Grey Larsen & The BMI thugs!!

[Jack Bradshaw]

A interesting statistic would be "What percentage of the collected fees actually get back to the respective artists/performers?"

[bepoq]

That is a disastrous idea Terry. Comhaltas has always fancied themselves as what Irish music is. They neither represent nor speak for all of us though, and they have already sold themselves to IMRO.

[Terry McGee]

Now is it the idea or the suggested beneficiary that is disastrous? Going back to the idea, would it be preferable for ITM earnings to go to an organisation that would benefit ITM rather than the pop music industry in general?

I also wondered about the ITM Archive as the beneficiary, but I have no close knowledge of its current directions or achievements, and the link might be harder to establish. CCE, for all its sins, IS an association of Irish musicians, and therefore would be in a postion to claim primacy.

I imagine the same difficulty would arise in other countries. EG, the EDFSS is the nominal association representing English folk music, but unless it's lifted its game since I went there in the seventies, it wouldn't be a place I'd tend to hang out. But I guess I'd still rather see Trad English royalties go there than to major record companies.

I wonder though how much money we are actually talking here? It might all amount to a storm in a key cup!

Terry

[kmag]

I agree that much of the problem is probably ill trained enforcers that target players of pop songs and the title lets you know who wrote and performed the song. ITM wouldn't fall under that and they are not sure how to handle it. At this point it is probably more about head-butting that anything else.

As far as what you receive from BMI. I have a friend that has recorded music in the Old Time music genre. He is a member of BMI since his membership opens doors to gigs that he might not otherwise have the opportunity to play.
He has heard his music played on the local station before and has never received any money for it. It appears that the larger get groups get paid for their efforts while the small and/or independent musicians do not. He said he contacted BMI about the matter, more out of curiosity, and was told enforcement of niche markets is spotty at best, too small a target.

Kurt

[dhamilingu]

Hi folks,

Those interested in this topic might be interested in the following:

http://www.beyondthecommons.com/allnotgiven.pdf

and

http://www.beyondthecommons.com/iff2003.html

I believe that the author's views are continually in development, but these points-along-the-way might stimulate some discussion.

Cheers,

Pete

[joshD]

Well,

I know Grey and he is not a person that would put himself before the music. Grey is very sensitve to the music and puts countless hours into the spread of the art form. This is clearly a situation of were laws are not able to take into consideration the situation.

[Flutered]

I don't know - what's the saying: 'all it needs for evil to prosper is a few good men to turn their backs' or to that effect. It comes down to personal responsibility, doesn't it - if Grey 'is not a person who put himeslf before the music' - then why is he copyrighting 'arrangements' of these trad. tunes??? Don't add up...

[s1m0n]

.. then why is he copyrighting 'arrangements' of these trad. tunes?

Because he arranged and recorded some tunes, and there's a royalty that goes to the arranger. What's difficult to understand about that?

The problem isn't Grey, it's BMI. They administer copyright, and someone who works there doesn't understand* that owning an arrangement--Grey's--isn't the same as owning the melody.

They asked a pub with a session what tunes get played, and the guy gave them a list of titles. Some junior lawyer typed a few titles into a database, saw a match, and figured it was worth a demand letter. They probably do that many times a day. If someone bites and pays up, it's free money for BMI. If not, they'll decide then whether it's worthsome kind of follow up, or not.

*Or more likely doesn't care. First comes the demand letter, which puts the ball into the recipient's court to either pay or show why they don't have to pay. From BMI's POV, all the research it can make the recipients finance is research that costs BMI nothing.

[bepoq]

BMI is a symptom of the the intellectual copyright system that was never intended for recorded music on the one hand, or traditional music on the other. On the other hand, it is possible to not claim such rights even when they are there to be claimed in law - whether or not you then get published is another question.

Terry, why on earth would you want one group of Irish musicians to claim "primacy." That lot already do, and they do not wield their power well - they already pulled in a great deal of money from IMRO, much of which was promptly handed over to O'Murchu's wife for her pet project - even if this were not the case though, the idea of one limited organization collecting money for a group of people a vast number of whom have no connection to it is unconscionable.

I am not part of comhaltas and I have no wish to be either as teacher or performer. If I were to register my tunes with BMI or ASCAP or IMRO, (which I wouldn't do on principle, believing the tunes to be a common store that, having drawn from, I am glad to contribute to) why on earth would I want funds generated off the back of my tunes to go to comhaltas? (edited to point out that this last question is rhetorical - I wouldn't, won't and don't)

[Flutered]

Because he arranged and recorded some tunes, and there's a royalty that goes to the arranger. What's difficult to understand about that?

Jaysus.. because I don't believe he or anyone should be getting royalties for arranging a traditional tune. It's a fairly simple concept.

By all means make money from CD sales, downloads, books whatever but not from claiming some hypothetical ownership of a piece of trad music.

[s1m0n]

Jaysus.. because I don't believe he or anyone should be getting royalties for arranging a traditional tune.

It's how people who make records get paid for doing so. With 'mechanical' reproduction royalties (part of copyright law) the money is already on the table. It's already in the pot and someone is going to take it home. If the artist doesn't file, the record company, retailer, or publisher keeps it. The money does not go away.

[Cork]

...Jaysus.. because I don't believe he or anyone should be getting royalties for arranging a traditional tune. It's a fairly simple concept...

I've never seen a "partial" copyright, as apparently everything within a publication gets covered by copyright.

Without copyright protection, moreover, an author simply can't get paid, and, frankly, authors generally are a good thing.

So, I'd say that as long as anybody could feel free to copyright a traditional tune, then there shouldn't be any problem.

That is, perhaps both you and I could copyright the same traditional tune, to the benefit of each of us.

Perhaps we could both then laugh all the way to the bank.

:-)

[jim stone]

The tune isn't copyrighted, only the arrangement.
Anybody can play the tune anyway they please,
in truth. In addition, these aren't Fat Cats being
greedy, more likely starving artists desperately trying to
continue their work. Or would we rather they
sold insurance?

[MTGuru]

Flutered, take off the blinders for a moment and check your peripheral vision.

A fundamental question is: Is it legitimate, reasonable, ethical etc. for a performer to make money from the public performance of his or her recordings of traditional music?

If one's answer is no, then fair enough. The music is a public patrimony that belongs to all, and copyrighting particular arrangements of tunes is an illegitimate enclosure. An artist may recoup the material cost of producing a physical CD by selling them from a suitcase or however. But the creative effort and expense of arranging and recording a trad tune has no economic added value, and should be unrecoverable. Anyone who purchases the recording owns it as they would, say, a kitchen appliance, and can do with it as they please. If an artist doesn't like that state of affairs, they can write and record their own music instead and hope for authorship revenues, or rely only on paid live performance revenues. That is certainly one possible model.

But if one's answer is yes, then how do you propose to allow that to happen? As Ben points out, BMI and IMRO and the like were never designed with recorded trad in mind. Yet these are the only available, ill-conceived mechanisms for an artist to recover revenue when their recordings are played on the radio, or jukeboxes, or at political rallies, or as TV adverts, or as the soundtrack to Mel Gibson's latest cinematic gorefest.

So a performer records a CD and registers his trad "arrangements" to protect his work and CD performance royalties, given that "arrangement" is the only legal pigeon-hole available. The artist is then aghast when organization goons proceed to enforce the registration in a way that the artist never intended. Then he gets flogged by those with an ideological axe to grind, or those whose self-interest wants CD performance to be free of cost, despite the artist's actively trying to remedy the misguided enforcement.

By all means, work to support and promote the reform of antiquated copyright and IP laws, particularly with regard to trad. But why beat up on particular recording artists for working as best they can within a broken framework? I wonder how many recordings of ITM there would be if performers were entitled to only the cost of the plastic their CDs are made from? Some, certainly, but fewer. And there are those think that a lowered level of commercialism might not be a bad thing.

Flutered, how did you handle this dilemma on your latest commercially available recording of traditional music? I want to know.

[bepoq]

You sound fairly happy with the system S1m0n, or at least accepting of it in your recent posts. Would that be true though?

For my part, I believe there to be a fundamental flaw in the intellectual property system of law, which I believe to be strongly imperialist - that is extending itself over domains it was never intended nor fitted for, and an even deeper flaw in the common acceptance of intellectual property law as simply what is.

And I thought, at least with regard to the Larson and pub example in question, that we were discussion performance rights, not mechanical ones - did I get confused? One think this sort of law is, is byzantine, eh?