Hey, he’s dead already.
OregonLive.com : Everything Oregon
A performance of the Jimi Hendrix classic, “The Wind Cries Mary,” may cost Michael Dorr his restaurant.
Dorr, the 37-year-old owner of Imbibe on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, has been slapped with a federal lawsuit by companies that own the rights to a trio of popular classics that were performed at Dorr’s restaurant in 2005. The songs at the center of the suit? Other than the Hendrix song, the music companies say Stevie Wonder’s “That Girl,” and a 1971 tune, “Slippin’ into Darkness.”
Dorr says a rep from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers paid an unannounced visit to his restaurant one night and heard covers of the songs performed by local band “Black Notes.” Because his place features local musicians and covers are rare, he didn’t think he had to pay the musicians and publishers group an estimated $2,000 to cover performances of copyrighted tunes. But the owners of the songs, including Wonder and Hendrix’s estate, say he does.Now they’re suing Dorr for copyright infringement – and they’re seeking payment of between $750 and $30,000 for each song, along with attorney fees.
“It’s basically going to bankrupt me and put me out of business,” Dorr said this morning. “I can’t afford the lawyer and the fees. It’s going to close me down.”
Since when does a publishing company get paid $30,000 so a band can perform a song? Everytime I go into any piano bar I ask the guy to play “Stairway to Heaven.” So now he owes money? Nobody can ever play anything? What creeps.
found by Raff
Welcome to the New World Order. Please leave 25 dollars in the jar on your way in AND out… just in case.
Just wait until the Happy birthday owners stalk restaurants.
“Nobody can ever play anything?”
Not without paying. This isn’t anything new and the vast majority of bars that feature live music know this and have obtained licenses to keep themselves legal, e.g., ASCAP.
I’m assuming the guy was ignorant of the law, but that’s not really an excuse. Let’s face it John, what if a magazine publisher started re-runing your columns?
Oh, and the reason the costs are so high in this instance is because he didn’t get the license prior to getting caught. It’s actually quite cheap to get legal, but when bar owners try to get away without paying they get hammered. Heck, $2,000 a year is hardly anything. I’m assuming the bartenders skim more than that a month.
#1
Or when Santa goes on a suing spree… Ho, ho, ho… oops, that will cost John C. Dvorak $90,000…
“Heraven”?
What piano bar was this?
Sounds like they mix a mean martini.
They didn’t have to be a-holes about it SN. Is it also illegal to recite a poem in public without royalty payment to the author?
I’m very upset about this. Ripping a few CD’s should calm me down.
“They didn’t have to be a-holes about it SN.”
I don’t think they are being assholes. The guy tried to get something for free and now he’s paying the price. Like I said this is NOT new. Bars have been paying these licensing fees for most of the 19th century.
And in fact, the more I think about it, the more I realise the bar owner knew full and well that he was supposed to pay, but he thought he could get away with it.
And one more thing, there is a simple solution to this. If you’re a bar owner and don’t want to pay the licensing fees… don’t allow cover bands to play in your establishment. God, how simple is that?!
I have a friend who bartends at Ruby Tuesday, and she tells me that the reason why she isn’t allowed to unmute any of the televisions is because they would have to pay more for the audio performance rights.
Don’t know if any of that is true… but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
> Is it also illegal to recite a poem in public without royalty payment to the >author?
It might be. Martin Luther King’s family has been able to block use of his speeches in lots of places.
“Don’t know if any of that is true… but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.”
I’m guessing it’s not true. A bar owner (cafe owner, business owner, etc) only has to pay royalties if their audio system is of a professional quality. Basically, if you have a home stereo playing music in the corner of your pizza place, you don’t have to pay royalties. If you have a DJ with a professional sound system you do. Thus, if you were playing MTV on a TV in your pizza place, you would not have to pay any royalties for the audio.
TV is different. When you’re airing a TV you’re actually rebroadcasting it. Most broadcasters don’t care and since you’re watching their ads, they probably actually like it,. But bars that rebroadcast sporting events on their TVs have to pay royalties. I’m sure you’ve all heard the “no rebroadcast” legal mumbo jumbo played during sporting events on TV. I’m not entirely sure how blocking the audio would exempt them from payment.
I guess there could be some loophole I’m not familiar with. But a better guess is that if all the TVs played audio, it’d be highly annoying and people would leave. Telling you it as against the law was just easier than saying “no.”
As I said, I have no idea. But we weren’t at her bar when she told me… we were just at lunch someplace and I commented about how all the televisions were on mute with no closed captioning enabled.
“all the televisions were on mute with no closed captioning enabled.”
Yeah, that really bugs me too. It’d be so convenient to know what was going on without the noise of having the audio on. My guess is that most people don’t use closed captioning. However, because my in-laws are Deaf, my hearing wife likes to have it on. She’s used to watching TV that way.
I’m guessing most restaurants and bars don’t turn on CC because they just don’t think about it. Heck, they probably don’t even know how to turn it on.
I do have to say though that the quality of your sound system as a determiner of royalty requirement seems pretty silly. Especially once you throw in the cover band aspect being discussed here where the bands themselves may be of various levels of performance quality. Either the people are listening to the music or they aren’t.
Not disputing what you have said, as I have no reason to believe it’s not true. It just seems very arbitrary to me and lacking in any logical basis.
“I do have to say though that the quality of your sound system as a determiner of royalty requirement seems pretty silly. “
Think about it. You have a pizza place and you have a little radio in the back to listen to while you make pizzas. The guy next door has a 20 thousand dollar sound system and a DJ and he’s charging 10 bucks a head for people to get in the place.
Do you really think that the first guy should pay the same as the second guy? Well, he doesn’t. (See 18 below)
People don’t pay extra to hear music on the same type of sound system they have at home. If people aren’t paying extra, the restaurant/bar owner is not getting extra. If he’s not getting extra, why would anyone try to extract money from him? (Actually, the music industry tried to extract money from any and all music played. Luckily, the restaurant/bar lobby is strong enough to at least get what I’ll call the “home stereo” exception.)
“bands themselves may be of various levels of performance quality”
Once you have a live band you have professional sound equipment. And if those band members perform covers, the owner has to pay. As I’ve said before, this is nothing new.
Looking into the site, membership to the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), gets you neat perks, like an ASCAP Mastercard, insurance on your instrument, and money set aside for a non-profit charity of the ASCAP’s choice (themselves) Overall a great idea from years past that turned into another way to collect more fees. If their focus was on getting money to the artists, that would be great, but their focus is elsewhere. Instead, the headline on the ASCAP’s site “YUSUF ISLAM NAMED SONGWRITER OF THE YEAR AT ASCAP AWARDS IN LONDON” Nothing more American than that. I think I will go back to playing Hendix on my air guitar,.. I wonder if I will have to register the portion of the atmosphere that I strum with the ASCAP to keep in the clear.
I was a chef at a small restaurant that got one of those nasty letters from ASCAP…it seems my radio playing in the kitchen could be heard in the dining room….. My boss paid the fine.
this world really sucks sometimes. Thank You ASCAP.
My other question is how is a performance of a song an infringement of copyright (key word being “copy”)? What copying is going on by simply playing audio waves through the air?
I obviously don’t have any knowledge about this subject, I’m just curious about the rationalization for this type of decision.
“What copying is going on by simply playing audio waves through the air?”
You’re not copying it. It’s a performance. Yes, playing a CD for a group of people and charging is a performance.
Considering that most pop stars only lip sync on stage nowadays against a CD, it’s not so strange if you think about it.
Re: 14.
Here’s the deal straight from ASCAP‘s website:
In other words, if your system is small (e.g., limited number of speakers) and you don’t charge admission you don’t have to pay. If it is large (e.g., transmitted from one room to another) you do.
In the real world, nearly all restaurants and bars that play any sort of music simply pay the licensing fees to avoid being sued.
I remember YEARS ago when a friend of mine’s father worked in a store that had a small radio on a shelf playing the local AM radio station for the shoppers to listen to while they shopped.
A person from MUZAK showed up and told them to stop playing the radio in public as it was violating the law.
Of course, they wanted to sell them a subscription to their service.
I understand that artists should be paid for their work.
I also believe the owner of the bar should have discussed with the band playing what songs they would be performing prior to letting them take the stage. They are actually partially to blame, and they should shoulder some of the repurcussions.
“The band playing… are actually partially to blame, and they should shoulder some of the repurcussions.”
Not in the real world. In the real world the band is probably paying to play. There are a lot of bands out there and if playing gets you exposure you bite the bullet and pay the owner to let you play. You hope to sell some CDs, a t-shirt or two, and maybe get signed one day. (Unless you’re in a professional cover band, but those guys usually work weddings and such and avoid bars. They don’t have any CDs to sell or any illusions about getting signed one day, so what’s the point of playing in some shit hole for chump change?!)
At best, the band is getting a cut of the cover charge. But under no circumstances would the band ever have to pay royalties. That’s the bar owner’s responsibility, and as I’ve said previously, most do it as the cost of doing business.
As I’ve said, it’s only a few grand per year. Basically, the music industry has their protection racket down pat. They charge enough to make boat loads of money without actually having to do anything. But little enough that the vast majority of bar/restaurant owners pay without raising a fuss.
Interesting how they aren’t suing the band for preforming the songs.
“Interesting how they aren’t suing the band for preforming the songs.”
See 20.
Hey, somebody fixed the typo! I thought this was supposed to be a blog or something?
It is interesting to me that an industry whose products are, arguably, of such limited tangible value has built for themselves a system for perpetual income generation based on a one-time effort of work. I bet the guy who designed or worked on the line building a bus would love to receive a royalty every time one of his buses gets used to transport paying customers from now until 75 years after his death.
What a racket…
If I was the defense attorney, (which lucky for them I’m not) I would argue that the cost of playing the cover songs is not my problem. That obligation should rightfully fall upon the artists who played the music and their management.
The restaurant has no contract or obligation with ASCAP for the collection of royalties. The restaurant contracted with the local artists to provide the music. If you argue that the restaurant benefited from the music, the answer is yes they did and they paid the artists for it. It is the artist that should be responsible for the payment of the music. The same as buying or renting their instruments or transporting their equipment to the gig, this is just another cost of being a musician.
If it was a bar band then I might rethink this argument, but not for a local band doing just a one night or even a week gig.
RE # 19 and My comment #15… I remember a MUZAK guy coming in a month or so before the ASCAP letter. And now that I really think about it I recall other stories at the time that bordered on extortion….The MUZAK guy comes in to sell you the service…say yes and all is OK, Say no thanks and weeks later you get a letter from ASCAP. I’m only repeating stories so dont sue me ASCAP and MUZAK
As a bartender in a small (45 stools), one room, neighborhood bar I was visited by an ASCAP rep who told me that we couldn’t play the radio when the jukebox wasn’t being used because royalties for the songs were not being paid. The solution was to get a satellite radio service. No comercials, nice. An additional bill every month, not nice. Btw, SN if you wouldn’t mind passing along the name of the bar where you can “skim” $2,000 a month w/o getting fired or arrested I would appreciate it. Most of us make a nice living by doing a good job and being compensated by appreciative clientele. Guess I have been doing things the hard way.
“I’m guessing most restaurants and bars don’t turn on CC because they just don’t think about it. Heck, they probably don’t even know how to turn it on.”
Actually #11(& #10), the closed captions are covered under all the “no public broadcast” rules. In other words, they could get sued for copyright violations if the wrong person comes in and sees the closed captions on.
-A
Yeah this is ridiculous, jimmy wouldnt have wanted it this way, only his bloodsucking relatives and managers.
Urgent news flash, we dont make goods in North America. All we make is IP Lawyers. So what do you expect?
Its not like this kind of thing would fly anywhere else, but heh we have to keep all those land sharks employed.