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it. It's wrong!

The way I see it, this makes them no different from organizations like the RIAA. I've seen the arguments for royalties and some are convincing. When these groups first started out they did good by musicians and songwriters, but that was then and this is now. Times have changed. These same organizations that take care of this sort of thing have become overly aggressive and greedy. Many artists signed with them have noted how the money collected from bars, clubs and such is spent on lavish parties at the "non-profit organization" which cuts into payments for the artists they claim to support. That's IF they get the money at all! Some get paid and some don't.

I'm not a big fan of most of the cartel music out there anyway but why are they even allowed to attack venues that play public domain or non-copyrighted music is played? In those cases who are they collecting fees for? Racket! I ask again, why should musicians continue to receive money for work they did years ago? Sure, people benefit from it and enhance their own business from it but software does the same thing. So do a lot of other things. I'll bet that if those same musicians had to pay the makers of their instruments every time they picked up an instrument to play it or pay an engineer every time they used a piece of software to enhance the songs on an album in the studio I bet they wouldn't like that too much would they? I'm not saying people shouldn't get paid for their work but some of this is out of hand! It was only last year that Carlos Gardel's work - a tango singer who died in the 1930's - was put into the public domain. I can understand receiving royalties for twenty or even thirty years but fifty or more years is too long. Who's benefiting after forty or fifty years? Do they have the ethical right to continue to benefit for that long? It's about time the laws were changed.

Some people object to comparing creative work to other kinds of work - as if the work others do is less important or noble. They feel that creative work deserves royalties because it's, well creative! A snobbish argument that holds no water. I'm a creative person (I'm a writer and poet) I also used to be a musician though I no longer play violin. My point is that I don't expect or demand that my work continue to make me money many years after I've created it. If it does, then that's fine, I won't object to it. But I'm not interested in suing anyone who wants to use it for free to enhance their own projects, just so long as they give proper credit. It's time the laws were changed and that groups like ASCAP who make much of their money by filing lawsuits over copyrighted and noncopyrighted material find their ethical roots. Or disappear.

Learn more about this author, Victoria Jeffrey.
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