You may have seen (P.D.) or (Trad.) on album covers and wondered what it meant.
(Trad. is short for traditional). The U.S. Copyright, Patent and Trademark laws
provide a period of ownership for creative works, inventions and product names,
after which ownership is supposed to expire and pass into the Public Domain,
which means that they are available for any use by anyone without threat of
infringement lawsuits. However, law allows the copyright of an "arrangement"
of a public domain work, and there are thousands of arrangements on file for
well-known P.D. works, and it is unclear exactly what is privately or publicly
owned.
ASCAP and BMI are private licensing organizations that monitor radio,TV, movie,
restaurant, store & live performances of copyrighted music, and require
users to pay yearly license fees to create a fund (now a yearly amount of about
$320 million), from which royalty payments are made according to statistical
samples of airplay and various calculations. If an arrangement of a public domain
piece is sampled during such a survey, the copyright owner receives less money
(about 1/5) than an original work.
Many of us feel that the current system is not ideal, for several reasons. It
discriminates statistically in favor of major artists, since money is paid out
based on very small samples, when the computer power exists to actually log
airplay, as is done in many countries. It prevents popular artists and record
companies from recording and disseminating traditional music because they will
make a lot less royalty money, thus making it hard to find traditional music
on mass media. (If you play your own songs on TV, you make a lot more money)
There are also many songs (including some extremely well-known songs) that have
traditional melodies, but that are registered as original music. The copyright
owners receive royalty money for music that belongs to everyone. Many familiar
songs that were learned as folk music or collected as folklore were copyrighted
by folklorists and musicians in the 1920's and 1930's. Club owners and promoters
who hire traditional music performers must pay license fees to ASCAP and BMI
that are paid out based on sampling of radio airplay and thus tend to end up
in the pockets of the rich rather than the actual authors of the music. (ASCAP
samples public radio at a rate of .000066 or only 27.6 minutes a year per station!)
Many of us feel that public domain music has been used for personal profit rather
than to benefit the public, much like our public lands and resources, yet the
system is set up such that there has never been legislation passed (except by
irate states that tried to outlaw ASCAP and lost in federal court) by elected
officials to regulate it.
For more information or suggestions as to what you might do to help our traditional
arts, send a SASE to me c/o Woodpecker. I am currently researching the issues
of public domain copyrights, and will gladly pass along my findings. Our national
musical treasures must be cared for and remain available for all of us to enjoy,
just like our natural resources and parks.
© 1993 by Harvey Reid
Harvey Reid has been a full-time acoustic guitar player, songwriter, traditional
musician, and free-lance minstrel since 1974. He has recently released his 11th
solo recording on Woodpecker Records. He lives in Southern Maine. He has written
an extensive piece on ASCAP
& BMI which is posted here.
For more information about the Public Domain, check out http://www.bright.net/~pdinfo
and also Bob Katzmarek's extensive and interesting site at
http://members.aol.com/Katzmarek
This web site
concerns the music and life of acoustic musician, writer & music educator Harvey Reid.
If
you don't find what you want, or if you have comments or questions, please email
to
This web site
concerns the music and life of acoustic musician, writer & music educator Harvey Reid.
If
you don't find what you want, or if you have comments or questions, please email
to
