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Well lets roll back the tape to before those laws that are violated were in existence.
Artist writes song and sells said song to a performer who then cuts a record. Writers been paid. Done deal. performer sells records and gets paid. Done deal. Sheet music is sold. Done deal.



With all due respect, you've got to be kidding. Nobody can predict how well a new project is going to do ahead of time that's why there's royalties in the first place. You mean to tell me you would actually accept a deal where you got a flat fee for a new song you wrote and then watched it sell 10 million copies and you didn't get a piece of that? Every movie/recording project made has some form of profit sharing for the principal people involved. Therefore every time someone illegally downloads a copy of a new release it directly takes money out of the pockets of those people. The only valid argument you could make about that is many of those downloads are done by kids or poor people who probably don't have the money to buy it and therefore it doesn't really count as a lost sale. Still as we all know, there's plenty of people all around us who do this stuff everyday who certainly can afford it but think it's cool to download tons of movies and music and "stick it to the man, yeah!".
Ponder this: You're 80 years old, not rich but 50 years ago you wrote one of the biggest hits of all time and you have the rights to it. At what point would you simply give up those rights and allow anybody to do whatever with your tune? Say you walked into a hotel lounge and the performer was playing your tune. Don't you think you would still want a small piece of that? That's what ASCAP and BMI do with small venues. Larger venues like the Hollywood Bowl or big Vegas casinos actually turn in the song lists so those rights owners get paid directly per song.
What would you have the artists and their companies do John? As soon as you get the lawyers involved there's no choice but to enforce the laws that have been in place for 100 years but really never became a big problem until high speed internet came along.
As a practical matter, they're really only going after big sites who are trafficking in new releases not small niche forums like this one where most of the postings are old, classic cover tunes. But the legal principle is the same in all cases. Old song or new, unless the owner has given you a license, you have no legal right at all to do anything with it period except listen to it at home.

Bob

Last edited by jazzmammal; 09/10/10 08:38 AM.
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