Comments on: An expensive night’s entertainment

By: D

Thu, 10 Apr 2014 20:49:36 +0000

Wait. This was a bar band. Isn’t their performance covered under parody laws?

By: Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 02:58:53 +0000

@Jim Collins

No. It’s the responsibility of the venue. See ASCAP’s FAQ:
http://www.ascap.com/licensing/licensingfaq.aspx#general

By: Parkhorse

Parkhorse — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 00:34:17 +0000

@Jim: entirely possible the band has next to no assets. The bar owner, on the other hand, owns a bar. The choice of who to sue is obvious.

By: Bumper

Bumper — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 17:35:09 +0000

Because bar bands have no money, that’s why they are still a bar band, and moving circularly; they don’t have their act together, i.e., no or not enough original material, which is why they play other people’s songs.

Note: Even the Beatles played cover songs, they just had better lawyers and that was a long time ago when life (the law) was easier.

By: Jim Collins

Jim Collins — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 13:32:59 +0000

Why sue the bar? Sue the band. Isn’t it the band’s obligation to take care of this?

By: ras

ras — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 21:03:08 +0000

If nobody wants your current product, you gotta try to make the old stuff pay more somehow.

I predict an eventual upsurge in something akin to the free software approach, whereby music will be licensed free by independent musicians looking to gain recognition, and played widely as a result. Anything’s better than the crap the industry foists on us these days.

/and get off my lawn, too!

By: asdfasdf

asdfasdf — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 19:08:23 +0000

The lawsuit filing is here:http://www.onstagemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/BMIvs69Taps.pdf .

The suit does not ask for $1.5 million dollars. It asks for statutory damages, which the accompanying article calculated could be “up to” that amount.

The suit to me looks completely justified. The bar is getting direct financial benefit by playing copyrighted songs without paying the rights holders. Presumably, the bar refused to settle.

Songwriters deserve money when someone makes a profit off their work. If the bar didn’t want to compensate the creators of the work, it shouldn’t have played their songs for money.