In June, we reported that a biker bar in Virginia was facing a lawsuit from ASCAP because some weekend warriors played some cover songs in the establishment, who couldn’t afford to pay the required music licensing fees. It was a downright offensive case of picking on the little guy, but apparently someone over at Sony/ATV thought it was a great idea. Now they’ve filed suit against the owner of Daisy Baker’s restaurant in Troy, NY.
Daisy Baker’s is charged with six counts of copyright infringement, for bands’ performances of classic songs by Prince, Chris Isaak, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Marvin Gaye, as well as some of the most well known Motown songs from the 60s & 70s. We’re talking shit like My Girl.
Sony’s attorney wrote in the complaint filed that the incidents have caused “great injury to the plaintiffs,” who “will suffer irreparable harm” if they are infringed upon again. What a pile of bullshit. For shame. Seriously.
Meanwhile, have you heard about that viral wedding video? Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz staged an elaborate, choreographed entrance to their wedding party, set to the tune of Forever, a year-old song by Chris Brown (whose job security has been in question since he beat up Rihanna).
The couple’s home video of the production became a YouTube smash, with almost 14 million views as of today. Did the church in St. Paul, Minnesota pay for a performance license? Nope. Even if they had, it would only cover the performance, and not the YouTube video. So where’s the big lawsuit for that one, Sony?
Once again, the lesson is: Copyright infringement is very bad, except for when it is very good.
Sony ran ads for Chris Brown’s music next to the video on YouTube, directly generating sales from the interest. Forever skyrocketed out of its grave and into the top half of the iTunes top 10, and YouTube owner Google has proclaimed it a great success; a case study of how artists and copyright infringers can live together in harmony.
Techdirt wonders: “Shouldn’t the folks in the video (or, perhaps the person who shot it) get some of that monetization as well? After all, if we base our thinking on traditional RIAA-style thinking, the whole reason why there are suddenly so many new sales and renewed interest in Brown and this song is entirely due to this wedding party and whoever shot the video… Doesn’t something seem wrong that the actual copyright holder of the video in question isn’t getting any of that money?”
In other news, our buddy Joel Tenenbaum has lost his lawsuit against RIAA yesterday. He’s been ordered to pay $675,000 for sharing 30 songs over eight years. This is despite Radiohead’s manager, Brian Message testifying that sharing music actually helps the artists, supporting a grand defensive effort journaled at joelfightsback.com.
While Tenenbaum’s attorney Charles Nesson begged the jury to consider the value of each song the 99¢ it would have cost Joel on iTunes, federal law placed the value at anywhere between $750 and $30,000. That is, if the infringement was accidental. If it was willful, then the penalty could go up to $150,000 per song. Ultimately, Joel’s penalty per song falls at about $22,500. So yeah, that’s totally reasonable.
Shit like this honestly makes me wonder if we deserve this planet.
[...] item of future Antiquiet history to be documented in yesterday’s ‘copywrongs’ roundup. I wound up leaving it out, as there was plenty of real significance to report on. But for [...]
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