Message-Id: <01BDF3B1.5F1AE140.lnktheriot@csi.com>
From: Ken Theriot <lnktheriot@csi.com>
To: "'minstrel@pbm.com'" <minstrel@pbm.com>
Subject: minstrel: Calote's query and more
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 18:19:35 -0400
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Sender: owner-minstrel@rt.com
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About responsibility for copyrights?  It is the site's responsibility, 
exclusively.  What happens in practice is that any venue which knows or 
expects that music will be part of a commercial undertaking (hall rented 
for a dance, say) buys a use license from ASCAP which permits them pretty 
much unlimited use of music under ASCAP copyright or any other organization 
with which they have a reciprocal agreement (this covers most things). 
 Check the next time you are near a dance school and you should see a 
sticker on or near the door that says "ASCAP" (dance schools get raided A 
LOT so most of them don't take the chance of NOT having a license).  Think 
of it as a plenary indulgence for copyright violation.

The only possible responsibility the SCA could have is to inquire of a site 
whether they have a license, but that's a courtesy, really, and most places 
won't.  They like to take their chances and then whine "But we're the Girl 
Scouts / a church/ a non-profit organization" when they get caught.  If the 
West Kingdom Site Fund ever gets a permanent site going, THEY will be in 
serious danger of an ASCAP raid, but until we own the venue, we're okay.

ASCAP bleeds the music-listening public, then surveys various sources, and 
based on how many times they heard your song, you get X amount of the 
money.  Eogan asked how he was taking money from an artist because he 
couldn't see that he was "preventing him from selling records".  Well, he 
wasn't preventing record sales, but anyone in the music biz will tell you 
that the record sales are chump change compared to the potential 
royalty/sync right/publishing fee money you can make off a hit (after all, 
there are a lot of people who are professional songwriters who will never 
in their life sell a record of their own, but someone else can make them a 
millionaire - there are writers in Nashville who have bought 100 acre 
ranches off the royalties from one song).  If artists don't police their 
rights, they can lose them, and the future income stream that goes with 
them.   I would bet big money that Phil Colclough has made more money off 
royalties and publishing fees on "Song for Ireland" than he has ever made 
from sales of his recording (based on the number of versions of it I have 
seen and the number of times I heard it on the radio in Britain NOT being 
sung by Phil Colclough).  Any published infringement of that song which (by 
his tolerance of it) endangered those rights would be taking not only the 
bread from his mouth, but the roof from oer his head, the rug from oot his 
feet, and the Guinness from his glass.

As Stan Rogers used to say in concert, "My goal is to be played on an 
elevator" to which his brother Garnet would add, "That's when you start 
making the bucks..."
					Adelaide


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