A Ringtone Is Not A Public Performance, Judge Says

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It seems like common sense, but it still took a judge's decision to decide that a phone ringtone does not equate to a public performance, despite the arguments of the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and BMI.

The ASCAP originally claimed that they should receive royalties for ringtones as it counts as a public performance. They went to court, and a judge has just made a ruling that destroys the ASCAP's claims, citing that for it to be a performance that breaches the Copyright Act, there must be commercial intent, and nobody buys ringtones and play them in order to make money. This assumes playing a ringtones counts as a performance, which it does not, so there's absolutely no grounds for these claims.

This is not the first time such a ridiculous claim has been made. Recently, and some of these claims are from the ASCAP/BMI, these claims range from wanting Congress to guarantee their profit, regardless of market conditions. They also want money from YouTube embeds, despite Google/YouTube already giving them ad money from these embeds. Even the 30 second previews on music stores like iTunes or Amazon aren't exempt, with the ASCAP/BMI wanting to be paid for these "performances" as well.

More:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200...02486549.shtml