[geeks] Legal Corporate Music Servers

[Phil Stracchino]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> On May 26, 2009, at 4:37 PM, Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick at zill.net>  
> wrote:
> 
>> Rick Hamell wrote:
>>> Does any one on the list work for a company that does, or  
>>> implemented a
>>> corporate level music server that was legal in the eyes of the RIAA  
>>> and
>>> their clients?
>>
>> I think what you could get away with, would be a license for your
>> "cafeteria" that follows the pricing of the ASCAP model.  That is,
>> ignore the part about them each listening to separate music and just
>> focus on a license for a company cafeteria with x number of seats.
> 
> You would likely get an a for effort, but would likely still be afoul  
> of the RIAA, and your contributions to the RIAA (license fees) would  
> help fund your prosecution!

Oh, bugger.  I thought I knew someone who's managed this, but I was
misremembering the details.

Here's the short and dirty.  About 1998, we tried to do this at Cygnus,
but the minimum license that could be negotiated at the time was for 10K
listeners for one year for about $5,000, which clearly wasn't on.

About 2005, we (a different we involving many of the same people) tried
to do the same thing at another company.  The good news was, we were
able to talk ASCAP down to a $100/year license for up to 50 people.  The
bad news is, the terms of the license granted ASCAP the right to look at
ANY AND ALL digital data in the company at any time.  Our legal counsel
said "Dream on", amended the license to something feasibly acceptable to
an intellectual-property-based technology company, and sent it back to
ASCAP for their approval.  ASCAP said, "License terms are
non-negotiable, take it or leave it."  We left it.


(Well, actually, she didn't say "Dream on", she demanded to know what
kinda *&%$*!#% they were smoking.  But you get the idea.)


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.