On Wed, 6 Sep 2006 14:45:48 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:
Note that IANAL (I am not a lawyer) and you would be
stupid to take any of this as any kind of advice except to
illustrate that you need professional legal help.
Richard, your analysis is good as usual.
This podcasting rights thing is very confusing. ASCAP seems to want a
piece of the action for any use of their stuff streamed, podcasted or
otherwise. I looked at the below link which confused me more than
anything else:
http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/feecalculation.html
It appears they base their fees on revenue generated by use of their
material and since there is a minimum $288 a year fee, I'd assume a
non-income generating organization would have to still nominally pay
$288 / year not to mention BMI fees which are even harder to
understand form the looks of their web site.
I do know a radio station I work for which has been one of the leaders
in music podcasts and I've spoken to the podcasting director about
copyright issues. He says that they draw up a contract with every
artist / author for rights before podcasting.
This seems to be in agreement with the information at the ASCAP site:
"ASCAP does not grant licenses on a per-song basis. Instead, ASCAP
offers blanket licenses that authorize the performance of any or all
of the millions of copyrighted musical works in the ASCAP repertory.
If you intend to make available one or a small number of songs and do
not believe an ASCAP blanket license is best suited for you, you may
contact each of the copyright owners (most typically the publisher)
for each of the songs you would like to use to request a direct
license"
Julian