Word: ascap
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...years of its court-studded existence the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers has fought many a stiff fight to collect revenue for its members when their music was publicly performed. Radio even prompted the Federal Government to charge ASCAP with violation of the Anti-Trust Law (TIME, July 1, et ante). The case is still pending but odds so far have favored ASCAP, which has made no bones about controlling the bulk of the popular music on which Radio depends...
Biggest blow of its career was struck at ASCAP last week from within its own organization, when four of its publishers and their subsidiaries resigned their memberships. Together the four claim to have published some 40% of the music most in demand. They are Harms, Inc., M. Witmark & Sons, T. B. Harms Co. and Remick Music Corp., all subsidiaries now of Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. which announced that it would hereafter do its own dickering...
Radio's complaint is that ASCAP charges too much for its music (5% of a broadcaster's net receipts). Warner Brothers says that it asks too little. ASCAP's President Gene Buck stated last week that all the important songwriters were bound personally to the Society by new five-year contracts, that Warner Brothers' experiment would depend on finding new talent. But ASCAP was obviously perturbed. Its strength has been its ability to dictate terms without thought of rivalry. An ASCAP rival is what Radio has long been wanting...
...court contest over the legal character of ASCAP, with a long summer adjournment, will doubtless run well into the autumn. Whatever the result, chances are that there will be two more rounds, one in the Circuit Court of Appeals, another before the U. S. Supreme Court...
Before that tribunal Lawyer Burkan has already won one great victory for ASCAP. In 1917 when restaurants and hotels were the principal pirates of copyrighted music the late Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes laid down this dictum: "If the rights under the copyright are infringed only by a performance where money is taken in at the door, they are very imperfectly protected. ... If music did not pay it would be given up. If it pays, it pays out of the public's pocket. Whether it pays or not, the purpose of employing it is profit, and that is enough...