Re: [Harp-L] elderly harp player arrested etc.

[Philharpn@xxxxxxx]

Several years ago when Gordon Mitchell was no longer the president of SPAH, 
and the group convention was meeting at a hotel near the Detroit Metropolitcan 
airport, an ASCAP official approached the convention and requested a 
performance license for all the ASCAP songs (at that time, just about every tune that 
played at SPAH was ASCAP).

The thinking at the time was that SPAH would indeed get a license for that 
year -- because it had never bothered in the previous 20-some years and didn't 
want to encourage ASCAP to start going after the fees for all those early 
years. Maybe nobody plays ASCAP songs any more at SPAH conventions. And if they do, 
maybe nobody knows you need an ASCAP license.

I don't know what the current status with ASCAP, BMI and SPAH is to date.   I 
never heard any more about it after that year in Detroit.

I'm not a copyright or performance rights lawyer, although I own a few books 
on the topic. But I think the performance fees (like ASCAP, BMI et al) as well 
as the mechianical licensing fee (9 cents (?) per song paid to the 
owner/owner/publisher of the song are both designed as a compromise, as I recall from my 
reading over the   years. 

The two concepts are different but the bottom line is that somebody owns the 
song and if you want to perform it or record you have to pay the owner.

What is the compromise?

The original deal was that only the writer/owner could use the song for 
public performance and player piano rolls, later recording cylinders and later 
discs/ tapes/ CDs etc.

The compromise: if you pay a statutary fee (a resonable rate set by law) then 
you could use the tune.

The fact that many amateurs and semi-pros and even some pros in the harmonica 
community don't even know about these rates says more about harmonica 
community   -- this is, after all, a harmonica list and I don't recall seeing   one 
post even suggesting that ASCAP or whatever greedy money grubbing group (Harry 
Fox) that was collecting these fees even had the legal right to do so.

Of course, even the big stars like Johnny Cash get caught up and think they 
can get away with ignoring the system. 
"Folsom Prison Blues" was largely plagiarized from a 1953 song by Gordon 
Jenkins, "Crescent City Blues," and once it became a big Johnny Cash hit in 1956, 
Cash settled up.
Anybody ever heard of Crescent City Blues?


In a message dated 11/11/06 9:45:08 AM, bandbase2@xxxxxxxxx writes:


> m wrote:
> This certainly wouldn't have been prosecuted in the US, unless he was
> recording the gigs and selling the
> recordings.  Even then, it's hard to say whether anyone would pursue
> it if it was small enough.
> --------<< True enough -- different copyright laws in different countries.
> Here in the states BMI, ASCAP and SESAC would chase down the barowner for a
> yearly payout.You don't pay, you wake up in bed with a horse's head.  :)--TB
> >><
> My first thought is that the story is skewed. He could certainly be
> prosecuted in the US for not having a music license for his bar  from one of
> the performing rights societies. It's a Federal law.I am sure that he was
> being prosecuted as a bar owner, not a musician. The authorities would never
> take action except in cases of extreme obstinance which appears to be the
> case here.
> Still it's a good story and gives a new meaning to "he plays so badly that
> he couldn't get arrested."
> 
> --
> Steve York
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