Musical Ringtones In Public Are Copyrighted Violations?
Electronic technology has brought substantial benefits to all of us. But the advances have also brought about other problems that appear to be surfacing when it comes to copyright laws. There is now a lawsuit against AT&T bought by the ASCAP [The American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers], which states that musical ringtones in public are a copyright violation.
According to the article it states that:
ASCAP’s outlandish claim is part of its battle with major mobile carriers (including Verizon and AT&T) over whether ASCAP is owed any money for “public performances” of the musical ringtones sold by the carriers. The carriers point out that the owners of the musical compositions (i.e., songwriters and music publishers) are already paid for each ringtone download, but ASCAP claims that it’s owed another royalty for the “public performances” (i.e., ringing in a restaurant) of those same ringtones.
So what we need now is a new enforcement agency that monitors musical ringtones in public and will be able to arrest people who violate the law. How ridiculous and ludicrous all of this is becoming. Greed is alive and well in America.
Comments welcome.
5 Comments
Joe
June 22nd, 2009
at 8:57am
So they don’t want people to inquire about what the ringtone is (if it’s catchy enough or whatever) and therefore go spend money to purchase it if they like it?
Jonathan
June 22nd, 2009
at 11:17am
Oh, for crying (or ringing) out loud. How anal-retentive can these people be? Are they THAT desperate to make their paltry sum that they have to be niggardly about every note played?
I quit buying music altogether unless sold directly by the group or artist. I hope ASHAT or ASCAP or whatever and RIAA go broke.
Ron Schenone
June 22nd, 2009
at 1:57pm
Hi Jonathan,
If consumers stopped buying music CD’s that might wake these idiots up.
Ryan Farmer
June 23rd, 2009
at 7:11am
The recording industry mobsters started this 10 years ago with Napster under the guise of “protecting artists from piracy rings” and now we see that they also want royalties if your cell phone rings in public, even though the crooks already got paid for a full song ($1) for a 20 second clip that you can’t even upload to your computer (DRM).
I think this shows you just how far their crap flies, they’ll probably win too since they have bribed Obama into packing their RIAA lawyers into his cabinet and into important government positions.
David
June 23rd, 2009
at 1:37pm
The ring-tone police are on their way.Cue theme from Starsky and Hutch……….oh no………..mustn’t do that – it’s copyright.
What total and utter rubbish they’re spouting.
Public performance, eh? They’ll be going after people whistling tunes in the street next!
I can see it now. “Yes, your honour, this person was arrested for whistling an out-of-tune version of `Oops Upside Your Head`. Really, officer? Y’know that’s really one of my favourites – boogie on down and all that”.
Reminds me of a sketch in a UK 80’s comedy programme. “Also arrested for walking on the cracks in the pavement”.