[cc-community] ASCAP

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Mon May 12 14:27:25 EDT 2008


On Monday 12 May 2008 13:36:50 Terry Hancock wrote:
> Brenda Kayne wrote:
> > I haven't even applied for a Creative Commons license yet.
>
> Oops, misconception alert! :-D
>
> It's not you being "licensed", it's just you choosing "a license" for
> your work.
>
> It's like a boilerplate contract from a collection of standard forms. CC
> doesn't "approve you" or anything like that, nor do you "join" (there
> may be such a thing as "joining CC", but it's not like a collecting
> society where you have to be a member to use the system).
>
> > I had just figured that I wanted to get out of ASCAP, be free and clear
> > of it, and then sign up for my Creative Commons license.
>
> Okay, to clarify the issues a little:
>
> 1) You do not have to "apply" for anything with CC, it's just a service
> providing licensing tools for you to use (you are a free agent; CC
> licenses are themselves free-licensed; CC is NOT a collecting society;
> CC won't pay, promote, or endorse you; and you do not pay CC to use
> their licenses)
>
> 2) You do not have to leave ASCAP to be able to use CC licenses
>
> 3) There MAY be some weird stuff in your ASCAP contract that interferes
> with CC licensing (people who are supposed to know say there isn't --
> but personally I know nothing about ASCAP or their contracts), or that
> allows ASCAP to continue demanding licensing fees on your behalf, but
> equally, there may NOT be such a legal basis.

I need to look into this some more as I think I may be interested in ASCAP or 
BMI but I want to use BY-SA on my musical works and do not want a mess.

Something I have run into is the concept of a blanket license from a CS. The 
license fee is not going to change for a radio station that is music based 
but does an hour of talk with no music as opposed to one with all music. I 
would imagine it would also not change even if the talk hour was an hour of 
BY or BY-SA music.

I guess you could look at it sort of like an all you can eat deal. Is the 
eatery ripping off those who eat less?
>
> It's possible that ASCAP is abusing your contract and making ILLEGAL
> demands for money from people using your work under CC licenses. Or
> maybe, they are simply confused. It definitely sounds like they are not
> dealing fairly with you.

See, this is an interesting avenue for me. If they want to prove that they 
used my works as per the BY-SA license cool, if not, use the CS license.

Now, I keep thinking the BY-SA license might need some adjustment to make it 
work for music and radio as I might prefer but that is another issue.
>
> The unanswered question here is "does your ASCAP contract actually allow
> them to collect on music by you which is used under the terms of a CC
> license?" I'm not positive what the answer is on that, and I'll have to
> hope that someone who understands the issue will fill you in on that.

Does anyone know if ASCAp and BMI issue blanket licenses? That may be a part 
of the issue here.
>
> Cheers,
> Terry

all the best,

drew


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