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CMU Beef Of The Week #160: BMI v TMZ

By | Published on Friday 7 June 2013

BMI

The guys at US collecting society BMI aren’t overly impressed with the way gossip website TMZ has reported on action they’re taking against various cafes and bars which are playing music without the required public performance licences.

The TMZ “exclusive” certainly has an emotive headline, declaring that “Music company suit triggers nineteen nervous breakdowns”. Details of said nervous breakdowns aren’t especially forthcoming in the full article (or actually mentioned at all), but TMZ reports that twelve bars and restaurants are facing legal action for playing songs represented by BMI without a licence, adding that the action could force some of the eateries out of business.

That headline aside, BMI objects to a couple of elements of the TMZ story, which the company has asked be retracted (so far without success).

First that the report states that “for every BMI song that gets played on a bar jukebox or by a DJ without the proper fee being paid, BMI is entitled to $150,000 in damages”. The rights body says that, while it is true that the maximum damages allowed under US copyright law for any one infringement is $150,000, that doesn’t equate to an “entitlement”, and the society wasn’t seeking anything like that sort of recompense from the unlicensed bars.

The BMI bods also reckon that it was misleading of TMZ to kick off its story with a list of premiere league recording artists (both in list and photo montage form), implying that it was wealthy pop stars who were threatening to put these bars out of business. For starters, not all the recording artists mentioned necessarily wrote their biggest hits, and the list ignores the fact that BMI represents a massive community of songwriters, many of who are neither famous nor loaded.

Said BMI to Billboard: “Not all artists and performers are songwriters. This article inaccurately lists more than 20 artists and misrepresents them, assuming that they are all creators of musical works. The piece inaccurately suggests that these artists may be involved in litigation involving BMI”.

Of course it’s not uncommon for the operators of public spaces to gasp when they first learn that, under copyright law, they need a licence to play music. But that’s what copyright law (often) says, and to be fair to BMI, any action it is taking against these twelve bars sounds pretty run of the mill in the world of public performance licensing. Until said action is given the TMZ treatment, I suppose.



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