Toshen wrote:
Quote:
Biden needs to draw attention to the fact that the GOP has pissed off many recording artists by using their work without permission.
I heard McCain paid a fee for the Barracuda song, and the band turned around and sent their royalty check to support Obama lol.
While I'm sure you did "hear it", you do realize why it should be obvious to you that this is false, right?
While I've certainly not researched this specific event, it looks to me like it's a stunt by the artists to get their opinion out there and a "zing" against the McCain/Palin ticket, which in turn allows the sheep out there to parrot it and think it's a big deal. Unless they used the song in an advertisement, or it was part of a scheduled performance used to draw people to an event, there's no copyright infringement here. They can make a big deal about sending a cease and desist order, but it's meaningless.
You do not need an artist's permission to play a recording of their song in the background as part of some other event. If you did every single bar, stripclub, dance club, and party would have to pay (the artists, not just the DJ) to provide music for their activities. Same deal applies to political events. If they want to play Heart's songs in the background they can. I'm sure they'll avoid doing so because of the order, but legally Heart can't make them. It's part of the deal when you make money selling something. The person who paid money for it (a copy of the CD in this case) gets to play and listen to the music.
What's funny is that while I've heard the barracuda nickname mentioned, I have not *once* heard the song being played in any manner relating to Palin. Maybe it was on in the background during the convention and I missed it, but this is a bit of a stretch. Hardly "cease and desist" worthy...