Janis Kenyon wrote: > Ricardo > (at 83) is still working in his electrical repair shop in San Telmo to pay > the bills. >
Unfortunately, not surprising. Appropriating someone's performance or their privacy without consent (by recording it and making money off it, or giving it away for free, or in the YouTube case, using it to drive traffic to a website intended to make money) is a time-honored form of exploitation in the U.S. It calls to mind all those great black musicians in the first half of the 20th century who sold their recording rights for pennies and died in poverty while the promoters built lucrative music industry businesses off their backs. I wish I had a dollar to give to Frankie Manning for every twentysomething lindy hopper who posts videos of his early film footage on YouTube, on the principle that "his dance is now part of our cultural heritage and it belongs to us now" and it is "critical to distribute it as widely as possible among us because we are the ones trying to study and preserve this art form." Or rather, I wish I could make every one of them give Frankie a dollar out of their weekly latte budget. Frankie's lucky, he's over 90 and back into dancing lindy hop and making money off it after five decades as a postal worker, but he's got bills to pay too. -- Carol Ruth Shepherd Arborlaw PLC Ann Arbor MI USA 734 668 4646 v 734 786 1241 f http://arborlaw.com licensing * protection * franchising * distribution "legal solutions for 21st century businesses" _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
