SLMC

Tommy CUlt · Joined: 06 Sep 2007 Posts: 199

Thank you Kim for the info. My concern has been from our venue side of things. Because we have always had our own stream, and let any performer use it (if required), I think that is one area we may change. I dont mind taking a 'risk' using my own stream to perform my own set (which currently includes covers), but I am no so sure I want to hang my head out for other performers to use my stream, if ultimately I AM THE ONE who is responsible for THEIR breech of copyright.

Perhaps it is time for one of the emerging sections of the SL music industry to step up on behalf of their 'clients' ? I am of course referreing to the performer managment section. Maybe this is not part of their 'brief' ? but certainly educating clients on keeping within various laws, and perhaps even providing such licences for thier clients is not out of the question? I can see a few people shift in their chair already, but lets be realistic. If someone takes a performer into their fold, and promotes them, and gets them gigs, all aware they are perhaps breaking some laws - but does not at least tell the performer...oh...by the way, it is unlikey that you will get busted....but.....I just think they (the management) have a responsibilty to KNOW what their clients can and cant do. Personally - I would be a little worried if I was letting someone handle my affairs who may just dissapear into thin air when the shit hits the fan - I mean.....is your manager gonna be holding your hand in court if that day ever came?

If indeed the current legal viewpoint is that the stream owner is responible for the material broadcast, then I know this - I wont be letting anyone use our stream unless they only play their own music - or public domain music. It is all well and good for people to think nothing will happen - but tell that to some of the families and teens that got sued for D/L music from Napster. I bet they all thought nothing would ever happen too.
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Kim Seifert · Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 212 Location: Ohio

I agree it is a sticky situation Tommy. That is why I believe Silas' idea is a good one. I am going to look into how we can work with BMI, etc. to work up an amicable solution for everyone on the grid. As far as the teens that were sued, you have to understand that it was the publishing companies with loads of money that went after them because the publishing companies own the rights to the sound recordings which are not at issue in SL live music. Those publishing companies actually lose a lot of money every time someone copies a cd so there is a lot of money involved and worth pursuing.
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Silas Scarborough · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 1635 Location: None

ticious · Joined: 03 Sep 2007 Posts: 2600 Location: Chicago

It would only be strong arm if it was implemented in that way. Folks would be free to cover their expenses on their own, take the chance of ignoring the issue or join the 'co-op' (which is really what it would be). The issue again of course, would be accountability and accounting and finding someone trustworthy to handle the financial end of things. But there's ways to solve that since it could be made easy enough to discover if the fees were paid or not. Because there would be real life legal responsibilities and an expectation of real life legal protection involved, there would also need to be non-SL based agreements and electronic sigs involved, fiduciary responsibility clearly assigned and accepted, that sort of thing. This wouldn't be as simple as establishing an SL group and slapping a membership fee on it.

This would also give venues some means to cover themselves from that cloud of concern that wakes some of us up in the middle of the night. We would have the options of joining and contributing to assure our coverage, only hiring cover musicians we knew had covered the fee, only letting musicians who had paid the fee use our stream (though I'm not comfortable that giving up my stream and making the musicians always use theirs will necessarily get me off the hook when the time comes, that's still awful gray) or going on taking the risk. In short, people on both sides of the booking would have some options for actually dealing with this issue. Lots of us would sleep easier Wink

But stage one is simply fact finding, and I'm grateful to you too, Kim. I also wanna note that, I mentioned a lot of responsibilities and some pretty heavy work here in this post. I am *NOT* assuming (and at this stage, no one else should either) that you're jumping on board for all of that!! Once we have info in hand, that will be the time to start thinking about how to structure the thing and figuring out who's gonna do what in the next stage. And I'm not necessarily volunteering either. We won't need enthusiasm and willingness for putting together a co-op like this, we'll need qualification and competence to set that part up and implement it.
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Silas Scarborough · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 1635 Location: None

I'm not suggesting that's the only solution as that aspect of it is, to me, mechanical relative to the conceptual aspect (i.e. are performers and venue owners willing to take this out to the agencies to get legal). The mechanical aspects of a project are always a nuisance but they're not usually terminal whereas there's no reason to talk at all without at least an implicit agreement that it's worth doing.

Seems to me the agreement, albeit on a small scale, is there and Kim has graciously volunteered to get more information so perhaps the mechanical aspects of implementing this will start getting more important as people get serious about making it happen. I very much hope that is the case as this problem has haunted people since the first chord got strummed in SL.
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Distilled1 · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 421 Location: Chicago

Heres a little info I found. And has useful info.

"Like ASCAP and SESAC, BMI offers licensing for Internet use of their compositions. Unlike ASCAP and SESAC, BMI offers an online licensing account center to help you find the license you need. BMI offers a convenient interactive questionnaire to arrive at the correct license for you.

BMI's licensing is substantially simpler and more affordable than the other two. The minimum fee, currently $295 as of this writing, is all you will owe if your annual revenue is under $15,000. If your revenue exceeds $15,000 you still have very reasonable options with BMI, and recordkeeping is also much simpler. These terms are excellent and BMI should be applauded for making the process far less painful. In fact, I recommend the use of BMI music on your website (with the appropriate license, of course).

Although BMI does not currently base its rates on the exact number of music listening sessions that took place, you will still be contacted by BMI and required to report the music listening activity on your website, including both the songs that were offered and how often they were downloaded. So good recordkeeping is essential. But since BMI's rates are not session-based, you should be able to meet these recordkeeping requirements by analyzing your website's log files... provided you keep them, that is. However, if you have built a sophisticated, database-driven music delivery system that makes it impossible to figure out which songs were listened to by looking at the server logs, make sure you build a recordkeeping system directly into your database.

I do have one complaint with BMI: you won't find a link to account.bmi.com on www.bmi.com's main licensing page! Instead you are encouraged to send email... to an address that never responded to me when I previously wrote about this subject.

Why wasn't this information more readily available on BMI's home page? Who knows! Fortunately, the brilliant singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton knew about account.bmi.com. And when I spotted his hilarious easy-listening cover of "Baby Got Back," I realized he was the man to ask. Many thanks Jonathan Coulton for his insights into the Internet cover-song licensing process.
Obtaining an ASCAP Performance License
You can obtain an ASCAP license for an Internet radio station from ASCAP's Internet Music License Agreements page.

Actually, there are two types of licenses offered. The difference in price is not great, so it's worth understanding what is permitted by each.
The Non-Interactive License: "Radio" Only
ASCAP's non-interactive license covers websites that function much like a radio station, in that the user can't decide what songs to listen to when, and there is no pre-announced list of songs to be played and when. The minimum annual fee for the "non-interactive" license is $288, as of this writing.
The Interactive License: Music On Demand
Sites that allow users to listen to what they want, when they want, will need to choose ASCAP's "Interactive License." The Interactive license has a minimum fee of $340, as of this writing, and higher rates as well. Otherwise it is quite similar to the non-interactive license, with a similar choice of rate schedules.
The Big Catch: Paying For Music That Isn't Theirs
As of this writing, ASCAP offers a choice of three rate schedules. The first one appears to be the most attractive, with the lowest rates. But read carefully! All three schedules calculate your rate based on your website's revenue, and again based on music listening sessions, with the larger of the two being the amount you owe. But under schedule A, you owe even if the revenue or music listening did not involve ASCAP music in any way!

And under schedule C, you pay only based on revenue or music listening that does relate to ASCAP artists... but the rates are much higher.

Read the fine print and choose carefully!
Recordkeeping Requirements
Notice that the ASCAP licenses require you to keep track of your music listeners and send in regular reports. Good recordkeeping is an absolute requirement.

Whose job is it to figure out that a set of songs were listened to by the same person over a 35-minute period, meaning that only one "session" was involved by ASCAP's definition (as of this writing)? It's your job. And you need to be able to document that and back it up. I suggest handling this by requiring the use of session cookies and refusing access to users whose browsers fail to accept them, bouncing them back to a "please turn on cookies in your browser" page until they turn them on. Then you can safely avoid paying 10 times for 10 song plays that were, in reality, all by the same person in the same hour. PHP is a great tool for this. With PHP you can easily log the start of each song playback to a database along with a session ID.

Performance Licensing for SESAC Compositions
Like ASCAP, SESAC offers a standard Internet licensing agreement. You can find that license here. As of this writing, you'll pay a minimum of $101, twice a year. In addition, as of this writing you'll pay $.000604 per "aggregate tuning-hour," or ATH (an hour of listening for a single user). You will pay more if your website offers multiple "components" such as streaming, podcasting and downloading.
Paying for downloads as a "component" through SESAC does not mean you have paid for the mechanical rights. You must do that separately if you are offering permanent downloads!

Note that if 100 users listen to the same stream for an hour, that comes to 100 Aggregate Tuning-Hours. "

I tried at one time to see what it would cost me to set up legit and pay a blanket license to bmi and ASACP on my stream, but found it impossible to do reason ...
1. There is still no completed or black and white law, its all still so gray.
2.there are internet radio fees,this looks to be what we would pay at this time, as there is no way to pay per food and drink etc.

In the long run it is up to the stream owner to pay as its there "radio" and heres the issue we are playing live covers not recorded this is where its a mess. as if we pay the radio fee we can still be sued for the performance fee and the way these buggers are they will come after us for the mechanical as well, weather they have legal right to do so or not.

An Interesting story with post from "websherif" in the talk can be found here http://news.dmusic.com/article/29703 a little background it is about a you tube video take down of a cover Van Morrison's Brown eyed girl, that is now back up Very Happy

and whats going on that its considered broadcasting.. but has that extra edge of film sync in it. its back up because giving away or preforming for free over the internet at this time has no laws regarding that, its not law its just strong arm by the industry, just like the RIAA strong arms, what did they have to do? post that it was written by and copyrights by... So at this time at least from what I can tell as long as a musician is playing free(no pay base) than saying this is a cover of "song name" by"artist/band" published by and copywrights by...its covered ... tips what a couple USDs I wouldn't consider that revenue.

but I am no lawyer and am also one of the people that fight against the majors and there collection agency's (RIAA etc.

For the DJs that play other peoples music and mix scratch what ever, its black and white you pay or stand the chance of getting caught, I would think the search the shoutcast streams all the time, of course a private non listed stream url is hard to find no?
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Distilled1 · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 421 Location: Chicago

Also note on the internet based licensing, its based on web site ... would that then be the land the music url is on or the stream url onl, as theres no site?

this is why its hard, if there was a blanket for all and we made a small group and paid that would be great.... but do we want to open that can of worms with any agency and or association ?

they may give us a grate rate but I bet the #'s would be insane, I can ask what the blanket is at dmusic.com for streaming/downloading, I guess this could be the same as preforming, still think its a big can of worms! And they are very hungry fish!

ASCAP license fee dispute over streaming digital services, rate holding here. USA v. ASCAP, No. 41-1395 (WCC) (S.D.N.Y., White Plains, opinion and order 4/30/0 Cool

:

"[T]he fee for a blanket license for unlimited performance of all music in the ASCAP repetory for all open periods to December 31, 2009 shall be determined by multiplying the total revenue of the licensed business unit ... less customary deductions for advertising sales commissions and traffic acquisition costs, by a music-use-adjustment fraction whose numerator is the total number of hours music is streamed to users by the licensee ... and whose denominator is the total number of hours of use of the licensee's website ... and applying to the resulting music-use-adjusted revenue a fee rate of 2.5%."
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Kim Seifert · Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 212 Location: Ohio

Distilled....thanks for the info but I am speaking with the legal departments of these agencies to come up with an amicable solution outside of what is offered on their website. Hugs!
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Silas Scarborough · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 1635 Location: None

I can't do much more than kibitz at this point but a bit of encouragement to Kim and Distilled for this great research wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

What I'm hoping is that there's a blanket license that would cover all of SL and then we could manage how to pay it. If licensing is at an individual level, it'd be kind of a mess.
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Find a place to play and I'll roll the P.A. anywhere
If you want to play, bring yer guitar

Distilled1 · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 421 Location: Chicago

I know Dmusic.com has a blanket for all covers on the site, now its a little different than streaming live, but... I know that the lawyer that owns and runs it allows us to play any cover by a Dmusic.com registered artist on the radio stream (public listed) as well, so if I get an answer I will post the cost here I would think that it can't be that bad.

but I believe as well we would need to make a LLC out of a co-op type thing, maybe not I don't know. I'm an Artist (hence) my bad typing and spelling lol)

And thanks Silas. its something we all really need to watch and be aware of if nothing else Wink

_________________
"Being drunk is a good disguise.
I drink so that I can talk to Ass Holes,
This includes myself"
-J.Morrison
http://distill.dmusic.com