More, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06/ascap-wants-be-paid-/ "ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it without a license. At least that's the import of a brief [2.5mb PDF] it filed in ASCAP's court battle with mobile phone giant AT&T. "This will doubtless come as a shock to the millions of Americans who have legitimately purchased musical ringtones, contributing millions to the music industry's bottom line. Are we each liable for statutory damages (say, $80,000) if we forget to silence our phones in a restaurant? "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. " ________________________________ From: Amalyah Keshet [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 3:46 PM To: 'Museum Computer Network Listserv' Subject: IP SIG: ringtones as public performances >From the "If a tree falls in the forest..." Department: ________________________________ AT&T and ASCAP are locked in a titanic battle about whether musical ringtones must be licensed for public performance. In their brief, filed last week, ASCAP makes some truly breathtaking arguments. Such as: "When an AT&T ringtone plays in public, there is no question that it falls under clause (1) of the definition of "to perform publicly." The phone is on AT&T's network, and AT&T controls the entire series of steps that allow and trigger the player to perform the performance. That is a direct infringement under the Copyright Act." "There is thus no question that the performances that AT&T causes are "public," regardless of whether some customers' phones may sometimes be switched to vibrate, turned off, or located in the home. ... It need only be "capable" of being performed to the public; whether the ringtone is set to play, and indeed whether anyone hears it, is of no moment." ASCAP's entire brief here: <http://files.me.com/fvl/an3drn> ________________________________
