Re: Royalties paid by non-profit stations

[watson@halley.mp3 (William Watson)]

Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu> writes:
>The station pays an annual licensing fee to ASCAP and to BMI.  The
>annual fee to ASCAP is $150 and the annual fee to BMI is about $250.
>These annual fee allows the station to play as much music licensed by
>ASCAP and BMI (which covers the vast majority of music on US or
>British record companies) as they want.  I have no idea how ASCAP or
>BMI then decides whish artists get what share of the money.

I am told that ASCAP and BMI distribute the money after determining in
some way what is played.  Since they have no real data to base this on,
I suspect that they just divvy the money up based on record sales.
I apologize for not being clear about how this works in my earlier posts.

Your point is certainly well taken that payment of a nominal fee 
allows radio stations to play music which may be recorded by individuals
for their own private enjoyment.  However, this is not exactly the
same as a library lending books.  It seems rather unlikely that people
will make copies of the books when they check them out of the library.
They *do* make copies of records that they check out, and quite probably
make copies of software.  Although I understand the discomfort that the
software houses feel, I cannot see a clear way out of the dilemma.
Since it may happen that books are transcribed onto some digital format,
and thus easily copiable, the same situation will apply to publishers
of novels.

I am not sure that this discussion really belongs in this newsgroup, but
I will continue for a while yet.

The software publishers *do* seem to have a basis for their arguments.
The advent of the VCR and prerecorded movies seems to have established
a precedent.  Movies can be rented.  The rental fee paid is for personal
use, and does not convey rights to public performance (you can't rent
theater rights for $2.00) or copying rights.  The motion picture industry
is trying quite hard to make taping of programs from the airwaves or
cable illegal.  If they succeed, why shouldn't the music industry follow?

The software companies may have a better case, in that they (normally,
at least) do not license their properties for broadcast to the public.
This makes such works more similar to printed forms, except for the fact
that they can (often) be easily copied.


I don't see any clear solutions to this problem, and I am beginning (!)
to ramble.  Perhaps I will have inspiried someone who can think out such
matters more clearly than I.

William