Slashdot Mirror
Restaurateur Loses Copyright Suit To BMI
Frosty P writes: BMI claims Amici III in Linden, New York didn't have a license when it played four tunes in its eatery one night last year, including the beloved "Bennie and the Jets" and "Brown Sugar," winning $24,000 earlier this year, and over $8,200 in attorney's fees. Giovanni Lavorato, who has been in business for 25 years, says the disc DJ brought into the eatery paid a fee to play tunes. "It's ridiculous for me to pay somebody also," he said. "This is not a nightclub. This is not a disco joint . . . How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?"
How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?"
As many times as they possibly can.
Obviously.
How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?
Infinite.
When I go to a restaurant I want food, not music.
. Stories like this one is why I will never feel bad about piracy.
"How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?"
How high is infinity?
"This is not a nightclub. This is not a disco joint."
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
This ain't no fooling around.
This ain't no Mudd Club, or C. B. G. B.,
I ain't got time for that now.
- Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime" (Sire records)
It sounds like BMI tried to be reasonable and get him to license the music but he ignored them. From his quotes it sounds like he probably pissed them off and they decided to go after him.
"How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?"
Dunno. How many times do you want to get paid for serving the same stupid meals?
Sure, we all hate the MAFIAA, but it's rather odd how you feel capitalism is suddenly a one-way street.
Artists need to hop on the CC bandwagon. Things have changed drastically since the music industry started strangling them as well as consumers.
If we had a sizable pool of popular CC licensed music, this kind of thing would be less of an issue because establishments like this could simply use it instead. There are tons of new ways for artists to get paid via CC licensed music. Maybe we can brainstorm on ideas and models for this to become a reality? I'm thinking some sort of croudfunding model might be a good first step.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Stop taking it on the chin.
Use violence. It's time for a revolt.
"How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?"
Every time it is played by anyone anywhere forever! Thats what they want. Really friggin insanely stupid and greedy isn't it?!
Infinite plus one.
I was just reading about Jurassic world, so when I looked at the headline I thought it said Restautantosaur. How cool would that be?
That's not a reason to call it good, this is anything but reasonable.
If you're inconvenienced by music, I suggest you pick one of the >90% of restaurants that don't play any.
Oops. I just got sued.
Looks to me like the judge overlooked "double-billing" in this case.
If the DJ paid for a license as part of his business, then the restaurant owner hired him, then BMI is double-billing.
The licensing of the music is intrinsic to the DJs business.
Looks like someone ( judge, jury?, lawyers...) will get a trip to disneyland.
Oh - IANAL. So this really is an opiniom that smells better than the case described in the summary.
Someday, maybe, restaurants will remember they are places for people eat food NOT discos. If I wanted to get my ears blasted, I would go to a club.
Wouldn't the logical extension of this logic be that if a bar has the TV on a station, and that station plays content that contains a song, then BMI can go after the bar for unlicensed reproduction?
The TV content provider paid a license for redistribution, just like the DJ did. Is there a difference I am missing?
Can someone explain how this shit works?
I thought the whole idea behind copyright was that it allows the author (err, I mean, rights-holder) to license the production of copies, which leads to the term *copy*-right. Thus, since the disc is licensed, the copy-right has already been enforced.
Now I suppose what people may argue is "but you create another copy of the music in the air and in people's heads when you play the disc." However, we've already been over this. Last century, this was one of the arguments that software publishers used to force you to agree to their shrink-wrap licenses, e.g. "if you don't agree to this license, then you can't use this software, because using it copies it into your computer's RAM and without this license you cannot legally make that copy." However, the courts rightfully decided this was complete bullshit, and that any copies of the data on a distribution medium that are necessary for the normal use of a work are automatically permitted. This is why publishers have resorted to "you must check this box before the software will function" instead, as the courts have yet to tell them that that too is complete bullshit.
Thus, what argument do the music publishers have? If playing a music disc is indeed any sort of copy, it's already permitted simply because of the fact that the disc itself is already a licensed copy and it is impossible to utilize that licensed copy without playing the disc. So what is thier argument that they are somehow entitled to further compensation?
So most establishments have a defense. Maybe this one did. But the judge heard from only one side since the restaurant never showed up to court. Too bad.
and they wonder why people feel no guilt about pirating music. the BMI/RIAA/MPAA/most record labels are corporate middleman thugs who care nothing about the content they are "licensing" but only about how many $$ they can extract out of the pipeline.
how many of those $24k went to the 4 ARTISTS who's work was "infringed"? probably about 0.7 microcents.
how much "damage" was actually done to those artists by the infringement? they probably actually made money as likely somebody at that restaurant that night heard the songs, was reminded of a happier time in their life and went on iTunes and bought a Rolling Stones or Elton John CD.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
"How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?"
Every time you play it.
Every time you hear it.
Every time you hum it.
Every time you think it.
Refrain: Greedy buggers bugger you every time they can!
When Napster burst on the scene, I was of a mind that people downloading music were greedy cheating bastards. Over the course of about 5 or 10 years my perspective changed. However, I didn't become anti-copyright. I became anti-corporatist. That's the larger problem. Copyright is just one of their many weapons. Rulings like this are what caused my perspective to shift. So. I refuse to engage in the mental masturbation that would have us re-name downloading to "sharing", but at the same time I'd like to see entities like BMI just die already. Every sale they don't get helps a little. You see, they had a chance to keep their system going fairly. They didn't use it. Also, people like this are corrupting my government, so any sort of moral argument kind of lost its punch.
It's an old blues song and BMI owes a lot of people a lot of money
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
BMI regularly sues eateries, bars and other businesses for playing music without coughing up licensing fees, which range from $357 annually for a jukebox to $5.85 per audience member for a week's worth of live performances.
Do they mean live performances by the artist that recorded the song? If so, that's an even bigger scam than I would have guessed.
If it's for a band that is covering the song, WTF? back when I played in various bands, you could cover anything you wanted to live. It was only an issue if it was newer than 20 years (or whatever the period of time was) and sold it on a recorded format. As far as I can recall, once it was past a certain age, anyone could make money off of recording their own version of it. You only got sued if you didn't license a newer song or get permission from the rights holder.
Follow the money.
Go ahead, pay the license for playing the music, however, multiple auditing firms will follow the money from start to finish to see how much went to the "artists" and how much went into BMI's wallet.
From there, if the percentage is what we all know that it is - ie - negligible, then sick the US AG's office on them for RICO Violations - ie - blackmailing, extortion, copyright abuse, etc...
That's all it is these days, extortion, blackmail, copyright abuse - pure and simple.
Use guns? Violence?
Sorry, BMI has pre-empted that. Any attack on their offices will be an act of terrorism.
Their new address:
BMI
7 World Trade Center
250 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10007-0030
Phone: (212) 220-3000
I wouldn't pay a penny to listen to either of those no-talent hacks.
Giovanni Lavorato [...] says the disc DJ brought into the eatery paid a fee to play tunes.
Can we have that in English? The article isn't much better...
The disc jockey DJ brought into the eatery by his son also paid a fee to play tunes
Brought in by whose son?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Rohr, who represented Bobby Dee’s
- but sounds like he's representing BMI -
said it makes sense for businesses to be in harmony with licensing groups like BMI. “It’s actually foolish not to do it,” he said, noting the licensing cost is less than a legal proceeding.
Is that like how it makes sense to pay protection money, because it costs less than having your store smashed up or burnt down?
It shouldn't be "foolish not to do it." It should be "fair to all involved to do it."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
is not an excuse. The law itself may be unjust, but I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. There may be a reason you run a restaurant instead of work as a quant, but still.
All restaurants should switch to that fake "teenage" music from 1970's sitcoms.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Forever and ever and ever and ever. Parts of the song, the song on different media, if they thought you were thinking the song in your head, whenever. If you hum the song stuck in your head, you are giving a public performance of the song, and owe them money. The stupid that is music copyright is an a greedy corporation with bought and paid politicians and boardroom manufactured laws. Sonny Bono became evil incarnate because of his DMCA. Also the Micky Mouse(tm) protection act was bought and paid by private dollars and drafted in a private companies boardroom for paid-off politicians to enact to enslave the greater populace. Its free money forever. Even if the composer, performers and lyricists great grandkids are all dead, those holding paper will demand compensation. You thought the mafia was a protection racket? You ain't seen nuttin!
You get more mileage from a cheap pair of speakers.
One of the most popular cafes in this town is successful in great part because of their lack of background music. It's not a fancy place at all, just a deli-style counter with fairly good sandwich and salad makings, lots of good pastries, and a variety of (non-alcoholic) drinkables. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen groups decide to go there explicitly because conversation is possible.
Of course, I can see other restaurant owners deciding to go with the music because it interferes with conversation, so people will just eat and then free up the table for the next customers. Groups that are talking tend to stay around too long for a truly "commercial" establishment. This may well be the main reasons that eateries pay for licenses to play music. They want you to eat and get out in as short at time as possible, not sit around and talk.
The local cafe mentioned above is frequented by the local political crowd, and by the leaders of many local organizations. My wife is involved in organizing an upcoming music & art & food festival, and most of the organization's meetings have been held in that cafe. The cafe's owners presumably like serving this local function (and they also cater events in your home if you prefer). Maybe there's only enough of that sort of business to support one such eatery locally, or there's nobody else that wants to get into that niche.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It's that if you don't answer the complaint, then the plaintiff files a motion for summary judgement. Hearing no objection from the defendant, judges typically grant such motions, legally affording plaintiffs all relief they were seeking in their complaint, which nearly always includes attorneys' fees.
Of course, then the plaintiff has to actually collect on the awarded judgement.
Just put the link to the article if you can't think of what to write about it.
It is easy to find rich DJs.
But still, your point is valid.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
They own the copyright so it is their right to do this if they wish. It may be thuggish in your view, but it is their stuff to license and it's their job to enforce their license terms.
If you own a venue that plays music, pay your fees directly or buy your music from a service that does it for you. If you choose to go without a license, you are violating the copyright and they can come after you if they want. Sorry, but that's how this works.
Dollars to donuts you are a BMI shill
This is why I do my grocery shopping at Aldi. They don't have background music, and they pass the savings on to me.
There the only sound is the beeping of the UPC scanner at the register. It's much less stressful.
all copyright became forfeit when public domain was suspended.
They reneged on their side of the contract... there is no obligation for us to uphold ours.
Nothing reasonable about BMI. The license fee from them starts around $1,000 a year for a small sized restaurant and does NOT include any live music. It can go WAY higher from there. They charge by the foot and have all manner of legal crapola in their contract for collecting other fees from you if you miscalculate your situation. And, note, BMI only licenses SOME music. It is NOT ASCAP, and I don't believe paying BMI will cover you if you don't happen to know which agency licenses what. And there are other license holders as well. So it's really a legal minefield playing ANY sort of music in your for-profit business. Live band? Beware, beware, beware! You maybe *thought* you were licensed for that particular song? Wanna play Russian roulette? Most restaurants are very marginal in profits so a $20K judgement will probably put a high percentage of them out of business pretty quick. But the saddest thing is there really isn't any solid way to protect your business. An employee plays something even one time or against your policy from normal Pandora or Apple or Spotify? You can be screwed seven ways from Sunday. Probably the best deal out there right now for commercial businesses which want to play popular music is Pandora THROUGH DMX. http://www.dmx.com/pandora/. It was about $25/month last I checked. But you DO need a hardware piece and that hardware requires a fixed IP address if you have other things on your network. So the $25/month becomes $50/month. That is $600/year. So you are approaching BMI prices again. And you STILL have risk from other license holders. And you still can't play live. Nor anything which isn't being MEASURED and tracked by the DMX hardware. Jamendo offers another path if you can play "unknown" artists doing unknown songs. They are from europe and license independent music and have a provision for businesses at something like $60/year. And I understand (but what do I know?) that you are okay if you play music copyrighted before 1921 or something. But note that an old piece of music will still have a copyright if someone performed it and copyrighted their "interpretation"/ performance. So....landmine there as well. What is the answer? Maybe revoke the fourteenth amendment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution). Or give up hope. It's an ugly future as the corporations now have vastly more rights than mere humans.
the music industry was even going after arcade / locations operators / locations with a Guitar Hero Arcade calming they needed to pay jukebox fees as well. They lost that case or there was some kind of out of court settlement
places dancing game, pinball or any arcade machine may be at risk from a law suit http://arcadeheroes.com/2015/0...
and they did this years ago with Guitar Hero Arcades.
These guys really don't seem to get that laws are generally only as enforced as people want them to be. They keep this shit up and no jury is going to stand with them. And at that point, what is their copyright worth?
They need to charge a reasonable rate in a reasonable cost structure.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Pay for hire some musicians to write generic songs for the restaurant businesses and place those songs in the creative commons.
Generic rock as background music would be fine. If people are dancing to it probably less so. Don't think people dance to benny and the jets.
There are tens of thousands of songs now. If they want a particular song, perhaps they need to pay top dollar.
But that's their choice.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
https://www.jamendo.com/en/welcome
Music provided by artists who keep all their copyrughts, CC-licensed, distribution by bit-torrent from the users, and they license out radio-streaming to businesses that doesn't incur al of the extra licensing costs, so they don't have to pay off the PRS/BMI.
"Bennie and the Jets" is a song that criticizes the rampant commercialization of the music industry, look 'er up. Anyone got any duct tape?
One license for transferring music data off a storage medium. One license for converting digital music data to an analog form. One license for each speaker reproducing the sound, including woofers and tweeters. One license per 10m^3 of space where the mean audio is within two deviations of the average loudness of the music.
If you are listening to said music, you need a license for that, and another if you are planning on remembering listening to the music, plus a re-performance license if you are going to hum a substantial portion of the primary melody in the shower later.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
In the case of a business, you're playing music for the same reason the artist is making it; to entertain others.
Same reason you play it in your own home when others are also present.
That's why a music CD costs a lot more than a blank CD, correct?
The price of CDs were established when they first went public based on the cost of manufacturing. Now the cost of manufacturing is 5 cents and they still charge the same amount because they know that's the price the market will bear.
Citation? As a GH fan, I honestly don't remember hearing this and would like to read more about it.
FC Closer
Just wait until these trade agreements go through. If you make this nonsense illegal, McDonalds in other countries will sue your government instead to recoup the 'lost profits'.
You'd think the music industry would love the exposure that public performances give them from restaurants, stores and the like. On more than one occasion, I have been inside of a restaurant or such and liked a particular track enough to go home and BUY the track off of Amazon. How many other individuals have done this?
I'd also like to know how they see the performance of a track a violation of copyright if the track has been paid for. I doubt anyone will be walking into a shop wanting to record the tracks that are playing to sell illegally.
So, if the music industry wants to charge an exorbitant fee to have the privilege to play the music in the establishment, proprietors won't buy the license or the music to play in their establishment. They'll just play tracks that aren't under the auspice of ASCAP/BMI/RIAA or won't play anything at all. Then the exposure of their 'product' won't be nearly as high.
This is a stupid business decision. The free market is catching up to them and they are trying to claw themselves out of the box their business model and backwards ideas placed them in, that's all.
let's just get rid of all these "people" at BMI and this won't happen to anyone else.
yes i think like that
Given the value of a song seems to be 99 cents, they are claiming damages of $24,000 ? So they are saying by this place playing 4 songs, they lost $24,000 in lost sales and there for each person in the restaurant would have bought these songs 500 times, if they didn't get a free performance. These laws are dumb and have no real word fair value, it's all a made up amount by lawyers. btw: If you want to be safe, play the radio or a for business radio service (like xm radio for business), they deal with licensing.
That's alot of work for a coffee shop that hardly turns a profit in the first place, hiring song writers and musicians to record songs for them. They are probably looking at $500 per song. You would want atleast 50 songs per day to prevent the same 5 from repeating 20 times per day. The safest thing is just play the radio, or get something like xm for business, its about $30 a month and they pay the performance rights, as its specifically for restaurants and places of business.
"Bennie and the Jets" and "Brown Sugar?"
And how many other people gave a shit?
It's just sad that society tolerates hucksters like the BMI. This is akin to racketeering. There is a foul stench of Mafia about this behaviour.
"the law says" ... change the law ...it's all a big scam ... or change the lawmakers.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Subject line says it all. Oh, and they don't want to give any of it to the artist, too.
This statement says it all:
"How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?"
How many other industries can charge infinitely for the same work, over and over without any logical sense? It's absolutely ridiculous. Those double-dipping greedy bastards need to go away ASAP.
IMHO, this is indicative of what's really wrong with this country. It's not the mean, evil, greedy, CEOs. It's the musicians, actors, athletes, and people who are famous for being famous who have been deluding into thinking that everything they do is awesome and worthy of perpetual fees. It's gotten so bad that these people think that they're brilliant at everything when in reality they don't know anything. But legions of fans are so blinded by the star power that they are willing to believe everything that comes out of their mouths no matter how wrong or inane. Further, it's gotten to the point where ordinary people aspire to be famous far more than they do to be a physician or a scientist. The most dangerous aspect of all of this is that these people subconsciously know that famous people don't have to work hard for their money. It gets thrown at them. Therefore, they erroneously believe that nobody who has a lot of money earned it through hard work and ingenuity. Ultimately, the people who have money thrown at them have no appreciation for the money and the hard work it takes most people to earn it.
Cocaine is not that cheap. The music industry in Nashville would grind to a halt if it wasn't for drugs and alcohol.
photosMy Photostream
Unless by "stealing musing" you mean actually stealing physical media, it isn't theft. That's like taking a person's picture being called kidnapping.
In the future, money will be made by owning things. Wait, I am sorry that's not just the future that's how it has always been. If you don't own property, or part of a company, or some intellectual property. There is no money in work, unless the work is generating property for you. In the future as robots do most of work .. it will be even harder to get income without having investments.
Instead of worrying about unemployment, government should worry about the uninvested. Government can tax the factories and give out shares to the uninvested, so they casn get dividends and live off that. If you won't have any investment, how do you expect to retire? Oh yeah by investing in social security. Not bad.
The disclaimers at the end of each and every NFL, MLB, NHL, PGA, et al sporting event that is televised warns of the same consequences about public presentation of the material or subsequent descriptions. So if you own a restaurant, bar, club et al you need to pay the piper.
If anyone's wondering why more and more people feel content to be poor, or at least, not strive to make large amounts of money, it's because it seems increasingly these days that it's pointless to do so, when some fucking assholes can just come along and rob you with a piece of paper, for some stupid shit like this.
Once upon a time if you wanted music in your home or business, you had to pay someone to play it, (or obviously, play it yourself). Then along comes Edison with his phonograph, and suddenly, the equation changed. It was essentially a PARTIALLY disruptive technology. The device itself couldn't MAKE music, it could only reproduce it. At some point, any piece of recorded music had to have SOMEONE to make it, by which I mean perform it in the presence or general direction of a microphone.
As a result, someone got the idea that because ONCE UPON A TIME people were willing to pay someone to make music, that that means that people should still have to pay even though the people being paid aren't actually DOING THE WORK. Imagine if I came to your home, and cleaned it for you, and then in perpetuity, if you want your home clean again, you have to pay me, even though I am only ever going to do it that one time. So if you put everything back where I put it, and then remove anything that wasn't there when I cleaned it, you have to pay me again. Sound like bullshit? That's because it is.
By the same logic, every time you drive your car, a royalty or licensing fee should have to be paid to the people who would have raised the horse you would have had to have ridden to go wherever you went in your car, a fee to the people who would have made the bridle for your use of the steering wheel, a fee to the people who would have made the saddle you would have sat on but did not, choosing instead to sit in the chair behind the aforementioned steering wheel, and a SEPARATE fee EACH to the guys who made stirrups, and spurs for your use of the floor mats, the gas pedal, and the brake. And if your car is a stick shift... well, you get the idea. Let's not forget, farriers will have to be paid for your use of the tires, and asbestos miners for your use of asbestos-free brake-pad alternatives.
If you use alternating current electricity, you'll have to pay Thomas Edison's estate or descendants, to compensate them for the fact that since you're using what is basically Nikola Tesla's poly-phase A/C system, you're NOT using his D/C system, and he, and his descendants, heirs, assignees, etc., are all entitled to royalties from your use of electricity since once upon a time, before Tesla struck out on his own from Edison and developed his superior A/C system, if you wanted to use electricity, you would have HAD TO PAY HIM.
To add insult to injury, many of us now use Tesla's A/C system to power electronic devices, which means using A/C power to... GENERATE D/C electricity in such devices as the ONE YOU'RE USING TO READ THIS! You owe him SOOOO MUCH MONEY!
Or maybe we need to recognize the absurdity of continuing with this fundamentally flawed, failed system for compensating "artists," etc. Copyrights should really only allow you to prohibit someone claiming your work as his/her/their own, (plagiarism,) rather than allowing you to use the law as a cudgel for extortion. How much more of this kind of shit will people tolerate? I don't know, but I'll tell you... it's going to get ugly before the end.
I was speaking about the restaurant industry as a whole. It would cost them less than a penny each to have songs created. You know- just like programmers collectively write programs and make them public domain.
Even Houston alone has 4000 restaurants so $25000 for songs would be a one time expense of about $6.25 per restaurant.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
google "guitar hero lawsuit dropped". Tons of articles.
Lead result
http://www.wired.com/2013/02/a...
Judge Dismisses Axl Roseâ(TM)s $20M Guitar Hero Lawsuit
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Comment removed based on user account deletion