Quote:
Originally Posted by lumpynose
The copyright laws, or whatever laws they are, can sometimes be surprising. Another example from the early mp3 days was an article I heard on the radio. From what I understood them saying, you can't buy a CD, for example, and play it in your restaurant as background music for the customers. Unless you arrange to pay royalties to the people who manage them (BMI, RIAA, I think). So every time the radio plays a song, they're paying royalties; it might only be a penny per play, but they're paying it. In these cases there is money being made by the party playing the music, which is part of the reason they're playing the music. Another example they mentioned was a summer camp that bought some sheet music and they were using it for the kids to sing the songs around a camp fire. According to what I heard they were liable for the royalties since the camp wasn't free/nonprofit.
Royalties are related to copyright but the point is that it's about the artist being compensated for their work. But what we see is the "greedy" business that's collecting the money, and they typically take a huge percentage in comparison to what the artist ends up getting.
|
In the US, that system is actually based on a consent decree from a legal case way back in the 20's, I think. Like a lot of copyright law in the US, it was originally judge created law rather than based on legislation.