Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Re: [tuning] Copyrights and licenses

I understand very much the difference between copyrights and licenses.

The point here is that Yahoo! is covering themselves so that if approached
by a rights organization (in my case, GEMA), they can haul out the agreement
indicating that the person who posted the file has accepted liability for
the license fee.

I do believe that GEMA is, in fact, setting too high a hurdle for licensing
content online, and frankly, I'm not convinced that they have the resources
to adequately monitor the situation. However, licenses are the most
important income source for composers, and I don't want to be put in the
position of having to pay myself for web publication rather than getting
paid.

I may be wrong about this, but I believe that licenses for music posted on
web sites owned by organization (Universities, for example) that already
have blanket agreements with rights organizations, should be already covered
by those existing agreements. That way, composers can get paid via the
normal channel and are not themselves liable for the license fee.

Daniel Wolf
Budapest

🔗jpehrson@rcn.com

--- In tuning@y..., "Daniel Wolf" <djwolf1@m...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_18331.html#18331

> I understand very much the difference between copyrights and
licenses.
>
> The point here is that Yahoo! is covering themselves so that if
approached by a rights organization (in my case, GEMA), they can haul
out the agreement indicating that the person who posted the file has
accepted liability for the license fee.
>

Thank you, Daniel Wolf, for your commentary. However I frankly don't
believe things would work that way. The Yahoo website would be no
different from any other previously "unlicensed" entity. For
example, there are certain performing organizations that can play my
music without paying a licence fee to ASCAP.

One of the conditions is that performers are paid and that there is a
paying audience. So far, these conditions do not pertain on the Web,
and ASCAP, and I presume GEMA works similarly, have not licensed all
the sites, nor are they necessarily intending to license them...

Let's say, for example, that ASCAP suddenly wanted to
license the Yahoo site for original music and let's say I had
original music on the Yahoo site. (I don't so the point is a bit
mute, but let's continue the exercise).

ASCAP would request a license fee for my music. Yahoo would either
pay it, at that point, under a blanket license, or they would point
to their "terms of service" and say that under this agreement any of
my posted material is not subject to a license, presuming that I read
the agreement before I posted anything on the site.

Let's say ASCAP (or GEMA) would demand again, and *I* wouldn't end up
paying anything, but Yahoo could ask me, because of the licensing
pressure, to remove my licensed materials from the site, rather than
paying anything themselves through a blanket license, which is how
they would do it in such a case.

It would be the same kind of situation with a performing group, let's
say, which figures out that if it wants to play my music they have to
pay an ASCAP fee. They may decide, therefore, that they cannot
afford to play my music or the music of any ASCAP-affiliated
composer.

Then, they wouldn't ask *me* to contribute anything, but they would
withdraw my music from the concert they were planning.

The same thing would happen here, and I would be asked to take my
original materials off the website.

However, such a thing has not happened as of yet, and the fact that
there is little original copyrighted musical material on this site,
or probably anywhere on the text-based Yahoo Groups would auger that
an ASCAP licensing foray would be very unlikely.

Sites which would be MUCH MORE likely for this kind of targeted
licensing have already been swiftly approached. For example mp3.com
already pays blanket license fees to ASCAP and as I'm sure you're
aware, has paid severe penalties for copyright "infringement"....

I doubt very seriously that ASCAP, BMI or GEMA are going to take any
licensing interest in anything on the primarily text-based Yahoo
groups and if they do, the COMPOSER wouldn't pay anything, but he/she
might be asked to withdraw copyrighted materials from the site...

______ ____ _____ _____
Joseph Pehrson

🔗Bill Alves <ALVES@ORION.AC.HMC.EDU>

As I offered when the Mills site shut down, I am happy to host the tuning
list here. This is a college, we don't attach advertising, we have blanket
licenses, we won't harvest email addresses, etc. HOWEVER, my understanding
of the list software that we run is that:

1. There is no web interface,
2. There is no automated archive,
3. There is no digest mode (I think),
4. There is no public disk space for uploading of files.

By the way, from Dan's description, I believe the United States' performing
rights agencies, ASCAP and BMI, are different from GEMA in that contracts
with the composers are non-exclusive. That is, they serve only to collect
performance rights royalties as an agent of the composer. The composer
remains free to collect those royalties or assign performance rights in
other ways as well. Therefore there is no problem with composers putting
their own works on the web -- they have essentially assigned their
performance rights to themselves and ASCAP/BMI are by-passed. They can also
enter into an agreement with someone, including, I suppose, Yahoo, that
allows them to use their works without the consent of ASCAP or BMI. At
least that is my understanding.

Regardless of the way that the vote goes, I admit that I am pretty peeved
at Yahoo as well. I still can't get through the web interface because of
problems connecting my "yahoo" identity with my egroups one. My email to
yahoo's help line only resulted in an automated reply with all the
information I already had. So actually, I can't even vote in this poll yet.

Bill

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^
^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)607-7600 (fax) ^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Re: [tuning] Copyrights and licenses

🔗Daniel Wolf <djwolf1@matavnet.hu>

🔗jpehrson@rcn.com

🔗Bill Alves <ALVES@ORION.AC.HMC.EDU>

🔗David Beardsley <xouoxno@virtulink.com>