in Alabama to prove it) or 2) if we don't stop Mexicans we can't stop the terrorists.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant is there any other kind of republican, we all know there are other types of despicable people.

Re:My guess

[Rockoon]

Kinda discredits his reasoning though.

You need to use reason and logic to discredit reasoning. The specific laws which limited immigration, nor their intended purpose, undermine his logic at all. They only serve to undermine the people who passed those laws, and their reasons for doing so.

Your argument can be reduced to "Friedman is wrong about immigration because congress was full of racists in 1924" .. its neither a logical nor reasoned argument. Its simply an appeal to emotion.

Re:My guess

[countertrolling]

They are a type of fruit.

We find that very offensive

Re:My guess

[flimflammer]

It's not an issue who the song is sold to. The problem is how the song is used after it's purchased. The artist doesn't care if Gingrich purchased and listened to the song, the issue is using the song in public potentially without proper ASCAP licensing. If the publisher was willing to file a lawsuit (the author only brought it up to the publisher's attention, the author did not file suit), it seems to me that they may not have paid the appropriate licensing fees.

If he did pay the ASCAP licensing fees, then he's totally in the clear. We just don't have that information right now.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess deep down inside they are suing because you can't just take someone's shit and use it without asking.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Zombie Reagan

Was there another kind?

Re:My guess

[MachineShedFred]

I'm sure that they had no problem cashing the checks from ASCAP right up until they learned that Speaker Gingrich was using it.

You don't get it both ways, champ.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way you can reduce my argument to those terms is if you completely failed to read what I said, or even your own source since I was referring to events in the 1800s.

Maybe you think basing conclusions on non-factual statements is acceptable logic and reasoning, but I truly don't. I find it suspect when rhetoric overcomes the truth.

That's the problem, not the racism.

Re:My guess

[Rockoon]

Maybe you think basing conclusions on non-factual statements is acceptable logic and reasoning, but I truly don't.

Which non-factual statements? Now you are just waiving your hands. One logical fallacy after another....

Re:My guess

[b4dc0d3r]

How to you get to the conclusion that slashdot hates copyright?

A lot of people here own copyrights (registered or not) and would appreciate some protection. Very few people have said "screw it, download everything".

GPL is advertised as fighting copyright with copyright, and it would be unimportant without copyright. But without copyright, all you have is public domain and trade secrets. There is no requirement to release code changes unless you personally contract with everyone who wants to download your code. Hosting a tarball with a license and expecting people to follow the license does not exist, because there is no basis of enforcement. A license with a public domain download is not enforceable.

I believe the maximum copyright should be no more than 28 years, and several people have come up with 14 as the optimal length. Copyright is only evil because 1) it is excessively long, effectively infinite 2) enforcement such as DRM abridges fair use, especially if the DRM has not been broken when something that uses it is in the public domain.

Copyright is to be respected, at least for a little while.

http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/dumb-by-the-numbers-optimal-copyright-term-of-14-years-time-to-kill-all-the-economists/

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Toss in the line that Gingrich opposed SOPA. Such a tough decision...

Re:My guess

[crmanriq]

http://www.immigralaw.com/english/familypref.shtml (I know, not a US.GOV site, but it was the first place I looked).

" Family First Preference:

Quota: 23,400 plus any unused 4th preference visas
Waiting Period: 2 years for all countries except the Philippines (11 years) and Mexico (4-5 years)
Who is Eligible: unmarried people with at least one US citizen parent

Oh, here:

http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/154162.pdf
(Page 12)
"Prospective family-sponsored immigrants from the
Philippines have the most substantial waiting times before a visa is scheduled to become available
to them; consular officers are now considering the petitions of the brothers and sisters of U.S.
citizens from the Philippines who filed almost 23 years ago"

Re:My guess

[bfandreas]

Glenn Beck is amazing in his skill to not see the real issue at hand.

In this case the actor, his descent and his relation to ethnicity which Glenn Beck in his relation to any ethnicity is opposed of contrary to rhyme, reason and the ever so uncommon sense is of little concern whatsoever.

No, the real question is wether we again want to watch Peter Parker being bitten by a genetically atomized engineered and highly allegorical spyder and transform into an Alfa Romeo driven by Dustin Hoffman.
I'm sorry, that's about the only twist they can take on the same old, same old. Another reboot? Pointlessly so? And Glenn Beck missed the horror in that?
*bumps button with fist*
*soundbite of some WASP hobo soccer mom being catholized by space aliens on daytime TV which is where all TV personalities go if they aren't outright fired*
"Shocking!"

...and here's to you, Mr. Glenn Beck
Jesus is indifferent about you, hohohooo
God bless you please, Mr Glenn Beck,
You are tarded so we don't have to be, hehehe

The man is done, so fuck him.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, what you are looking for is ethnic discrimination, not racism. Racism, as you are attempting to use the word, is a hold over from incorrect teaching of Gen X and older generations. To keep using the word as you are doing, you might as well join the Flat Earth Society. There is currently only one recognized sentient species/race on this planet, Homo sapien sapien. The characteristics for Homo sapien spaien sapien have not been defined much more than "we'll know when we see one." Willy, Fido, Bambi, etc. have not been universally agreed upon to be sentient and there is no universally accepted evidence ET is among us. What all of this means is true racism has not existed for at least 35 000 years.

Re:My guess

[Nyder]

Deep down inside they are suing because they don't like Gingrich. Just my guess though.

Isn't that case of most suing?

I mean, if i like someone, i'm probably not going to sue them in court, i'd figure some other way of getting a compromise.

just saying.

Re:My guess

[khallow]

But how is this possible, Mexico has such light regulation, it should surely be a utopian land of opportunity devoid of sprawling slums!?

I think I see the logic here. Mexico is a disaster, hence, it must be a libertarian paradise!

It's interesting to compare the costs of various sorts of business transactions such as the World Bank has done (I gather they looked at a sample of businesses to get appropriate figures). Mexico fares much worse than its neighor, the United States.

For example, it takes about 6 days and an average of $675 to start a business in the US versus 8-10 days and a bit over $1000 (at current exchange rate) for the Mexico business (the purchasing power parity seems to be 1.3 to 1.4 for Mexico relative to the US (since the US is a more expensive place to be), giving an effective cost of around $1300-1400).

A particularly bad example is registering property. Takes 12 days on average to do it in the US. No less than 45 days (and as long as 105 days!) to do it in Mexico. Cost in the US is almost $10k plus 0.4% of the value of the property. In Mexico, it's $24,169 at current exchange rate. The property has to be worth more than roughly $3.5 million before the US rates exceed the Mexican ones in absolute cost.

Doing taxes for a business is easier and cheaper in the US. It's averages about 187 hours of work to fill out the paperwork versus Mexico's 347 hours. Profit taken in taxes is a bit less in the US at almost 47% (interestingly, a considerable portion is New York state-specific taxes, which I gather is averaged over all businesses, not just the NY-based ones) versus almost 53% in Mexico plus a VAT which gets paid by the buyer not the business.

Enforcing contracts via the court is another interesting measure. It takes roughly 300 days in the US versus 415 days in Mexico to file a successful court case with most of the delay in the enforcement of the court's decision (90 days versus 183 days). The cost of the court case is another factor. Court-related payments are 14% of the US claims, but 32% of the Mexico claims.

In other words, we see that this "light regulation" in Mexico results in greater cost and delay than the regulation of the US.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

This. I'm currently looking at 6 more years on top of the already 5 I've put in. And I'm Canadian. TN to get work here right away, wait for the H1 lottery to work out (took a few tries, and you can't apply for a green card on a TN), now I'm on the green card lottery. Mean while MY wife isn't allowed to work until this is all sorted out. She's willing to work, to contribute but isn't allowed. The "right way" blows for pretty much everyone but a spouse of a citizen.

Re:My guess

[b4dc0d3r]

Nice point, but he went way round the bushes to make it. Immigration is bad after 1914, or whatever date you choose, because we're full.

We're not really "full", but we're past the point of allowing unlimited immigration.

The issue of legal vs. illegal immigration is a separate point, validly suggesting welfare as a key difference. It is just one of many reasons why we are "full", and without the welfare state we would likely remain full.

Re:My guess

[BlackSnake112]

Their Skin color has nothing to do with it.
Their choice of language spoken has nothing to do with it.

The fact that many come here illegally has everything to do with it.
Legal immigration is fine. Sneaking across the border is not.

I know many people of Latino decent who are really annoyed of people who did not come here legally. They say it give them a bad reputation. They have a point.

Re:My guess

[glodime]

That’s an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it’s no good. Why? Because as long as it’s illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don’t qualify for social security, they don’t qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket. So long as they don’t qualify they migrate to jobs.

It is not clear how much incentive welfare would have on the marginal legal immigrant to not search for jobs, so it may be less of a paradox and more of a conjecture. Also, there is a simple solution if the effect of welfare was significant. Make qualification for welfare depend on something other than legal immigration alone.

Re:My guess

[databaseadmin]

Exactly. 14years is enough recoup an investment. Beyond that, someone has achieved the owning of ideas and expression. That was never the goal.

Re:My guess

[b4dc0d3r]

How sure of that are you? according to two sources, the song copyright is given as "Copyright: (P) 1991 Volcano Entertainment, III, L.L.C."

This guy and another wrote it. The article lists them as the owners of Rude Music Inc., unrelated to Volcano as far as I can read. It also says they copyrighted the song in 1982.

He copyrighted the song, but Volcano owns the copyright to the actual recording, which Journey did.

If I want to cover it, I have to ask Rude Music Inc. But if I want to play the recording, I have to ask Volcano. Or just pay into one of the blanket jukebox style license agreements and don't ask anyone.

Re:My guess

[b4dc0d3r]

Knowingly how?

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2647101&cid=38881893

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Just back from the migration office, renewing my FM2. I am Dutch, living in Mexico. I guess Mexico is developed? If you have some income (I am a freelance "overseas" Perl programmer) getting an FM3 or FM2 is a piece of cake. It's just filling in some papers and the fees are far, far from 2K USD. Also it takes weeks, not months. Oh, and I was an illegal immigrant for 2 years in Mexico. No, I didn't end up in prison, didn't get tortured, and no, I didn't have to bribe corrupt officials. I just went to the migration office (Xalapa) where I was told that I had to leave the country and come back in. They even explained how to do this: go to Guatemala, cross the border, get to a different border post, so you can come back in the same day. Been there, done that. It's a long bus trip to Guatemala from Xalapa, but it's easy peasy, see: A very short visit to Guatemala

Have also been living in NZ for a while. They use a points system that at one time was strongly biased to get UK bred material in the easiest. With a good degree (MSc) the right age, and some persistence one can get in without much trouble. Fee was around 2K USD. Took around 5 or 6 months, can't recall. Since one can stay for 9 months (back then) on a visitor visa it's possible to get the papers done by then.

Based on my experience: a) do the paperwork yourself, it's not that hard (were possible) b) DO NOT use an "immigration service" in your own company. If I had used those in the Netherlands, were I was living until 2000, I would have paid well over 5K USD for their "services" which basically consist of filling in papers and sending them to NZ.

In both cases I just went to each country, and filed for immigrant status in the country itself.

Re:My guess

[b4dc0d3r]

So? They are the copyright holder, correct?

Not as far as any info I've been able to find. Writing and performing are two different copyrights, this guy seems to hold the wrong one.

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2647101&cid=38881893

Re:My guess

[cfulmer]

Problem, though, is that the Gingrich campaign probably has a blanket license from ASCAP or BMI which would cover what he's doing with this song. Political campaigns always get them, even though the artists whose songs are used sometimes don't like it. After the Gingrich campaign sends a copy of the license, the suit will be quietly dropped, having done what it was intended to do -- express displeasure at Gingrich.

Alternatively, the campaign may stop using the song because the distraiction isn't worth it. If that's the case, then this really is abusive.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, was it somehow not obvious that "The united States as you know before 1914 had completely free immigration." was the part found to be less than a factual statement, that it was nothing more than a false narrative shaping a whole convoluted reasoning which actually didn't measure up to reality?

I may be being unfair to you, but your inability to even recognize that is kinda off-putting. I find it more likely you're playing dumb than you actually didn't see that.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it clear which side to pick?

If the lawmakers do not suffer from the stupid laws they make, there's no reason to change them. Gingrich should SUFFER as much as anyone who was ever sued over copyright laws when they didn't do anything worse than Gingrich did. The law makers must experience that their stupider laws also harm people like themselves, not just poor people nobody cares about.

But then again, if they're sued and a little money changes hands and all the rich come out saying "I'm okay with this", it will just set a precedent that will allow real people to suffer because they don't have campaign donation funds to throw at it.

The choice is clear. Aneurysm it is.

Re:My guess

[John Bokma]

the Mexican government actively encourages its citizens to illegally enter the U.S.

Dutch, living in Mexico for nearly 8 years. Just back from the immigration office. They do have posters in that office discouraging people to illegally enter the U.S. It tells that people die while doing so, get abused, and their money gets stolen. I''ve never heard this before, so maybe I am ignorant of it, or you just confuse "Dora la Exploradora" with government propaganda...

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have free immigration, in the way we had it before 1914, everybody benefited.

That would be hard, considering that we no longer have open territories full of empty land that we wanted to populate as quickly as possible.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

The Netherlands. 1100 EUR, one exam, 6 months. The only hard part is taking the effort to go through rosetta stone levels 1-3 to learn enough language to pass the exam.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of Rush Limbaugh is Democratic, exactly? You stupid fucknugget.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

The intelligent among us will judge someone based on their culture

I'm guessing that you think this group includes you?

Re:My guess

[John Bokma]

Heh, and I am not quite sure where you got the idea from that "In Mexico, basically everything is illegal unless you are politically connected and/or can afford the bribes to get the regulators to look the other way"...

I entered the country (Mexico) back in 2003. My visa expired, and since I was both afraid of the immigration service -- probably same misguided ideas as you -- and low on money, I stayed illegally in the country for 2 years. Then I finally went to the immigration service. Was I tortured, put in prison, deported? No. Did I have to pay bribes? No. Was I "connected"? Heh, you must be kidding.

So what really happened? I was told that in order to be able to apply for an FM3 I had to pay a small fine and leave the country... Oh... No!!! ... and get back in. I got clear instructions on how to do the latter: take a bus from Xalapa (were I was and still am living) to Tapachula in the state of Chiapas. Hop over the border into Guatemala (legally, of course), drive to the nearest next border post and get back into Mexico (again, legally). The "nearest next" is only required if you want to do it in one day, which we did. Easy peasy, to quote Lola.

Anyway, each and every payment to the immigration office has to be paid at the bank. The bank confirms the payment on the form you got at the immigration service which you bring back to the immigration service together with the receipt you got at the bank. I've never, ever, paid cash at the immigration office, nor ever paid a bribe anywhere in Mexico. And I have been living in Mexico for close to 8 years. Even bumped into the police on several occasions and no, I didn't end up in prison with Jalapeños where the sun doesn't shine. The police is very laid back in my experience, and really takes time to listen to you even when wrong.

As for bribes... I have seen twice that someone had to pay a bribe in 8 years. Once in Chiapas a driver of a mini-van had to pay a bribe to a police officer. He was quite disgruntled since he had to pay more for me (white, I am Dutch). Second occasion was when we went back to Xalapa in a taxi from Xalapa. Taxis in Xalapa are allowed to drive people to towns outside Xalapa but they can't pick up people and bring them back into Xalapa. No idea why, sounds like a silly rule. Anyway, the trip was 150 pesos (12 USD?) and the driver had to pay a bribe. Or maybe it actually was a fine, but he called a pinche mordida (f-ing bribe).

Each time I read those corruption & torture stories on Slashdot about Mexico I wonder if I am living in a different country or Veracruz is the only state were things are normal...

Re:My guess

[DigiShaman]

I don't just think. I know it does. Or else I wouldn't have made the point in the first place, now would I?

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it reading comprehension is not your strength. Journey did not record this song. Survivor did. Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan, the coauthors of the song were members of the band Survivor.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Assholes, douchebags and arrogance were also created in France.
Too bad they didn't keep them.

Re:My guess

[khallow]

Ahh, yes, "Democracy", the art of two wolves giving a sheep the choice of being barbecued or spit-roasted for dinner.

In the matter of immigration who is the sheep?

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

evil copyright

Is there another kind?

Re:My guess

[AHuxley]

re Why would we do that? For what purpose?
They keep production costs low, do the work, don't unionise, less health and safety, long hours, no issues if fingers- limbs lost- deaths, keeps local and federal political cash tied to local brand names over generations.
Inspect my factory again and your political cash stops, I can ICE you at any time, help me get re elected.
If the US where to document all the guest workers they would form unions, call EPA, get state health depts in at every death, work normal hours for a US wage.
Or buy robots - expensive, imported parts, imported/expensive skills, do one thing really well at one stage in the growth of your brand vs many cheap undocumented hands.
As for the music - he is all for US art rights. yes or no to use the music and a set price if allowed.

Re:My guess

[doesnothingwell]

Some people doubt evolution because humans are obviously too superior to be descendants of primates. Primates fling pooh at each other, humans have politicians.

Re:My guess

[Imbrondir]

I guess I'm in a minority here, but I don't see why copyright length is a problem. If "Eye of the tiger" were covered under copyright for all eternity, how exactly would future musicians be hindered to make new and even similar music? You can usually get around a copyright with incredibly small implementation changes.

And with only 14 years coverage, I suppose it would be ok to make my own closed fork of the linux kernel also?

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

How does one waive their hand?

Has that got something to do with poker?

Re:My guess

[dangitman]

Very few people have said "screw it, download everything".

You must have a strange definition of "very few" when it comes to Slashdot. That's pretty much the majority position.

Re:My guess

[dangitman]

Wanting to control our population numbers is NOT RACIST.

The racist part comes in where with white skin who speak English are favored over other immigrants. If you don't think that happens, then you are delusional.

There are also other issues apart from racism. America was founded by violence. Who's to say that certain people are able to claim a certain geographic area, but not others? If a stronger military force were to conquer the USA, would you be OK with that?

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you mean "the majority of Slashdot posts I cherry-picked", then sure.

Re:My guess

[dangitman]

Yes there is a correlation to one being a poor, unskilled and illegal laborer in the USA and being "brown". The republicans would love to toss all of the former group out, regardless of the amount of pigmentation in their skin.

Nonsense. The Republican base needs those people to exploit. The last thing they want is an intelligent and skilled population, that would mean the end of their party.

Re:My guess

[dangitman]

Most people who strongly advocate against allowing illegals into the country and/or allowing them to become legal would be perfectly happy with laws that make it easier/cheaper for people to legally enter the country.

[citation needed]

Re:My guess

[HiThere]

Well, one way it's different is that the Homestead Act has expired, and if it hadn't there wouldn't be anywhere to homestead anyway.

OTOH, the real answer is that if you go back before 1914 you had a bunch of bigots campaigning to keep the foreigners (mainly southern europeans) out. The goal these folk have is to keep out people different from us.

That said, it does make a lot of sense that there be limitations on what support is given to those who aren't already residents. The sense that is makes is that if you must support everyone equally, you can't support anyone. This is why the Supreme Court decision that cities couldn't limit their general assistance to residents was so bad. It turned social services into a race to the bottom.

Re:My guess

[electrosoccertux]

Beyond that, someone has achieved the owning of ideas and expression. That was never the goal.

Yes, actually, it was.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the ignorant judge people based on race. The intelligent among us will judge someone based on their culture (religious, political, philosophy of life...ect).

I would say you are wrong.

The intelligent among us judge not at all, but simply accept all fellow humans based on the depth of an individual's character and deeds. There is nothing that can be 'judged' with absolute certainty about any race, creed or culture that would apply to all in that group.

Frankly, you sound as ignorant as someone who would shout racial epithets at those of differing skin color. Coating your own ignorant philosophies in the guise of intellectualism does nothing to hide it's true nature.

Prejudice is prejudice. The reality is, it is not your place to 'judge' the worth of any person, seeing as you are one as well. The best you can do is discern how easily you can personally relate to another individual. Anything more is truly overestimating your own worth in the cycle of life.

And I'm not saying I'm not guilty of being just as ignorant in thought and deed myself. Sadly, the best we imperfect humans can do is strive for an ideal.

Re:My guess

[Shotgun]

Never heard the Republican candidates talk about building a high fence with wide gates did you?

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your asshat off. if you publish music and the music is licensed under ASCAP. Then Newt, or anyone else can pay a fee to ASCAP and use what was once your music before you signed away your rights to it. It works ALL ways, vegans, Hilter youth, black panthers, kkk, democrats, republicans, communists, pro abortion, anti abortion, NRA, PETA you name it. They can all use it in their commercials, rallies, etc.

I suspect having an advanced knowledge of copyright. Newt or the venu's in question have paid ASCAP then there is no issue. Just produce the paperwork and this case will go away.

Move Along. Nothing to see here.

Re:My guess

[moozey]

This isn't just a question of being able to copy other peoples ideas, but rather that media should be distributed freely in any way, shape or form without consequence after 14 years. In this case Gingrich would be able to use the song and there'd be no case for the composers as it was produced in the 80's. At the same time, he could record his own version of it and not have to pay royalties to the composers.

Personally, I don't know where I stand on the issue. I certainly don't want anything like this happening again though.

Re:My guess

[mattack2]

...despicable Republican...

:-) Is there another kind?

Yes, there is Ron Paul.

Re:My guess

[mattack2]

We dont have a vast frontier anymore

I actually agree with most of what you say, but this part isn't true. We have TONS of unused space.

I honestly don't remember the source (hopefully someone can find one and respond), but I saw/read recently that the earth's human population could fit inside Texas. (I remember it because for a long time I thought that the earth's population could easily fit inside the U.S., and obviously it being just Texas is a much smaller area.)

Re:My guess

[forkfail]

You could always go back...

Re:My guess

[Chris Burke]

I vow to implement a better character set for usernames on this POS website, for a start!

Hm... The name might give you some Silly credentials, but this sounds suspiciously Sensible.

Re:My guess

[Thing 1]

Vote Kevin Phillips Bong in the general election!

I'll vote Kevin Phillips' Bong, thankyouverymuch. (I'm sure it will come up with more sensible ideas, and if not, there's the catch-all "what were we just talking about?")

Re:My guess

[mattack2]

To quote Milton Friedman:

"I have always been amused by a kind of a paradox. Suppose you go around and ask people 'The united States as you know before 1914 had completely free immigration. Anybody could get on a boat and come to these shores and if he landed on Ellis Island he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?'

He certainly knew a lot more about this stuff than I do, but I knew that sounded wrong. A bit of searching around found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act_(United_States)
signed in 1882.

So there wasn't free immigration before 1914. There are probably a lot of other examples too. (BTW, I'm not saying that law was a good law.)

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't illegal immigration like illegal file sharing? Yes, the laws make it illegal, but its a natural evolution and impossibly difficult to stop, and painful and ruthless at that. There are families out there willing to risk it all (including death) to get a chance at a better living. Just to come here and pick fruit, doing jobs so many fat lazy Americans aren't willing to do. The benefits to employers give the US an economic advantage (healthcare etc takes from that, but it's still a net positive). Those are the people you'd like to rabidly attack and split up their families? Where is this coming from? Yes, you can argue some parts of it isn't racist. But forgive people from assuming what also sounds like human nature - fear/hatred of people different from you.

Re:My guess

[TheSpoom]

OK, wait. You're right if you only count family classes, but you're entirely discounting every other way to get one, and those don't even count the dual intent visas that allow one to adjust status to Permanent Resident (i.e. get a green card) which is how most work-related green card holders get them anyway.

And I say this as a K-1 family class immigrant. Look, immigration in the US can suck if you're not one of the favoured classes but let's not lie about it.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see anything about the brokers of other peoples creations here:

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the _exclusive right to their_ respective writings and discoveries;"

Maybe I missed something. 14 years to the original author or inventor sound good. How did we ever get so off track up as SOPA.

Re:My guess

[gmhowell]

Maybe... but the Statue of Liberty was also originally sculpted to look like an African woman. It was changed after arrival because a large and politically powerful portion of the population strongly objected to the idea of an African breaking free from the chains that bind them in a display of ultimate literal liberty.

[Citation needed] Best I found on the subject is contrary to your assertion. (That said, snopes is not 100%, but they're pretty darned close)

Re:My guess

[gmhowell]

What part of Rush Limbaugh is Democratic, exactly? You stupid fucknugget.

The part that likes to use drugs recreationally and indulge in non heteronormative sexual practices.

Re:My guess

[iphinome]

understanding is a three edged sword.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to my humble capitat where heads fly? Now where's the fool ...

Re:My guess

[AK Marc]

What are the percentage of visa/residency applicants who are brown? What percentage of approved visas/residencies are for people who are brown?

It's sad that the Libertarians are all nuts. About the only thing I don't disagree with is their "open borders" policy. There's nothing wrong with vast hordes of unskilled labor. And most people with such complaints make them because they don't like brown people (what they think of when they think of "unskilled labor").

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean "you are" or "you're"?

Re:My guess

[twistedcubic]

I saw the name of a famous person and expected something insightful. Wow, what a lame, simplistic argument. That is not genius-- some of it is wrong, and most of it is dumb.

Re:My guess

[Xest]

"Wanting to control our population numbers is NOT RACIST."

It is if it's targetted at certain groups, like, say, hispanics.

Many Americans will complain about Mexicans crossing the border, but just about none would bat an eyelid at an immigrant from Europe.

"Dont you think as a sovereign nation, we have the right to say who can and cannot come here?"

Of course you do, but that doesn't mean you're not racist.

"We dont have a vast frontier anymore"

Actually, you kind of do. Call us with this excuse when you have the same kind of population density across your country as the likes of Japan, Europe, or China. Just to make a point, the EU could be fit inside the US and then some, but has nearly twice the population, and has a bigger economy, greater average life expecancy, lower infant mortality, and sees heavy immigration from Africa and war torn sections of the middle east. Obviously it hasn't caused Europe any problems, why are you so scared of it? Don't worry - I'll answer that for you, xenophobia.

"we dont need nor want a flood of unskilled dregs added to our society"

Ah I see, all foreign immigrants are unskilled dregs, and you say you're not racist?

It's funny because we have people with your attitude here in the UK, they often say the same about Polish immigrants, claiming they take our jobs and so forth, yet having met and worked with a number of such immigrants they have a work ethic that puts that of most British born people to shame. Really, what those people making such claims dislike is that there are now people in the country who are harder working than them and lose out on job interviews to them not because there's an obscure inherent bias towards immigrants, but because they were just the better candidates.

You have a high end education system in the US, you have opportunities far beyond those available to citizens of many other countries in the world, so if you work hard and take advantage of those benefits you've nothing to worry about from immigration - you've got a massive head start over any immigrant if not only because you natively speak the language and don't have any communication issues because of your accent. If you haven't worked hard however, if you've been lazy, then perhaps there's the real problem, but are you expecting us to have sympathy for people who threw all their chances away losing out on jobs to immigrants who were willing to give up and risk everything they have to have the same chances you threw away?

The problem is many members of society in the West have become lazy, they believe the world owes them, that they're entitled to things, and that's really why they hate immigration - because the poorer countries from which people move to the West from, are full of people who would give everything to have the opportunities the West provides, and so quite often have a far better work ethic as a result.

Re:My guess

[the_arrow]

And with only 14 years coverage, I suppose it would be ok to make my own closed fork of the linux kernel also?

Only of a 14 year old copy of the kernel.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as he pays his fees to use play it publicly (just like every radio station does), then they can go stuff themselves. Authors don't get to choose who buys or reads their books. Once they're printed they're printed. This song has not been kept in a closet protected from public use. It's been on the radio. Writers are just whining idiots.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism is actually a term created by Marxists to deride Free Market Economics. Which is what we SHOULD have. Gov't needs to get out of trying to control private business. Regulating interstate commerce was a power given to keep states from gouging other states -- NOT to give the federal government even a fraction of the power it abuses today.

Re:My guess

[anyGould]

Deep down inside they are suing because they don't like Gingrich. Just my guess though.

Probably a fair guess - if they supported Gingrich they'd call up and negotiate a deal.

What would be amusing is if they proceeded to take-down Gingrich's stuff for copyright infringement.

Re:My guess

[mcgrew]

I find political correctness offensive. Political correctness is intolerance.

Re:My guess

[bill_mcgonigle]

I am very much pro copyright. Though I am a purist who believes in fair use and and that limited duration should never have been extended past 14 years.

But copyrights require states to enforce them. And states are always corrupt and don't stick to the rules for very long.

I get that you might like the concept of a copyright in a theoretical world, but empirically the kind of copyright you want is one you can't have (for long, anyway).

Re:My guess

[peawormsworth]

After 14 years, the business model has been completed and all money made from the original work has been made. The only way to make additional money off the same content is to re-introduce it into something totally new. For example, if an artist makes a song and it doesnt do well in 14 years... and then at 15 years, Volkswagen uses it in a commercial and a movie company puts it into a blockbuster... why should the original artist of the song make any money at all? I dont think they should because it wasnt their song that was popular, but rather the new content that drove it to the masses. If the artist then wants to make money off this, they should then make or produce something new using the popularity they achieved through no work of their own.

The other way to make money off old content is to highly limit the release of it. Like the way disney holds movies that are now 75 YEARS OLD and re-releases them every few years for a short period of time. I think it is a dam shame that we allow companies to do this and it is a great reduction in the shared cultural experience that is possible for all people (it limits experience for the poor). I think snow white and dumbo and others should now be free to all the world to enjoy regardless of funds and it is ridiculous to assume that anyone related to the making of these or even the company business model requires this extensive amount of time to recover profits from that endeavour.

About linux: you can always make ur own closed fork of linux. You just cant sell it that way. So make all the changes u want to ur linux version and use it in ur company and for ur employees... thats fine. If u compare this to music copyrights... well u cant. If u are suggesting all music and video have the same license... I would support that too.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

...

I'm a legal resident alien with a permanent resident card which entitles me to work. I do not quality for welfare until 10 years after the date I received it.

Re:My guess

[jwhitener]

"they don’t qualify for the other myriad of benefits"

They qualify for enough other benefits that it is a major drain on certain industries. Illegal immigrant use of emergency rooms drives health care costs up for all of us. In fact, I was downsized years ago from a Hospital for that reason. Their kids go to public schools, they use common resources like roads, water, that taxes pay for, etc...

The only parts of society that benefit are those employers that use illegal immigrant labor. The rest of us are just subsidizing those employers profits with our taxes that go to benefit illegal labor.

I wish we'd be consistent on the issue: either provide a path to citizenship, or really crack down on our borders like most other countries do.

Re:My guess

[superdave80]

We already have 'wide gates' in the form of letting in hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants every year. It's just that illegal immigrants have been abusing the 'low fence' for decades now.

Re:My guess

[amirulbahr]

And with only 14 years coverage, I suppose it would be ok to make my own closed fork of the linux kernel also?

Your closed fork would have to be from a 14 year old revision though. Linus is frequently adding and modifying the kernel source tree and the 14 year limitation would apply to any new works from the moment they are created.

So in other words, no, it would not be okay to make your own closed fork of the Linux kernel unless you want that closed fork to be of Linux as it was 14 years ago.

Re:My guess

[Imbrondir]

You are right that 14 years should be a time when most income sources for an original artwork should be exhausted. I just don't see the necessity to artificially limit it as such, as long as it doesn't hinder future progress. Yes Disney are assholes, but it's not a human right to eventually get all the content you want.

You could also spin your example around. What if the Volkswagen commercial was very quickly and poorly made, and they just found a fantastic 15 year old song from an artists that never got through to the right people. In the case of success, Volkswagen may sell more cars through no work of their own. I don't see why the original artist shouldn't get to be the one deciding if he'd demand a royalty, or let them use it for free (and probably make up for it in live shows).

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be rude or offensive
But you ignore the obvious

We paid agents to go to Europe and advertise for immigrants and offer them someone else’s land!
How can we ignore this when we talk about immigration?
This is the truth of why immigration can not work as it once did, we ran out of other peoples stuff/land to give them.

You’re ideal that the problem with modern immigration is due to our becoming a welfare state ignores the actual facts and relies on belief in a fictional history.

All immigration involves small controlling groups needing more outsiders to help get their way on something.
It matters not if you’re talking about the Greek immigrants that became Rome or the Norman immigrants that took England in 1066.

This is the single biggest reason why the rest of the world is more socialistic than America. They know their nations were built on rape pillage and plunder while we in America are still in denial, desperately clinging to the lie that our forefathers were somehow different.

immigration is only good for the small group that is using it to extend their dominance

Perhaps he can follow Hulk Hogan's lead

[Anonymous Coward]

And switch to the classic Real American.

Fair Use?

[cayenne8]

Wouldn't his use of the song clip...be considered fair use?

He's not generating profit from this.

He's not playing the entire performance of the song...

Re:Fair Use?

[morcego]

He's not generating profit from this.

EXCUSE ME ?!?!?!?!?!

Re:Fair Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Odds are it's not fair use, but they probably paid license fees to the necessary collection agencies to use the song. This is just the "creator" disliking the way the song is used which, despite bad publicity, is generally not illegal.

Re:Fair Use?

[Sockatume]

Fair use is slippery. There are situations where reproducing a whole text would be considered fair use, and situations where reproducing just a snippet would not be. In this instance a very distinctive part of the song is being used, promotionally, uncritically, and without modification so I'm not sure it really escapes.

Re:Fair Use?

[DragonWriter]

Wouldn't his use of the song clip...be considered fair use?

Probably not.

He's not generating profit from this.
He's not playing the entire performance of the song...

While those both relate to factors that are relevant to fair use determinations, the two of them together don't automatically mean that something is "fair use".

Re:Fair Use?

[Phreakiture]

He's not generating profit from this.

I'm not sure that's a correct statement. Maybe it isn't direct, but he is using it in what essentially amounts to advertising. These events are not private parties, so the private party exemption (specific to music) is also gone.

I do believe, however, that Rude Music is in for a rude awakening because of a thing called compulsory licensing. In essence, they can collect money for their product, but they have to offer it to all comers, and, if memory serves me, they must do so with non-discriminatory pricing.

Re:Fair Use?

[irishPete]

IANAL, but he is using enough of the song to be recognized, and specifically using that song for it's emotional message. Although profit is not a test of fair use, you could argue he is using the songs emotional message to bolster his "brand" in order to profit by gaining the Presidency.

Re:Fair Use?

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Not even remotely. Using it publicly in a for-profit (all politics is for profit) situation without paying any kind of license fee is definitely enough to get you sued.

Re:Fair Use?

[MitchDev]

Kids who download music aren't making any profit off it. And they also aren't playing in public at rallies promoting themselves to higher office...

Re:Fair Use?

[Rockoon]

The song in question is covered under ASCAP licensing.

As long as the venue has made its yearly ASCAP tribute payment that never gets to the authors, there is absolutely nothing the authors of this song can do about it.

Re:Fair Use?

[Gideon Wells]

You would need to be a lawyer, practically, to know how fine this line is. For example, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/28/nbc-mitt-romney-tom-brokaw-ad_n_1239107.html . Romney's use of that news footage in an advertisement is likely Fair Use.

Gingrich is using the music for self-promotion at campaign events. Definition/standards of fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Purpose_and_character

0) ". . .for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." It is none of these.

1) "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;" - Technically non-profit, but not for an educational purpose. Well, unless you count used to introduce a candidate to an event where he is educating them about himself. I think that is a bit too broad to work.

2) "the nature of the copyrighted work" - Neither a fact, idea or something as important to the public as the Zapruder film.

3) "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and" - The whole thing isn't being played, but how much of it?

4) "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." - I don't think this would be allowed to apply here. If the song can be blasted in part for this event, why not others? At that point the value of the song begins to go down due to over use.

It could go either way, but I'm leaning against fair use. I'm leaning enough against it that I expect this to be quietly hushed up with a settlement.

Re:Fair Use?

[king neckbeard]

I'm fairly sure that public performance isn't ACTUALLY subject to compulsory licensing. It's just that virtually anyone who has enough money to bring a frivolous lawsuit is a member of a PRS like ASCAP or BMI. That said, including the 'right of public performance' in copyright seems totally idiotic to me in the first place. It's not producing a copy in a manner that couldn't be widely done before the printing press, and it conflicts with free speech. I can sort of see an argument for radio airplay, but that's about it.

Re:Fair Use?

[dubsnipe]

Still, the author should be able to claim damages to his moral rights. I think he has a case.

Re:Fair Use?

[wvmarle]

Not likely he can get away with that argument.

It appears the song is used every time he comes on stage, making it a bit of his personal theme.

It is not used to parody, or to study it, to comment on it, or any similar manner.

The way it's used (at least that's how I read the summary) is to have the song become his theme, that as soon as someone hears the riff they think "Gingrich". So that way he's using it as advertising for himself. And imho should at least have asked permission from the rights holder before using it in such a manner.

Re:Fair Use?

[Jeng]

He's not generating profit from this.

Wouldn't it be great if that was a legitimate excuse?

But that is not a legitimate excuse. Just because he is failing to make money off of the use of the song that does not mean that he should not be compensating the artist for use of the song.

Legally that is.

Yes, I pirate, that is why I said it would be great if it was a legitimate excuse.

Re:Fair Use?

[JWW]

Yep. If he paid public performance fees to play the song, then the composer should sit down and shut up.

Or.

They could give back all the ASCAP fees they've collected and do all the licensing for the song themselves.

Basically the rules, as cumbersome and bad as they are, allow you to play the music you want if you've paid the licensing agency.

These artists WANT these large onerous licensing agencies representing them, until someone they don't like plays their songs.

Tell you what, if you want to bitch about politicians playing your songs, dissolve ASCAP, get rid of their ridiculous licensing BS, and do it all on your own. That's fair.

Re:Fair Use?

[Sir_Sri]

Consistently not, using a song in a political rally isn't fair use. It's a public performance of all or part of the song, or it implies and artists endorsement of a candidate.

I suppose history could easily have gone differently, and music at political events could have been fair use, but given that every election season sees this sort of thing happen that isn't the case.

Re:Fair Use?

[tnk1]

Yes, this isn't fair use, but it was probably licensed by ASCAP, so the only thing the creator will likely get is the publicity of opposing it. There won't even be a settlement.

Re:Fair Use?

[Kagato]

Concur. The issue may be that a lot of political rallys are held in venues that don't do have reason to hold ASCAP license. There could also be an issue if the campaign is putting videos up of the rallies.

Re:Fair Use?

[forkfail]

Regardless, I thought that Republicans at least pretended to be all about people getting paid for the fruit of their labors....

Re:Fair Use?

[1u3hr]

Wouldn't his use of the song clip...be considered fair use? He's not generating profit from this. He's not playing the entire performance of the song...

"Fair use" for music is much more limited than an extract from a book or movie. You're even supposed to get permission to use a single line of a song or a brief sample. Anyway, this is not being used for parody, scholarly or critical evaluation, it's simply being used as part of a performance. They make Girl Guides pay for singing songs around campfires, Gingrich can and should afford to pay to use this.

Re:Fair Use?

[chill]

Please cite references if I'm wrong, but I believe any of the actual lawsuits brought were for UPLOADING or SHARING music via P2P and not DOWNLOADING.

The music industry seems to have been very careful in splitting that hair.

Again, I haven't made a comprehensive study of the issue.

Re:Fair Use?

[chinton]

Be careful with the "EXCUSE ME"s... You don't want to get sued by Steve Martin.

Re:Fair Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this kind of thing generally revolved around payment of royalties, and that most artists, writers, and composers didn't have a standing if they sold or recorded the music. Under those circumstances, only the record company had any standing.

This just looks like a guy with an ax to grind. What a baby.

Re:Fair Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Be careful with the "EXCUSE ME"s... You don't want to get sued by Steve Martin.

No, that would be EXC-UUUUUUU-UUUUUU-UUUUUUUU-SE ME!

Dear republican candidates

[interkin3tic]

We go through this every election cycle. Stop using music. Just shuffle off the stage. Maybe when you're awkwardly doing so, think about changing music copyright laws if you get elected?

Re:Dear republican candidates

[DanTheStone]

Why would they need to change the laws? They probably aren't breaking them, musicians just don't like their music being used by politicians they disdain. That doesn't make it illegal.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110705/03482614973/dear-musicians-once-again-politicians-can-probably-play-your-songs-events-without-your-permission.shtml

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Baron_Yam]

Or, you know, pay for the song's use.

Shouldn't legislators follow the rules they love so dearly that they're campaigning to make more of them?

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Sockatume]

How about, when they want to use someone's music as their theme tune, they ask them first? Throw a few cents their way? Maybe think about not being a dick, in addition to whether their actions are legally defensible?

Re:Dear republican candidates

[DragonWriter]

We go through this every election cycle. Stop using music. Just shuffle off the stage. Maybe when you're awkwardly doing so, think about changing music copyright laws if you get elected?

Or, do what Mitt Romney did with Kid Rock, and ask permission from the creator before using their work.

Its fairly easy to avoid the situation that Gingrich is in where he got a C&D from one artist one day and a lawsuit from another the next without changing copyright laws or avoiding music altogether.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[countertrolling]

Just shuffle off...

to Buffalo?

Re:Dear republican candidates

[interkin3tic]

My thinking was "While these musicians are annoying you, maybe shorten the copyright on them so their grandchildren won't be profiting off of them. Tit for tat."

Re:Dear republican candidates

[phantomfive]

Dear republican candidates

You address your message only to Republican candidates? You are part of the problem.

Maybe when you're awkwardly doing so, think about changing music copyright laws if you get elected?

Do you want to know how congress 'fixes' this kind of thing? They create a special exemption for themselves. Like they are doing with their insider trading bill (which gives them MORE freedom to do insider trading than current law), and like they've done with the FOIA (they don't need to respond to FOIA requests).

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Penguinisto]

He likely already did.

There was a similar flap years ago between Chrissie Hinds (of the Pretenders) and Rush Limbaugh, who was using her song "Back to Ohio" as his opening and bump music. Thing is, Limbaugh paid the ASCAP and other associated licensing fees, so Hinds was basically told to bugger off (numerous times, and publicly on his show). I think she tried to sue, but discovered that she really couldn't do a damned thing about it.

My guess is that something very similar is the case here. Gingrich's campaign likely paid all the fees, and barring evidence otherwise, this guy is likely going to get told basically the same thing.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[crmanriq]

As long as the music is not tied to any particular part of the event, it's covered under a venue's ASCAP license.

But.

If the music is synchronized to a video montage, or used as part of an announcement or otherwise synchronized with something, the campaign has entered into the area of "Synchroization Rights". These are covered on a contract-by-contract basis between the music publisher and the user.

"A synchronization or "synch" right involves the use of a recording of musical work in audio-visual form: for example as part of a motion picture, television program, commercial announcement, music video or other videotape. Often, the music is "synchronized" or recorded in timed relation with the visual images. Synchronization rights are licensed by the music publisher to the producer of the movie or program." (http://www.ascap.com/licensing/termsdefined.aspx)

Re:Dear republican candidates

[0100010001010011]

Just shuffle off the stage.

Promptly sued by LMAFO

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Sulphur]

As long as the music is not tied to any particular part of the event, it's covered under a venue's ASCAP license.

But.

If the music is synchronized to a video montage, or used as part of an announcement or otherwise synchronized with something, the campaign has entered into the area of "Synchroization Rights". These are covered on a contract-by-contract basis between the music publisher and the user.

"A synchronization or "synch" right involves the use of a recording of musical work in audio-visual form: for example as part of a motion picture, television program, commercial announcement, music video or other videotape. Often, the music is "synchronized" or recorded in timed relation with the visual images. Synchronization rights are licensed by the music publisher to the producer of the movie or program." (http://www.ascap.com/licensing/termsdefined.aspx)

You can stop them from synching then?

Re:Dear republican candidates

[X0563511]

The publisher is the one acting, not the artist. Big difference.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[asdbffg]

ASCAP/BMI/SESAC licensing fees cover public performance of a copyrighted work, which includes playing the recording in a bar, a cover band playing the song in a venue, playing the recording over the radio or on television, etc. The intention is to funnel some of the money that the venue is earning from playing your song back to the artist. These amounts tend to be relatively small, but prevent situations where radio stations, say, can make tons of money off of advertising around your song without paying anything at all to the artist.

Using a copyrighted work within another work is something else entirely. "Another work" might refer to a stage play, a television show or film, an opera, and sometimes a staged presentation or demonstration. Those rights are called "grand rights" in the case of stage works and "sync rights" in the case of television or film and are not handled by ASCAP/BMI/SESAC. So, in cases where music is being used WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF ANOTHER WORK, explicit permission needs to be given by the copyright holder. The idea here is that, if Real Housewives of the OC wants to use your music as the opening of their show, they have to work it out with the composer/publisher and actually pay for that use.

Now... whether or not a political rally qualifies as a "dramatic work" is up for serious debate and is a question best left for a copyright lawyer. In the case of a television commercial, that is definitely something where explicit permission would need to be granted to use the song.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[tnk1]

No need, ASCAP licensing means that they can use the music, and the artist has no recourse but to accept the money.

Admittedly, there is probably a publicity reason to ask permission, but artist lawsuits in this case are purely PR value stunts and will pretty much lose every time due to compulsory licensing. There's zero financial or liability reason to care what the artist thinks of your use of their song.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Anonymous Coward]

actually Rush bought the rights for his theme song and paid iirc several million dollars for it directly to Chrissie Hinds.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[qpgmr]

There was a similar flap years ago between Chrissie Hinds (of the Pretenders) and Rush Limbaugh, who was using her song "Back to Ohio" as his opening and bump music. Thing is, Limbaugh paid the ASCAP and other associated licensing fees, so Hinds was basically told to bugger off (numerous times, and publicly on his show). I think she tried to sue, but discovered that she really couldn't do a damned thing about it.

It was Chrissie Hynde's song with The Pretenders "My City Was Gone" that Limbaugh had been using without licensing or permission for several years. She demanded he stop, he did. She relented when he agreed to give PETA $100,000. Amazing: you managed to create four factual errors and three spelling errors in one post. You're ready to run in a republican primary.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Aryden]

Republicans will change the laws, they'll extend the the coverage for another 25 years so Mickey Mouse stays a money maker for Disney.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[geekoid]

Since it involves republican candidates, the it was the proper address.

It is illegal for congress to do insider trading. The new bill doesn't change that.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[nosferatu1001]

Synch rights

theyre tying it to a particular part of the "show"

Re:Dear republican candidates

[GameboyRMH]

If they decide not to, maybe they could all chip in to collectively license the Star Wars Imperial March :-P

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Rary]

I'm not an expert on synchronization rights, but I can't find anything that indicates that such rights apply to anything other than synchronizing with a recorded visual element. That would suggest to me that "synchronizing" the song with Newt's live entrance would still fall under performance rights.

However, there is this element mentioned in the article, with emphasis added by me:

The suit lists appearances by Gingrich at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2009, 2010 and 2011 and numerous stops in Iowa among events at which the candidate has used the song without Sullivan's permission, as well as Internet videos featuring Gingrich that have been posted by American Conservative Union.

That last item might be what does Newt in.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Rary]

Replying to myself to add that another poster has pointed out that the "live performance" version of "synchronization rights" are "grand rights". That might be what would apply to the actual rallies themselves.

So, if Newt didn't make a deal with the publisher, which he obviously didn't since it's the publisher who's suing him, then he could be in trouble here.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[husker_man]

Or be the current President of the United States.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Anonymous Coward]

These amounts tend to be relatively small, but prevent situations where radio stations, say, can make tons of money off of advertising around your song without paying anything at all to the artist.

Ha! This seems so anachronistic now. Imagine a bunch of people hovering around a radio eagerly anticipating the next song because it was the new hotness only to have to begrudgingly wade through advertisements for local auto glass repair shops.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Quirkz]

More likely is passing a law that copyright doesn't apply to political uses of songs, just like political robocalling is exempt from the Do Not Call List. Why solve a problem for everybody when you can just fix it for yourself?

Re:Dear republican candidates

[phantomfive]

It is already illegal for congress to do insider trading. The new bill codifies when it is not ok, and conversely, when it is ok, for them to do insider trading.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[phantomfive]

Uh, are you aware that Obama hired a lawyer from the RIAA to work on his team? Democrats are more than happy to extend copyright law.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[buddilla]

I was wondering when the "Stop playing my music" stuff was gonna start up again. I don't understand why they can not just open up Garageband or something similar bust out some 30 second loop made from stuff that isn't copyrighted and be done with it. At least Ron Paul has supporters, some in the industry, that make music about him that they gladly allow him to play.

For instance Aimee Allen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiKh9Ko3mw4

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Wikopedia tells me: "After Limbaugh agreed to donate royalties to PETA, she let him use the song"

Re:Dear republican candidates

[Aryden]

Sorry, I failed to properly submit my meaning. Both sides of the aisle will extend the copyrights. I thought that it was common knowledge that the dems would do it as well.

Re:Dear republican candidates

[phantomfive]

You'd be surprised how many people think 'their' party would not do something like that.

if i may indulge myself

[circletimessquare]

<blatant partisan thinking>

the one good use of coyright law

</blatant partisan thinking>

Re:if i may indulge myself

[Mashiki]

Well since the majority of /. doesn't represent the majority of american mainstream political opinion. It's fine to have your partisan thinking. I mean, why bother working with the other guys when you can just be the usual hack.

Re:if i may indulge myself

[The Moof]

So, your against copyright law abuses, unless those abuses are done in a way that fall in line with your political beliefs, then it's okay? Sounds like you are part of the problem.

Re:if i may indulge myself

[geekoid]

Actually, your post a lack of thinking.

how do you know he wouldn't have said the same thing about the other party doing the same thing?

Eye of Newt

[OutSourcingIsTreason]

He needs a more appropriate song.

Re:Eye of Newt

[koan]

Frankie Goes to Hollywood "Relax"

Re:Eye of Newt

[Kierthos]

After Florida, he could start using Beck's "Loser".

Re:Eye of Newt

[countertrolling]

They're creepy and they're kooky,
Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
The Gingrich Family.

Re:Eye of Newt

[Moryath]

I'm thinking "Na na na na, hey hey hey..."

Re:Eye of Newt

[WilyCoder]

^^^ Good one. My first thought was "Everybody wants to rule the world" by Tears For Fears.

Then again, Dennis Miller has already raped that song beyond belief.

Re:Eye of Newt

[bfree]

Relax? I'd have thought "Two Tribes" would be far more apt.

Re:Eye of Newt

[GameboyRMH]

You're a mean one, Newt Gingrich
You just don't have a clue
You're as nutty as a fruitcake, you're as peaceful as a shrew
Newt GingriiiiIIICH
Only other rich chickenhawks agree with you!

FAIR USE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

He is the Rocky Balboa of the Republican party. Except being filthy rich. And fat. And old. And pigish looking. Otherwise, same story !!

Re:FAIR USE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Soo....he is a ginormous Ugnaught.

Re:FAIR USE !!

[toriver]

No, ugnaughts have useful technical skills.

Re:FAIR USE !!

[Nos9]

So he's Rocky from Rocky V then?

He likely has no case.

[dmgxmichael]

More likely than not, he's registered with BMI or ASCAP. You can purchase global rights through those agencies. I'm fairly certain Gingrinch's campaign has dotted that 'i' and crossed that 't'.

If he hasn't then by all means tear him up - I hate the guy myself. But his is likely a case of a composer wanting to distance themselves from the politician who likes their music. That's not exactly a new phenomena by any stretch of the imagination.

Re:He likely has no case.

[goldspider]

"But his is likely a case of a composer wanting to distance themselves from the politician who likes their music. That's not exactly a new phenomena by any stretch of the imagination."

Indeed, abusing the court system is as central to record labels' day-to-day business as is producing music.

Re:He likely has no case.

[Anonymous Coward]

Assiduously dotting i's and crossing t's? Newt? The guy who failed to make the ballot in Virginia?

Re:He likely has no case.

[mybecq]

More likely than not, he's registered with BMI or ASCAP.

Indeed, Eye of the Tiger is available for public performance with ASCAP.

Re:He likely has no case.

[DragonWriter]

More likely than not, he's registered with BMI or ASCAP. You can purchase global rights through those agencies. I'm fairly certain Gingrinch's campaign has dotted that 'i' and crossed that 't'.

More than likely, the composer was -- and the composer's lawyers were -- aware of whether the composer is registered with such an agency and whether the Gingrich campaign had purchased the appropriate rights, whether through such an agency or otherwise, before filing a lawsuit. I suspect the existence of such agencies and the fact that some campaigns do purchase rights through them is why most of the times that artists have publicly protested their works by campaigns haven't involved formal cease-and-desist notices or lawsuits, just public statements of disapproval, with the more formal actions being a fairly rare exception.

But his is likely a case of a composer wanting to distance themselves from the politician who likes their music. That's not exactly a new phenomena by any stretch of the imagination.

The distancing is not unusual, the lawsuit is., and you don't seem to have any basis for your claim that the case is likely baseless except the fact that, historically, other campaigns have had artists distance themselves from the campaigns use of songs, which is a pretty thin reed to hang your claim on.

Re:He likely has no case.

[jemtallon]

You know, I hadn't thought about the corporate licensing angle. Many businesses could be huge allies in the fight against copyrights. Every bar, elevator, mall, waiting room, that even plays a radio broadcast is breaking the licensing terms. Replaying a radio broadcast in a business or public setting isn't covered under the radio's broadcast license so the business playing the radio needs a license. Same for streaming, playing CDs, having televisions in a sports bar. Hell, the ASCAP site makes it sound like every cover band playing an ASCAP artist's song in a bar requires that *bar* to have a license or they're liable rather than the band playing the song.

The only reason bars, restaurants, malls, etc aren't sued as often as individuals on the Internet is that they're harder to track down. This almost calls for a "public good" group to document these infringements and submit them to ASCAP, BMI, etc... maybe then they'd sue enough people with money that we'd get a lobby to revoke their power?

Re:He likely has no case.

[dmgxmichael]

I stand by what I said. Lawyers without any ground to stand on rattle their sabers all the time - and sometimes they even make the mistake of going to court with their pants down (Universal vs. Nintendo for example). And what I said is they do not likely have a case. But I'm not ruling out that they do. I am both not a lawyer nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express this morning, so frankly I don't know.

Re:He likely has no case.

[JeanCroix]

Furthermore, there are documented cases of ASCAP/BMI reps fining and even getting bars shut down for not having licenses, even though the bands playing in the bars were performing ALL originals, no covers, and were not even registered with ASCAP/BMI. Racket much?

Re:He likely has no case.

[king neckbeard]

Small restaurants managed to get an exception for a single radio with the Fairness in Music Licensing Act of 1998, which was a rider of the CTEA. The WTO got pissed off and we still pay some money to Europeans about that garbage, DESPITE the fact that the radio broadcast has already been paid for.

ASCAP are total thugs, though, are basically running a protection racket, and they need to be destroyed.

Re:He likely has no case.

[Shotgun]

More likely than not, he's registered with BMI or ASCAP. You can purchase global rights through those agencies. I'm fairly certain Gingrinch's campaign has dotted that 'i' and crossed that 't'.

If he hasn't then by all means tear him up - I hate the guy myself. But his is likely a case of a composer wanting to distance themselves from the politician who likes their music. That's not exactly a new phenomena by any stretch of the imagination.

He failed to get on the ballot in Virginia or DC. Why would you think his campaign is competent?

Politics in a nutshell

[goldaryn]

So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your passion for glory

Re:Politics in a nutshell

[interkin3tic]

Although in Newt's case, "holes" should be added to that quote.

Is it on any web content from campaign sites

[RichMan]

File take down notices and get the web sites black listed.

Doesn't work like that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is just somebody's attempt to keep Gingrich from using the song, simply for being in a different ideological group... then, sorry bud, but that's not how copyright works...

The article doesn't say whether or not Gingrich failed to pay for the music. Seems to me that this information would have been included had Gingrich NOT paid for it.

The article does say, however, that the intro's guitar riffs were used -- which leads me to believe that this is only a small portion of the song, and therefore will likely be upheld as fair use when the case is heard in court.

Re:Doesn't work like that ...

[dosun88888]

Methinks you have never heard the song. Your other inferences are likely just as invalid.

Licensed through ASCAP

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing the author can do. Gingrich's campaign bought the rights to use the song fair and square. That the artist is a flaming liberal and doesn't like it, is irrelevant.

Re:Licensed through ASCAP

[Anonymous Coward]

it very well, appears ,he can use commas,,. i don't, see any, ,commas, in your, post!

Re:Licensed through ASCAP

[obtuse]

There's no indication whether or not the song is paid for through the standard licensing. To assume it is, is as unjustified as to assume it isn't. Politicians tend to assume everything they do is fair use as in http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/01/29/2015203/romney-invokes-fair-use-in-dispute-with-nbc-over-campaign-ad. Unfortunately, without that information, the article is pointless.

Artist with existing contract doesn't like what happened to his song, with no information about existing contract.

Re:Licensed through ASCAP

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ascap.com/ace/search.cfm?requesttimeout=300&mode=results&searchstr=350092054&search_in=i&search_type=exact&search_det=tswpbv&results_pp=30&start=1

"no indication"? Did you look?

Laws are for the masses.

[forkfail]

Interesting etiology: The word privilege comes from private law.

Newt and those in his circle have it, and aren't used to being told they have to follow the same rules that the rest of us do.

What the summary fails to note...

[dmacleod808]

Is that Jim Peterik, the co-author, is not suing, and doesn't mind that Gingrich uses it... "Chicago-born Frankie Sullivan co-authored the Grammy award-winning song with fellow Survivor founding member Jim Peterik. However, Peterik is not party to the lawsuit and reportedly said that he didn't have a problem with Gingrich using it, according to a Sun Times report." http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/290196/20120131/gingrich-sued-copyright-infringement-eye-tiger-rocky.htm

*etymology

[forkfail]

*grumbles at spell checker*

Re:*etymology

[Anonymous Coward]

admit it, you learned that from Samuel Vimes.

Re:*etymology

[forkfail]

Guilty as charged. True nevertheless.

Gingrich may have a case

[Anonymous Coward]

on the grounds that that same song has commonly been used in political and sports rallies (including IIRC the 1984 Democratic Convention), and most likely not all of those secured permission beforehand. Enforce your rights, or lose them.

Re:Gingrich may have a case

[Anonymous Coward]

Gingrich may have a case on the grounds that that same song has commonly been used in political and sports rallies (including IIRC the 1984 Democratic Convention), and most likely not all of those secured permission beforehand. Enforce your rights, or lose them.

<morbo>COPYRIGHTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOODNIGHT!</morbo>

Why not the RIAA?

[dmomo]

I guess they don't sue on behalf of actual artists.

Re:Why not the RIAA?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they're not suing the composer of the song on behalf of the bullshit artist... I mean, politician, in this case...

Re:Why not the RIAA?

[toriver]

They represent the industries not the artists. ASCAP and their like are supposed to represent the latter.

Re:Why not the RIAA?

[dmomo]

Great clarification, actually. But.. I'll keep my "funny"!

This always happens to conservatives

[XxtraLarGe]

I don't know why they don't check for permission first. Besides, Grinch Neutron hardly strikes me as a "Tiger". He probably should have contacted Ted Nugent and got the rights to "Cat Scratch Fever", would have suited him better.

Re:This always happens to conservatives

[twmcneil]

I was thinking Rebecca Blacks' Friday.

Re:This always happens to conservatives

[king neckbeard]

The Nuge would use his hunting bow to settle this, not his lawyers. He'd probably even make some Newt Burgers afterwards.

Re:This always happens to conservatives

[XxtraLarGe]

Nah, Ted's a neo-con, he wouldn't have any problems with Grinch using his stuff.

Re:This always happens to conservatives

[H0p313ss]

"Don't get around much anymore" .... But that's B.B. King, and he's way too cool for Gingrich.

Re:This always happens to conservatives

[MachineShedFred]

They don't check for permission first, because they already have it via their paid ASCAP license.

This guy is just crying because he doesn't like the candidate.

Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[elrous0]

That's pretty bad. Those guys haven't had a hit since Day-Glo Reeboks were still in style.

On the upside, the Gingrich campaign offered him a settlement of 1 month's rent and a case of Thunderbird.

Seriously, if you're a Republican, wouldn't it be much wiser to use Country music anyway? It's not like any Republican has ever gotten tired of hearing "God Bless the USA."

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[HBI]

Speak for yourself, I hate that effin song. And i'm assuredly a Republican. Next thing, you'll be saying all Republicans want to ban abortion and birth control and be wrong again.

Sometimes you're just a Republican because the other side is even more odious. Not to mention arrogant and presumptuous.

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[Jason Levine]

Honestly, that's how I often feel about the Democrat party. I'm a Democrat not because I believe (politically) in what every Democrat says 100%, but because I believe in some of what they say and disagree more often with Republicans. If a real centrist third party were to emerge, I think they would give the Democrats and Republicans a run for their money. (Which is why both parties will work to prevent this from happening.)

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[TheGratefulNet]

Sometimes you're just a Republican because the other side is even more odious. Not to mention arrogant and presumptuous.

not in my experience, fwiw. I've never met a repub who didn't LOVE their side of things, and their people are comic book characters who simply just want to embrace the religion and big business aspects of the R view. the people usually are welcomed and celebrated.

the D side of things is quite different. its almost always 'the D guy sucks but the R guy sucks so much worse'. I've never met anyone 'in love' with the D guys. at best they are tolerated and dispised on their own bad merits. never see D 'fans'. but I see lots of actual R 'fans'.

its not just A/B. there are marked diffs in the followers of each of the D and R camps.

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[Aryden]

Going over to the other side because the side you're on sucks isn't the answer. If you believe in something, make your own side and fight for it.

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[HBI]

I have a good friend who votes for write-ins or Constitution Party type people every election for this reason. I get his point. I get your almost identical point. I just don't feel much like wasting my vote, and wasting is assuredly what it would be. It was nice to have him write in my name for NJ Governor a couple years back, though.

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[HornWumpus]

My experience is basically the exact opposite.

And among the Ds who aren't true believers it's usually because the D's aren't nuts enough.

Talk about comic book world views; you are the deadhead.

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[bfree]

It's not wasting your vote, it's just using your vote to influence future elections rather then the one you are voting on right then. Each extra vote for an "unlikely" candidate makes it that much more likely that the next election will see more backing for other candidates, or simply modify the behaviour of the candidates who see the extra votes to be won.

I say this from a country where I enjoy never having to contemplate this as we have multi-seat transferable votes. I usually have to spend a while ranking anywhere from 10-20 candidates for 5 seats. I invariably end up starting with the pleasure of trying to pick which piece of scum deserves the bottom ranking the most this time round. I enjoy watching the count results just to see how many piles my vote has moved through before it reaches one of the candidates left in at the final round where it is ultimately "counted".

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[HBI]

In practice, third parties haven't worked like this in the US. They are issue based and rise and fall based upon their particular issue. They are a factor for a few elections and disappear, and any effect they had on the major candidates is difficult to discern.

The voting system in the US is not very conducive to third parties in any event. Your system is clearly designed to afford maximum representation to fringe parties.

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[GameboyRMH]

That's pretty bad. Those guys haven't had a hit since Day-Glo Reeboks were still in style.

It was a simpler time. Maybe not a better time, but sort of a more fun time. Everybody looked like children's cartoon characters and drove blocky cars while listening to awful music. Gangsters wore festive, colorful uniforms and were shot dead by angry, mustachioed men.

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[elrous0]

IIRC, back in those days I was a tough but stylish Miami detective--fighting drug smugglers alongside a young and dashing Ronald Reagan. As we cruised down the streets, listening to El DeBarge on our Walkmans, sometimes Ronny would turn to me and say "Where's the beef?" And we would both laugh.

It was indeed a great time to be alive.
 

Re:Wow, Survivor member turns DOWN exposure chance

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never met a repub who didn't LOVE their side of things

Yes, you have. You just didn't realize it at the time, because they weren't going on about it - in other words, you didn't realize they weren't that kind of Republican precisely BECAUSE they weren't that kind.

Missing from summary

[operagost]

I wonder if Sullivan bothered to simply send a letter to Gingrich asking him to stop using it? After all, it's been YEARS... sounds similar to a submarine patent, right? If Gingrich ignored such a request, then he's got it coming to him. I would feel pretty slimy using a song if I knew the composer didn't like it. That being said, he might be rationalizing a bit since co-writer Peterik is OK with it. I'm not sure what bearing Peterik's wishes have on this, as I don't know if he has a share in Rude Music.

Re:Missing from summary

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a balancing act:

By suing, and publicizing it, he hurts Gingrich's campaign, which he sees as a win.

By suing, and publicizing it, he makes Gingrich supporters (like me) hate Survivor, which hurts his own sales.

Posting AC, for obvious reasons.

America's Got President!

[lucky101man]

I'm surprised candidates haven't already started paying composers to write theme music for their campaigns. It's so similar to pro wrestling, maybe Gingrich could have a shot at the belt in the sequel if he doesn't make prez!

The Rye or the Kaiser

[knarfling]

Maybe he should try Weird Al's "Theme from Rocky XIII(The Rye or the Kaiser)". Not only is it more appropriate, Weird Al might let them use it for free.

Re:The Rye or the Kaiser

[eternaldoctorwho]

You beat me to it. Kudos, good sir.

I bet...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet he wouldn't be getting sued if he was playing "Liar" by The Rollins Band.

Re:I bet...

[Miseph]

I think Henry Rollins should sue to force him to use that song. He could use the argument that, since it's clearly piracy if a person fails to buy music (according to the RIAA), it must also be copyright infringement if a candidate fails to license a song.

I think he might even have enough absurdist leanings to give it a go, just for chuckles.

I don't get it...

[c]

Why wouldn't a political candidate double check to make sure that the composers/artists/etc responsible for music their using in their campaign is, at worst, neutral towards them?

Because, quite frankly, if I had total legal control over a piece of art that some dickwad I didn't like was appropriating for PR purposes, my first instinct would be to do my own counter-PR version and dump it on whichever public channels I could find.

For instance, a youtube video set to "Eye of the Tiger" which just shows a picture of Gingrinch on a punching bag being pummeled by various disadvantaged types with captions explaining their beefs against him and the Republican party might be an effective way to develop a negative association between him and the song.

Why in the world would a political campaign risk pissing someone off like that?

Re:I don't get it...

[dfenstrate]

Why in the world would a political campaign risk pissing someone off like that?

Because this one man's impotent anger is essentially irrelevant.

How many votes do you think an issue like this will swing? Five?

Re:I don't get it...

[TheGratefulNet]

reminds me of when people hot-link ('steal') images for their own websites.

some really evil minded people (bwahaha!) might just realize this, change the file to something else and LET the guy continue on linking to it. see how long it takes for him to realize the image showing up is not what he expected.

the author should definitely make a 'parody' video and get that going viral. if an artist can't control his own work, let him at least 'destroy' it. (OT: glad I'm not a brit traveling to the US...)

Re:I don't get it...

[c]

> How many votes do you think an issue like this will swing? Five?

It's not just an issue, it's an opportunity for someone to build an attack ad using popular and catchy music the candidate has been trying to build an association with.

So, to answer your question,it could swing as many votes as an effective political attack ad. I don't know how many that'd be, but it's obviously not a trivial number given how often political parties use attack advertising in their campaigns..

Re:I don't get it...

[MachineShedFred]

Because he doesn't have total legal control. He sold that to ASCAP for the checks he's been receiving since he published this work in 1982.

If he wants to sue over the use of this work, he can try to wrest control back from ASCAP. Good luck with that.

Re:I don't get it...

[c]

> Because he doesn't have total legal control.

Good point. It was bad choice of words.

In essence, he has the right to create derivative works from the song without getting into a big licensing kerfuffle. At least, he's got way more rights in that respect than anyone else.

He probably can't *stop* Newt Gingrinch for using his song, but he could certainly work to ensure that when people hear the song in the context of Newt Gingrinch, the first thing that comes to mind is "senile old horse fucker".

Re:I don't get it...

[Rich0]

So, you're saying the liberal media conspiracy will try to suppress the message of the Republicans who are just trying to get out the truth?

That is how this would get spun, and it will certainly energize the typical Red-stater. This is the primary, so they're the only people voting anyway.

I could care less for the guy, but lawsuits like this should not be allowed. Write your music, and go ahead and ask to get paid for it, but your right to control of how it is used ends when I buy the CD or pay the standardized non-discriminatory fee for performance.

What's next - Cisco suing anybody who sends email that they disagree with through a router on the basis of some patent?

Re:I don't get it...

[c]

> So, you're saying the liberal media conspiracy will try to suppress the
> message of the Republicans who are just trying to get out the truth?

Nope, I'm saying that if you're going to try to build goodwill by associating with pop culture, those responsible for creating that pop culture are in an ideal position to turn it against you, and it would be a far more effective and useful approach than a lawsuit. It doesn't matter which party or even which country you're talking about, either. It's just not a smart PR move, and I don't understand how a major political campaign, as obsessive as it is about details like nailing down the perfect "presidential" haircut, wouldn't have done something to mitigate that risk.

Re:I don't get it...

[Rich0]

Maybe, maybe not. Haven't seen it happen yet, and that probably says something.

With the way that studios control copyrights in the first place it wouldn't surprise me if the artist would have to beg permissions to parody his own song...

Re:I don't get it...

[c]

It may just be that the songs they use for this stuff are from "old media" artists who aren't savvy about using their music for a good public shaming. Borrowing a "Heart" song is a heck of a lot less risky than, say, a Dave Carroll song.

Give it time, I guess.

Re:I don't get it...

[greed]

If you're going to do that, see if you can make sure that when the guy doing it still sees the original image--it's all his site visitors that get the shock pic. I mean alternate pic. Implementation left as an exercise and all that.

Re:GIngrich is not going to be elected, period.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just love these open minded, compassionate liberals.

Re:GIngrich is not going to be elected, period.

[MitchDev]

American Idol, Jersey Shore, Survivor, America's got Talent, etc.... are all huge hits, and yet you think Newt's not electable for the reasons you listed? The GENERAL population loves people with those qualifications. They don't realize that they make horrible LEADERS.

It's LICENSED!

[cfulmer]

Every election season, this comes up. A politician licenses music from one of the performance rights organizations (often ASCAP). The artist (or, really, the composer) gets all upset and either sues or threatens to sue. He has no claim, but just does it for political reasons.

I would have thought...

[forkfail]

... he was more of a Dead Kennedys fan anyway....

Will the FBI get involved?

[TFAFalcon]

I wonder if the FBI will start an investigation. This seems to be quite a public case of copyright infringement. It could even be called a conspiracy!

Then they could freeze all his assets, as well as those of his campaign. Just until the trial is over of course. I'm sure keeping him in jail for a few months won't cause any permanent damage to his career.

Re:Will the FBI get involved?

[MachineShedFred]

Or they'll see that they paid for an ASCAP license, and close the file. This is the artist crying because he doesn't like the candidate, and he has a pulpit to yell from.

Jim Peterik doesn't mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sullivan didn’t want to get into whether he likes Gingrich or his politics. His co-writer on the song, fellow Survivor founding member Jim Peterik, however, gave Gingrich a partial endorsement.

“My wife is a big fan,” Peterik said. “I’m becoming a fan of Newt Gingrich. He has a mind of his own. He’s not a talking head. Originally, I didn’t like him, but look at the competition. He’s looking better and better.”

Peterik is not a party to the suit that Sullivan filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago. They share the copyright, but tend to stay out of each other’s way when it comes to cracking down on infringers.

the future campaign event

[Anonymous Coward]

The future of these events will be just pure awesome...epic

  In the near future, candidates will appear with an oily chest, rock'n'roll heavy death metal type of music and lots of pyrotechnic effect. They will show off they body and some cute half naked girl on their stage. 90% of the time will be an awesome public viewing show...mostly composed of women caressing themselves...including the candidate. near the end, they will talk about what they should for 2 - 3 minutes and take off in an helicopter.

This will be an epic election. /sarcasm

Re:the future campaign event

[mister_playboy]

Perhaps you've seen the movie Idiocracy? :)

Re:the future campaign event

[Aryden]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5zAAASsuyk&feature=related

Relax

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster is probably in a position where he regularly employs cheap foreign labor. Maybe he works in construction, for example, or hospitality. In either case, the more cheap unskilled labor available, the easier it is for them to cut costs and hit profit margins. So, naturally, they portray any effort at blocking this as racism, regardless of the real motivation.

we missed out....

[uncanny]

See, if we had just let SOPA get enacted, then they would have an easy route to shut Gingrich down, now we'll actually have to use our votes to do it. Damnit, i didn't want to have to work for this country to run!

Legal update

[silas_moeckel]

So how long till political campaigns get a fair use exception written into law? They did it for the do not call list after all.

The song is 30 years old

[Oidhche]

By any sane measure, it's been long in public domain.

Re:The song is 30 years old

[Pontiac]

By any sane measure, it's been long in public domain.

With the current state of copyright law it going to be awhile.

The song was released in 1982. If both authors were to die today it wouldn't enter public domain until 2082. Otherwise you will have to wait until 2102.

Re:The song is 30 years old

[Oidhche]

I did say sane.

Yes it is

[Anonymous Coward]

If we want to call ourselves a "fair" country, we should make immigration essentially random. If you meet a certain number of minimal conditions (no serious communicable diseases or criminal/anti-social behavior) then your name goes in a lottery. Rich and poor, skilled and unskilled, should all have the same chance. To those who say we should be able to decide who gets in according to whether they'd benefit our society, I'll remind you the Native Americans were not allowed that option.

Re:Yes it is

[Runaway1956]

Actually, the Native Americans welcomed the white men. That's why so many of us have mixed blood. Or, did you think that all mixed breed Americans were the result of rape?

Re:Yes it is

[Belial6]

That is overly simplistic. "Native Americans" are a lot of people. No doubt being people means that they had a lot of different views on the people showing up on their borders. Irrelevant of who were the "good guys" and who were the "bad guys", there were clearly many Indians that were not only very unhappy with the presence of Europeans, but were willing to both kill and die to protect their borders.

Re:Yes it is

[Runaway1956]

Yes - of course. But, let's not forget that the natives had spent millenia killing each other too.

Off on a tangent with that now. The "big news" in "immigration" (or, alternatively, "invasion") issues are Mexicans. Or, Azteca. Funny that today's Azteca seem to claim the land that they attempted to take by way of genocide for a thousand years before the white man came. "We killed millions of Apache before you whites ever showed up, so it should be OUR land!"

Re:Yes it is

[Nos9]

Look how well that turned out for them. We stole this land, fair and square.

Re:Yes it is

[Shotgun]

Yes - of course. But, let's not forget that the natives had spent millenia killing each other too.

Kind of like the European tribes kept doing even after they started invading this country. What's this mentality that seems to think that the Native Americans were less civilized than the Europeans, because they were not a united nation across the continent? That's stupid.

Re:Yes it is

[Runaway1956]

You've read something into my post that I didn't put there. Did I perhaps suggest that the white men hadn't spent the same millenia killing each other? Could you point that out, if it is in my post? Did I suggest that the white men had a single, continent spanning nation in Europe? Did I somehow suggest that the white man's culture was any more homogenous than the native's?

Just like Europe, some of the natives were rather civilized, and others were less civilized.

What the Native Americans lacked was TECHNOLOGY! And, the thing that killed of more natives than anything else was disease. They certainly weren't lacking for civilization.

How about paid use?

[Hartree]

If the venue (or more likely the campaign for a traveling show) has an ASCAP license (that song is under ASCAP IIRC) of the correct type, then how is a public performance of a recorded version a violation?

Maybe there's something I'm not seeing, but I don't see how the case has anything behind it. Is there a clause in ASCAP contracts about use being denied when it is a political event?

The ASCAP licensing I've dealt with is for festival type licensing so there may be nuances I don't know.

Sure, if it had been used in a video production without a synchronization license, but I'd hope any video producer worth their salt would have gotten one.

Re:How about paid use?

[Em Adespoton]

The only place I can see where they'd have a case is if someone decided that their blanket ASCAP license covered this and didn't get the one that applies to embedding the song in a repeated performance for branding purposes.

As soon as you attempt to associate a piece of music with a brand (Newt being the brand), blanket ASCAP doesn't apply.

He'd have similar issues if he ran up on stage wearing an LA Raiders jersey every time.

Re:How about paid use?

[Hartree]

That might well be it. Where I've dealt with it is incidental music for events and music for video productions. Neither linking the music to particular branding.

Nothing New

[Dripdry]

David Byrne had something like this happen a couple years back. Of course he won (if it's not in the journal). Again, if it's not in there, something to point out: This happens ALL THE TIME, but many artists don't have the money or cajones to fight it.

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2010/05/052510-yours-truly-vs-the-governor-of-florida.html

It makes an interesting point: we go on about copyright, yet here's a song 30 years old and still incredibly recognizable. It is an enduring work. Should it get protection or shouldn't it? How do we determine what has been marked indelibly into the lexicon of American Culture, should we compensate people for that?

He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[Quila]

At the time, the Democrats were the party of racism, trying to keep the blacks in their place. The Republicans were the party fighting racism, in large part originally founded on the abolitionist platform.

This whole supposed flip-flop on who's racist only happened with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Until then, the Democrats were the party of the KKK. Remember Robert Byrd saying you couldn't be in Democratic politics down South unless you were KKK?

Re:He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[Miseph]

It also had a bit to do with LBJ's "Great Nation" and Democrats (with many Republicans) pushing for things like the Civil Rights Act. In fact, if not for that, the "Southern Strategy" would likely never have happened, it was an explicit attempt to capture recently disenfranchised Southern Democrats who had been essentially kicked out of the party.

Re:He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[Daniel Dvorkin]

This whole supposed flip-flop on who's racist only happened with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Until then, the Democrats were the party of the KKK. Remember Robert Byrd saying you couldn't be in Democratic politics down South unless you were KKK?

First of all, the defining moment wasn't Nixon's campaign. It was the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; Johnson, who knew whereof he spoke, said as he signed it, "We [the Democrats] have lost the South for a generation" -- as it turned out, he was wrong only in assuming that the damage would be that short-lived. Second, it wasn't a "supposed flip-flop," you moron. The vast majority of Dixiecrats migrated to the Republicans, who welcomed them with open arms, over the next decade and a half or so. Byrd was one of the few who remained with his party, over time recognized how wrong he had been (and his former compatriots, now comfortably nestled in the Republican bosom, still were) and worked for years to undo the damage he had done. The ones who went Republican, in contrast, never changed because they never had any reason to do so, and the attitudes they brought with them largely define the Republican Party today.

Re:He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[khallow]

The great irony is that the Democrats remain the party which discriminates based on ethnicity and yet at the same time are the party which slanders a remarkable portion of the US population with the "racist" label.

Re:He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[Viewsonic]

You mean, USED to. They haven't done this for decades and decades.

Re:He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[Curunir_wolf]

It was called the "Great Society", and it was the most destructive set of policies since FDR. Where FDR created Social Security, LBJ decided to raid the SS trust fund and spend it social engineering programs that basically ended most of the progress of black communities since the turn of the century. I have to wonder if his reversal on Civil Rights legislation (which he blocked during his entire tenure in the Senate) was because he had come up with a more effective way of suppressing them - making them depending on Federal government and hand-outs, while subtly intimating that they would never be "good enough" to make it on their own.

Re:He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[Curunir_wolf]

I don't think so. He's spot-on and current.

Re:He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you aware that fifty years was a long time ago?

Re:He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[khallow]

You mean, USED to. They haven't done this for decades and decades.

Try present day student matriculation at California state universities, the tracking of ethnicity in almost every government interaction, ethnic preferences in loans and other government programs, and the primary source of political accusations of racism at broad groups of people.

The racism of today isn't the hooded robes of yesterday. It's a methodical, institutionalized tracking of everyone by ethnicity and favoring certain ethnic groups over other groups in legal and political matters.

Re:He was probably aghast at the Democrats' racism

[gmhowell]

Are you aware that fifty years was a long time ago?

Not to Jews and Palestinians.

Politicians are special

[Ameryll]

Every time this happens, I wish that the politician in question finally opens his or her eyes to how out of whack our fair use has gotten. But in the end they just want to be special and be allowed to do the things they think we the people should not be able to do.

And after all, they are special. They work for the corporations.

I've wondered where the cumpulsory line is

[Quila]

For example, a talk show radio host. He plays various intro and exit music, definitely covered under payments.

But what if he picks a song as his theme song and plays it constantly? I wouldn't think that would be covered under ASCAP any more than someone wanting to use a song in a movie.

Sounds like Newt's using it as his theme.

Bingo

[Anonymous Coward]

If there wasn't money to be made in the business of government, then government would be a tiny fraction the size it is today, measured both in revenue and power over the people. On the contrary, government (organized and "legitimized" coercion) is the largest, most successful business that has ever existed in human history.

Dear Liberal/Leftist Artists ...

[argStyopa]

...who are so deeply offended by the use of "their" music by the "wrong" people:

If you sell your song to agents/distributors who you legally empower to pimp that music to be used as theme music in movies, in Muzak versions in elevators, and in waiting rooms, don't be surprised that they ALSO pimp that music to political organizations that are offering decent $$.

In fact, unless you have a rider in your contract that allows you some special control over said distribution and the right to nay-say certain clients for whatever reason (you don't like their business, their politics, the color of their hair) then you haven't got shit legal basis for your suit and can pretty much fuck off.

- The people that pay you.

Re:Dear Liberal/Leftist Artists ...

[Shotgun]

...who are so deeply offended by the use of "their" music by the "wrong" people:

Probably the same reason they and actors make political statements that anger people, and then are surprised that those same people are not longer entertained by them (FU Jane Fonda and all you Dixie Chicks)....they're idiots.

Irony

[Lucky75]

How does Gingrich stand on SOPA/PIPA/ACTA? Irony at its finest.

Re:GIngrich is not going to be elected, period.

[Aryden]

Really... 8 years of W, and you think he COULDN'T get elected?

In other news...

[darkpixel2k]

In other news, a new bill has been introduced that exempts political candidates from using copyrighted works in their political ads. This will join the existing bill that exempts the idiots from telemarketing rules so they can call you whenever the hell they want with a recorded message asking for your vote. (Because I form all my political judgments from 30-second pre-recorded phone calls...)

Irony

[Keychain]

Funniest part of the story : "Eye of the tiger" was written is because stallone couldn't get the right to "Another one bite the dust". Maybe Gingrich should just commision a new version (or get the right to another one bite the dust :)).

Why?

[Valdier]

And why is this on Slashdot?

Political news for nerds now?

What people may not realize...

[PortHaven]

A lot of times such song use is in fact licensed. Usually through a licensing company which is contracted with publishing companies to license use.

In otherwords, I as an artist signs with SONY Records. Who contracts with MyPlay music licensing. I who am an event organizer pays MyPlay an annual fee to use any of the songs in their licensed music library. I am then hired by New Gingrich's campaign team.

So Newt pays the event entity who pays the license firm who pays the royalty house who in turn pays the artist.

Then when the artist finds out their song is being used by someone they don't like they decry theft, theft. But usually it's the case that it was licensed, licensed through a complicated chain that is basically how music is licensed in our society.

People who oppose said event side with artist, decrying "them there evil bass tards (fish poop)". Those who side with the other party sit there pondering, it's just how the system works. And it's how the artist gets paid. And if the average whiner self-absorbed artist only licensed their music to people they liked, no one would be able to ever license music because they're constantly offended by everything.

Hence, record labels handle that exericising of rights. Otherwise, artists would receive no license fees and starve to death.

Re:What people may not realize...

[rahvin112]

And as typically happens in these cases people completely forget that you have to pay multiple copyright trolls, that means you pay the RIAA studio for the actual recording AND you have to pay the song writer (ASCAP). And as typically happens the RIAA studio and ASCAP happily negotiates and accepts payment for works they aren't entitled to so that you end up getting sued anyway by both the song writer and band and have to pay a second time. And the kicker is that the first payments to the studio and ASCAP aren't refundable even if they weren't authorized to collect royalties for the works in question because they don't give money back even if they didn't collect it legally.

Re:What people may not realize...

[Anonymous Coward]

People who oppose said event side with artist, decrying "them there evil bass tards (fish poop)".

For arguments sake, lets say I oppose said event. Let's see... "composed the song and copyrighted it in 1982". Geez. 1982. That's 3 years before the release of Windows 1.0... in fact we were in the very early DOS years; 1982 is the year Microsoft signed a deal with Compaq to supply MS-DOS and BASIC for their very first IBM-compatible computer. It is also the year of release for the arcade games Sinistar, Super Pac-Man and Donkey Kong Jr.

THAT is how long ago 1982 is.

It's a shame that this song and it's original recording haven't entered the Public Domain yet.

That is easy. No anuerysm here.

[Brain-Fu]

Government officials should be held accountable to the laws they create and enforce. This is *ESPECIALLY* true when the law is a bad law that blocks people from doing things that are completely reasonable. That helps ensure that "they" feel the same pain as "us," which in turn furthers the cause of getting the bad laws corrected.

One law for them and another for us is a basic ingredient of tyranny.

Unskilled people in our borders

[TiggertheMad]

I do not see the point of allowing unskilled people into our borders. Why would we do that? For what purpose?

Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because they are people who, like you, and want to live in a free country where you have a chance to pursue your dreams. If you look at America's history, immigrants seem to be hard working and ambitious. Quite frankly, we could use more of that right now, and not just a bunch of stupid complacence idiots who think the most important thing to be focusing on is teaching creationism in schools.

By your logic, shouldn't we expel all the white people who are unskilled, and let in all the African, Hispanic, Asian, and Arabic people who are educated and skilled? Go see how that flies with the Republican party.

Unless you are of native American descent, you have no fucking right to complain about the immigrants anyway, seeing as how you are one...

Re:Unskilled people in our borders

[spire3661]

Because no time has passed and nothing has changed between now and 200 yeas ago. Yep, you are right the situation is exactly the same as the time of pre-revolutionary war. Thank you for pointing out the huge flaws in my logic. How dare i attempt to evaluate the CURRENT situation when my evil immigrant anscetors slaughtered innocent indians.

Re:Unskilled people in our borders

[ceoyoyo]

Current native Americans are the result of the last of probably about three waves of immigration (some of it likely quite bloody), so they're immigrants too.

Re:Unskilled people in our borders

[Nos9]

Yes look how well that open border policy worked out for the Native Americans, can you blame the white folks for not wanting to let that happen to them?

Re:Unskilled people in our borders

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because they are people who, like you, and want to live in a free country where you have a chance to pursue your dreams. If you look at America's history, immigrants seem to be hard working and ambitious.

Depends on the immigrants. I've got a number of uncles and cousins, as do many friends and acquaintances from the Caucassus, Greece or the Middle East who did just enough to claim dual citizenship solely for the purpose of going back to the motherland while collecting Canadian unemployment / welfare, and having access to Canadian helthcare, if needed. Their kids were born here, but the only time they spend in the country is during their post secondary schooling for the sake of a dirt cheap degree at a top tier University. A degree from McGill gets you a lot farther than one from University of Cairo. Playing dirty, screwing the system and generally cheating (never regarding friends and family though, only foreigners and strangers) is very much a cultural thing in that region. They all go back home because they hate it here, but it's convenient to abuse the system.

By your logic, shouldn't we expel all the white people who are unskilled, and let in all the African, Hispanic, Asian, and Arabic people who are educated and skilled?

It doesn't really follow what OP said. There's a difference between someone coming and someone born here. Generally you can't just start kicking out citizens. A state has an obligation to its citizens, not so much to anyone else.

Unless you are of native American descent, you have no fucking right to complain about the immigrants anyway, seeing as how you are one...

What happened to Natives was not rampant immigration gone wild, it was conquest and subjugation. While the Fremnch were relatively friendly (to the Algonquin, at least), and the English weren't as vicious as the Spaniards (who Annihilated both the aztec and Inca civilizations), the English were positively ruthless in their own right. Native americans were fucked out of their land, it hasn't been theirs for nearly 500 years, they can't really complain about immigrants, either. Americans however, very much have the right to a voice regarding who's allowed into their borders and who isn't.

Mod me flamebait or whatever, it might not be politically correct to say it, but it's true.

Re:Unskilled people in our borders

[Nyder]

...
Unless you are of native American descent, you have no fucking right to complain about the immigrants anyway, seeing as how you are one...

I'm not an immigrant, i was born in the USA. No, i'm not a Native American, I'm about as white european mutt as you can get. But I'm not an immigrant.

Now if you want to bust out the past, then we all are fucking immigrants based on that they think man came from africa and moved around the world.

So, Native Americans aren't so native now, are they? Unless we are black and live in africa, we are all immigrants. Even the native americans.

But that has nothing to do with anything, does it? It's just a way of trying to say some people are better then others, when in reality, we are all the same.

Re:Unskilled people in our borders

[bfandreas]

Bang on, mate.
If this Out of Africa thing is true then...well, being white would be some horrible mutation, wouldn't it?

For no particular reason I choose to blame solar flares. They suck.
Because in World of Warcraft nobody knows you are a dog.

Re:Unskilled people in our borders

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the so-called native Americans originally came from Africa, along with the rest of the world's population.

Re:Unskilled people in our borders

[TiggertheMad]

But that has nothing to do with anything, does it? It's just a way of trying to say some people are better then others, when in reality, we are all the same.

That's kind of the point, right? Why does someone who has been here several generations have any right to say that other immigrants aren't welcome? Didn't America used to have the name, 'The Great Melting Pot'?

It strikes me as hypocritical for anyone who wasn't a native America (and perhaps even them, too if you want to argue pedantics about who was here 'first') and therefore at one point an immigrant, to want to try to keep immigrants out. They have as much right to be here as you do.

ASCAP/BMI license

[Latent Heat]

I thought there was an arrangement where if an artist published a song under the aegis of ASCAP or BMI that anyone was free to play that song, provided they payed the tithe to ASCAP or BMI to play songs in a public venue.

In other words, if the Gingrich Campaign is paid up with ASCAP, they can play Eye of the Tiger all they want, even if the writers of that song disagree vehemently with Mr. Gingrinch's politics. The writers could go their own and not deal with ASCAP, which I kind of doubt they did, and hence retain more control over their works, but then they are on their own and lack ASCAP's "muscle" in getting the tithe paid.

If the Gingrich people are not paid up with ASCAP or BMI, well, some lame capitalists they are and Mr. Gingrinch doesn't deserve to run for President on account of legal ignorance.

Re:ASCAP/BMI license

[pixelpusher220]

I thought there was an arrangement where if an artist published a song under the aegis of ASCAP or BMI that anyone was free to play that song, provided they payed the tithe to ASCAP or BMI to play songs in a public venue.

You are correct

Even more, they performer doesn't have to pay anything to ASCAP if the venue itself pays for a blanket license.

Re:ASCAP/BMI license

[Curunir_wolf]

Exactly right. The same thing came up last election cycle with McCain getting sued for use of a song, but that was used in an ad. Same thing with David Byrne's suit against Charlie Crist. Both of those were settled. But, frankly, I think since ASCAP laws mean that composers don't have standing to sue for performances.

Re:ASCAP/BMI license

[scharkalvin]

If he's not paid up he should be fined at the same rate per play that people are being sued per song for downloading!

Re:ASCAP/BMI license

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is sued those amounts per song for downloading - they are sued those amounts per song for uploading. The logic goes that, since filesharing software automatically uploads files that you're downloading, you shared it with all 6.8 billion people on Earth and you're being sued a very reasonable few fractions of a cent per song per person.

Re:ASCAP/BMI license

[arglebargle_xiv]

In other words, if the Gingrich Campaign is paid up with ASCAP, they can play Eye of the Tiger all they want, even if the writers of that song disagree vehemently with Mr. Gingrinch's politics.

This only works in the US, which doesn't recognise moral rights (the right to control how your work is used). In Europe and other locations (it's a Berne Convention thing, the US signed it but doesn't recognise them) this wouldn't fly.

I doubt the Romney ad is fair use.

[langelgjm]

Romney's use of that news footage in an advertisement is likely Fair Use.

I disagree with that assessment, as I've posted in recent discussions on the issue.

I'd be curious to know why you think the Romney campaign ad is fair use. Keep in mind that the various purposes mentioned for fair use - e.g., criticism and comment - must (as far as I know) specifically be aimed at the work in question. I.e., if you are quoting or duplicating a copyright work to criticize or comment on that copyrighted work, that's fair use (this is why parody is allowed). But if you're just quoting or duplicating it in order to criticize or comment on something else, that's not (necessarily) fair use. Otherwise pretty much anything would be fair use, since anything can be viewed as "commentary."

The Romney ad did not copy and rebroadcast the NBC news clip to comment on the clip itself. They rebroadcast it to criticize Newt Gingrich, which they could have (and have) done in myriad other ways. In order to build a case for fair use, it's always helpful to show why you specifically needed to quote/copy that particular portion for that particular length (you'll note that Wikipedia does this for virtually all its fair use images).

The Romney ad lifted basically a full 30 seconds out of a 22 minute broadcast... maybe it's only quantitatively 2%, but qualitatively, it would likely be considered the "heart of the work" - i.e., the most important part of the broadcast (the lead story).

"Free speech" justifications don't hold water; SCOTUS has repeatedly emphasized that the right to free speech does not mean you have the right to use specific copyrighted works as part of that speech (most recently in Golan v. Holder).

Also as I've posted before, I'm just expressing my opinion about the current content and interpretation of copyright law, not what I think it should be. Personally I think that type of use should be allowed, but my reading of the current situation is that it is not.

Oh, sweet irony

[ThatsNotPudding]

Other than the Taliban, there cannot be another movement more out of sync with real Rock n' Roll attitudes than the GOP. Hell, they're even against the act of what that phrase originally referred to.

If there were any poetic justice in the world, the Republican party would only be allowed to use empty, jingoistic, might-makes-right music - known more commonly as Country.

If you've embraced the hide-bound, misogynistic, corporatist world-view of the right, you are not allowed to use the cool music. No. Not yours.

Re:Oh, sweet irony

[MachineShedFred]

Except that all the "cool" music is owned by the hide-bound misogynistic, corporatist world-view of the RIAA.

Oops.

Newt Gingrich?

[tompaulco]

Newt Gingrich is using this song? Well, then it is clearly legally protected parody.

But it's true...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gingrich has led an immoral personal life which suggests a personality defect

He has considerable "ethics" baggage in public service

He has no charm or charisma

When he thinks he is winning he becomes an insufferable, arrogant prick

David Byrne/Talking Heads and Charlie Crist

[Mysticeti]

Yep, these guys have short memories...

I liked Charlie's court mandated apology though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4k13LmlcUE

Genius perhaps, but he missed an important point

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though being illegal forces the immigrants to migrate to jobs, and that benefits businesses by supplying a larger pool of cheap labor, it still causes harm to legal American residents who are competing for those same jobs.

It is easy to say "oh, they are just doing the jobs that Americans don't want to do anyway." This is an easy lie we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that nobody is being harmed. But it is just not true. There are plenty of unskilled Americans who want to work those jobs....for an American wage.

The American workers, unlike the illegal foreign workers, don't want to live ten people to a one-bedroom house. They also don't want to work every waking hour, with no leisure time *at all*. Further, they don't want to work in dangerous working conditions that slowly destroy their bodies.

A high availability of foreign workers who are willing to accept these working conditions leaves the American workers with no option but unemployment. That makes them a permanent drag on the American economy, and still keeps them so impoverished that they can't afford to buy the products that the illegal foreign workers are producing. That, of course, further narrows profit margins, requiring further cost reduction, requiring even more cheap foreign workers to accept barely-livable working conditions. It is a completely unsustainable race to the bottom.

Of course, this race to the bottom doesn't harm the wealthy business owners in the short run. It is very beneficial in the short run, so they will do everything within their power to ensure that this downward spiral continues. The LAST thing they want is to be forced to hire American workers and pay an American wage and maintain working conditions up to American standards. That would cost them too much. It would probably drive some of them out of business. Of course, the laws of supply and demand would balance this out eventually, but not without first making a lot of wealthy people a lot less wealthy. Since the highest law of the land is "protect the wealth of the wealthy," we can expect these problems to continue.

All of this has happened before and this will all happen again.

Whoops...

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for Patatinians being invented companies......oh wait.

How does Weird AL handle this with his songs???

[Cutting_Crew]

Is he legally bound to ask or does he just do it to stay on everyones good side?

Re:How does Weird AL handle this with his songs???

[TheSpoom]

Weird Al asks for permission and doesn't release the song if he doesn't get permission (though he still plays them at concerts, of which there are a few, which is a good reason to see his shows if you're a fan!), but legally speaking, parody is absolutely and explicitly protected under fair use. He only asks for permission because he personally feels it's the ethical thing to do.

Re:How does Weird AL handle this with his songs???

[Anonymous Coward]

Parody "is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works." If a parody does not provide any commentary on the work from which it is derived, it infringes on copyright.

Since most of Weird Al's songs don't have anything at all to do with the original song that he parodied, it's questionable whether or not it would be considered a violation of copyright for him to publish them without permission.

They should be happy

[wganz]

that they're getting some air time and some sales from an otherwise dead listing. Seriously, when was the last time you heard that song other than a late night umpteenth time Rockie rerun?

Not the Apache, kemosabe.

[Anonymous Coward]

...The "big news" in "immigration" (or, alternatively, "invasion") issues are Mexicans. Or, Azteca. Funny that today's Azteca seem to claim the land that they attempted to take by way of genocide for a thousand years before the white man came. "We killed millions of Apache before you whites ever showed up, so it should be OUR land!"

The Apache are part of the Na-Dene ethnic / linguistic grouping, and are close cousins to the Navajo. Na-Dene speakers are relative newcomers to the Southwest, having arrived in the Southwest from further north only around 5-600 years ago. (Most Na-Dene speakers are in Canada and inland Alaska.)

I don't mind folks pointing out that folks in the Americas were, well, folks, and as such had as much fun bashing their neighbors over the head as the folks in Europe have had. But at least get your facts straight. The Aztecs and the Apache simply haven't been neighbors "for a thousand years before the white man came".

Anti-Scandinavian bias might be justified

[Anonymous Coward]

The hatred towards Latinos today is actually mild compared to the hatred towards Swedes and Norwegians 50 years ago in the north.

Good god, man, have you never smelled lutefisk? That hatred was probably justified.

Too bad SOPA did not pass

[pbf]

He could have Gingrich web sites removed from the net without bothering with going to court!

This would have been the mother of all wake up call for politicians supporting legislation such as ACTA/PIPA/SOPA.

The pope is an alien!

[Anonymous Coward]

...some WASP hobo soccer mom being catholized by space aliens on daytime TV...

So you have aliens holding Mass or something? Or just baptizing soccer moms? MILBs...

You haven't been paying attention

[billstewart]

Religious bigotry is just as offensive when so-called liberals do it - you may not always be as vehement about it as right-wingers are, but you're also supposed to know better than they do, and be better people than they are.

Also, your insults show that you really weren't paying attention during the '00s. Religious right-wingers didn't take over the party, neocons and machine politicians like Rove and Norquist did, and they pushed all the religious conservatives' big well-marked buttons to get them to become politically active right-wingers, just as they pushed all the buttons of the anti-debt folks (after Bush was done tripling the national debt and leaving Obama with a huge deficit, a couple of wars, and a broken financial industry to bail out.) They were at some risk of losing them in the 2005-2007 time frame, and if you read moderate-liberal sources like The Huffington Post, you'd have seen articles about how the religious conservatives were starting to notice that the political right-wingers had been using them, getting votes, and not giving anything significant back.

During the Tea Party / Anti-KenyanMuslimFurriner-Obama Election period, the Republican machine was able to give them something to come back to that didn't feel quite like the same old politicians using them, and the current election campaign has been mostly about the machine telling the right-wingers that their job was to get Republicans re-elected, not to actually influence policy, so they should shut up and vote for Romney now because none of the actual right-wingers are electable.

This is Newt Gingrich we're talking about here.

[billstewart]

Of course it's ok to be talking against both sides of the issue - Newt always does!

Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

How much money has that one hit wonder made off that song? I know that $tarbucks paid a nice chunck of change for that crappy song. Maybe he is just broke from buying leopard pants and hair gel. I never heard that he was suing any boxers or mma fighters for infringement. He just wants to stay relevant and act like he hates republicans when deep down he knows that the only way the USA survives is with a hard line republican at the helm.

Socialists and Libertarians can move to Canada. Democrats stop complaining..You had 4 yrs and didn't do anything beneficial. Send hate to /dev/null.

Re:That is easy. No anuerysm here.

[Thing 1]

One law for them and another for us is a basic ingredient of tyranny.

I've read "Three Felonies a Day" and am now reading "It's Dangerous to be Right When the Government is Wrong". Both, highly recommended to understand the nature of the environment that we are currently in.

Personally, I feel that the definition of "treason" should include "participating in the creation of unconstitutional laws." But good luck getting that passed, as the ones that would need to pass it are the ones creating unconstitutional laws.

Republican Rip Offs

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just wondering which Republican would try ripping off a recording artist this election. They ALWAYS do...

This is about the 20th time the GOP has done this.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with Republicans never getting permission to use Artist Copyrighted Songs?