Must reading for internet broadcasters

[RADIO TRUTH]

http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2010/10/articles/internet-radio/copyright-office-asks-if-federal-protection-should-be-extended-to-pre1972-sound-recordings-whats-the-impact-on-internet-radio/

This is must reading if you do anything related to internet broadcasting. One would have to figure that the recording industry would bribe a few congressmen to perpetuate the scam of collecting royalties from internet broadcasters to compensate artists who are mostly dead.

 

[JeeperOne]

But if there's NO ONE to send the Royalties to (Like from a Pre-1920 song), who are they going to send the check to? SOME CHARITY THE RIAA THINKS THE ARTIST MIGHT SUPPORT HAD THEY LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO SEE THE CREATION OF CHARITIES??

This has about as much of a chance of passing as PIGS FLYING

Then again we now live in a political world where RIGHT IS LEFT, RED IS BLUE & UP IS DOWN so I guess anything is possible and/or fair game now :

Cheers

 

[Jay Peninger]

While I am not surprised or shocked that the RIAA would try to extract money for these kind of works I think it would be almost impossible to enforce and the RIAA would have to spend a ton of money to get any sliver of a payment from the broadcasters.

I imagine a fair number of the recording in question were never properly copyrighted or at least not fully copyrighted and if that is true many of them are considered public domain: http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

I would venture to guess lawyers on both sides would get rich of litigation and I don't see the court fanning an already inflammatory debate by tacking on even more hotly debated content issues....

 

[Ai4i]

Many artist estates still exist, as Eric Carmen found out when he wrote and performed, All By Myself, in 1975, to the tune of Sergei Rachmaninof's Second piano concerto in C minor, opus 18, written 74 years earlier. A personal friend of ours, a sister of the late Johnie Spirt of Johnie Spirt and the Randells, still gets royalty checks for broadcast use of The Martian Hop.

 

[JeeperOne]

Yeah but that was 35 years ago. This is 2010. I seriously doubt Sergei Rachmaninof or any of his immediate relatives are still alive. His more recent ones likely don't even remember his work (If they even knew anything about it at all).

And then, you've got estates & their trustees who have WILLINGLY CHOSE TO make the works of the estate namesake public domain (Old Time Radio shows not owned b Conde Naste come to mind here). What's the RIAA going to do to THOSE folks? TELL THEM THEY CANNOT DO THAT & THEREFORE HAVE NO RIGHT OR LEGAL GROUNDS TO DO SO?? HA! Good luck getting THAT one past the courts.

As I said before, this has about as much of a chance of EVER resembling anything that's enforceable as PIGS FLYING!!!!!

Just my opinion.....

Cheers

 

[Ai4i]

As long as Penny keeps getting checks for Johnnie's work, @ least she will be happy!

 

[stuckinthe50s]

Many artist estates still exist, as Eric Carmen found out when he wrote and performed, All By Myself, in 1975, to the tune of Sergei Rachmaninof's Second piano concerto in C minor, opus 18, written 74 years earlier.

Not the same royalty issues as the RIAA/SX. This would have been a composer's copyright, probably with ASCAP. Another song from that concerto is Perry Como's Moonlight Love. Lots of melodies in the one work.