04-27-2007, 10:37 AM
Quote:ASCAP isn't enjoying the tune that came out of a federal district court in New York yesterday.
The court ruled that music downloads don't constitute performances of copyrighted works, and are merely mechanical reproductions of the copyrighted material. This denies ASCAP any entitlement to collect royalties for downloads as they do for web radio streams...
The judge compared the situation where a purchaser listens to an mp3 during a download to a customer at a music store buying a CD and then immediately listening to it before leaving the store. Surely, this wouldn't result in a public performance by the vendor, right? The court here certainly didn't seem to think so, and so it struck down ASCAP's attempts to get performance royalties from the online music stores...
full article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/26/...formances/