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

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

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 The poem at her feet is old, outdated and DOES NOT APPLY TO THE MODERN WORLD.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

[Rockoon]

:-) Is there another kind?

Yes, there are also despicable Democrats.

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

[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

[superdave80]

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

I went ahead and fixed that for you.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

Politics in a nutshell

[goldaryn]

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

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.

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

Why not the RIAA?

[dmomo]

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

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.

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.

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:Get a real job

[Kenja]

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

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.

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.

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.

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:Fair Use?

[chinton]

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

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...

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

[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.

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: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.