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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.
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.
I am pretty sure you serve the same meal once, you cannot serve it 2 or more times, unless you are waiting in the bathroom to get what comes out the other end.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
"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.
Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.. Each new meal requires new material, each play of a song does not.
If the DJ did indeed pay a fee to play said songs, then I don't see why another should be paid by the restaurant owner.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I was just reading about Jurassic world, so when I looked at the headline I thought it said Restautantosaur. How cool would that be?
EXACTLY. What if the DJ had played the songs in a park? Would the city have to pay BMI's licensing shakedown fee?
sig: sauer
you forgot "child sexual predator"
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.
Are you serious? I can't think of the last time I have been in a restaurant where there wasn't music playing. Usually through crappy, tinny speakers into a cavernous room with 30 foot high ceilings made out of metal, and bouncing off of all the exposed ducting and metal girders.
Trying to have a conversation over a dinner outside of the home is not even a remote possibility anymore.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
. Stories like this one is why I will never feel bad about piracy.
It should make you feel bad about being a pirate. By pirating music, you let the company know that you enjoy their music and are too cheap to pay for it. Instead, you should abstain from it altogether. If nobody bought it and nobody pirated it, they would get a clue.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.
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.
> I can't think of the last time I have been in a restaurant where there wasn't music playing.
Yep, I can't remember any place I've been in the last few years that didn't have some crap blasting through their $5 speakers.
Jimmy Johns sub or whatever has the music so loud you literally have to shout to order food. We got sick of that shit real fast and left before the food came. It was just too damn loud, and the music was some mindless pop-horsecrap.
Seriously, restaurant owners, TURN THAT SHIT DOWN. It's background music, not a f*cking mosh pit.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
If you are going to mix physical and intellectual property rights, let's do it properly.
If you go to McDonalds and buy a big mac, and go home to eat it, but aren't actually that hungry and decide to share it with a family member, McDonalds should be able to sue you for unauthorized distribution of their property. When you purchased your big mac you were only purchasing the right for yourself to eat it, not the public at large. When you shared your big mac with someone who did not pay for it, you deprived McDonalds of a potential big mac sale, and are therefore culpable for restitution owed to McDonalds.
Well, that's the problem about comparing music with, well, pretty much anything else: Everything else gets consumed and has to be replaced when it's being, well, consumed.
When he serves a meal, it's eaten and he has to redo it to sell it again (provided he doesn't engage in disgusting practices like "recycling" uneaten food). When my bartender serves me a cocktail, he has to make another one if he wants to sell it again. Pretty much anyone but content providers have to manufacture something again after they sold their original one if they plan to sell another one.
That's not the case with content. Content can be reproduced ad infinitum at little to no cost. There is very little else that you could use as a commodity that shares this trait.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
It's not like the license is all that expensive or hard to obtain or that services to pipe in music don't exist. I don't feel bad for this guy, likely all he needed to do is stop playing copyrighted stuff when he was made aware of the violation and then obtain a license as required if he needed to continue.... Or, BUY a music service for his business from somebody and let them keep up with the licenses.
I've been working on a "public" free holiday light display, I'll be playing copyrighted music, and even though it's only in the idea stage, I've already approached BMI about required license arrangements (which they claim is none). Their E-mail response will be printed and kept.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It's not like the license is all that expensive or hard to obtain or that services to pipe in music don't exist. I don't feel bad for this guy, likely all he needed to do is stop playing copyrighted stuff when he was made aware of the violation and then obtain a license as required if he needed to continue.... Or, BUY a music service for his business from somebody and let them keep up with the licenses.
If you would RTFA, or even the summary, you'd notice that he already did that. He hired a DJ, who had already paid licensing fees to play the music.
At issue here is that the licenses were already paid through the DJ, and BMI was demanding that they get paid again because ... well, that's the question, really ... why should he pay the licensing fees again when the music is already licensed?
Former Restautantosaur here. These BMI/ASCAP people are thugs. They cold call random businesses, threatening potential legal penalties if you don't buy a blanket license. They basically say, 'if you don't buy a license now, one of our inspectors might come out to your shop, and if we hear any of our music playing we're gonna sue your ass.' Then they go after random people like the guy in the article 'to set an example.' Thugs, it's all extortion.
If the owner of the park (the city government perhaps) were charging admission or otherwise benefiting commercially from the performance of the music, then yes they would have to pay the license fee.
You mean like if they charged property taxes or sales taxes to maintain the park?
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
You need to meet the terms that BMI puts forth if you play their material. Their website deals with this issue and they CLEARLY tell you that it is the owner of the venue, not the DJ who is liable.
Yeah, and those boxes that pop up on computers CLEARLY tell you that the IRS is going arrest you if you don't call this number and give them your credit card. That doesn't make it true.
Or, for an example a little more on point with how BMI operates, police will often say something like "I'm going to need to come inside and look around". The implication is that they are legally allowed to enter simply by saying so, when this is completely untrue - they actually cannot come in at that point unless you signal your acceptance for them to enter. What happens is that 99% of people will step back and hold their door open for the officer after he says that, thus legally extending the officer an invitation to enter (even if the invitation was caused by an implied lie).
Sure the DJ may have claimed to have the licenses required, but the business owner is the one who is required to obtain the licenses.
BMI can state that the venue is responsible all they want, but if you read between the lines on what they actually say on their website, you can have DJs (or whoever) be responsible for the licensing, it's just that you may be liable if the DJ isn't properly licensed. If the terms of a contract with a DJ requires the DJ to be responsible for the music, then there's a good chance that's exactly how it will work - either by direct assignment of responsibility, or by being responsible for any damages the business incurs due to their negligence.
Simply put, BMI words their statement like this because they want to double-dip into the licensing revenue stream. Even if the DJ already has all the proper licenses to play it in whatever venue they want, BMI will use vague language about who needs the license and use scare tactics to try make venue owners pay again for licenses that have already been paid.
This is why I'm glad this kind of rent-seeking thuggery is illegal in my country.
A copyright holder is not permitted to cold call businesses to threaten legal action or extort license fees. They are not permitted to conduct raids and secret investigations and they are definitely not permitted to sue without evidence (further more, under the Australian legal system they'll be up for the defences legal costs if they try).
The BMI is a private corporation, they should not ever have the license or capabilities to enforce anything (that is the job of the police and judiciary). Even the private entities Australia permits to issue their own parking fines (mostly universities) have to get the police and courts to do the enforcement.
You're defending rent seekers, there's nothing correct or noble about that.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I'm sure they're not that greedy. They would be more than happy to be paid infinite times.
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.
Well, that's because you are relatively poor, and go to fast food, or occasionally low-end chain restaurants. Quality restaurants will generally not have music, and even semi-decent restaurants will either not have music, or will have it playing at barely-noticeable volumes.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
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.
"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