Ascap & Bmi

[bdayton]

Originally Posted by frarob

Your best resources are the website for the major administration societies - ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.

Most such questions can easily be answered by considering a simple common sense question. "Did I pay money for this?" If the answer is "no" than it's probably illegal. If the answer if "yes", then it depends upon "who" you gave your money to.

I have already been to ASCAP and BMI. Neither gave me the kinds of information that I was looking for. In fact, after visiting those sites, I was left with more questions than I started with. (Legalese is not my prefered language). Let me give you an example....

A singer brings in his/her own burned karaoke CD and askes me to play it. (S)he tells me that (S)he owns the original. I am not an agent for the Karaoke companies nor do I want to be one. Still, I have no reason to doubt his/her claim so I play the song......

If (S)he lied and the song was an illegal copy, (and I get caught), who get's to be Bruce's next "squeeze" in the slammer? (The owner of the bar? The Singer that brough in the disk? ..... (Gulp!.. Me! ) And where can a "Hold up in court" but still writen in the Kings english, copy of this information be found?

(The information I found at ASCAP and BMI was, from my perspective, almost completly incomprehensible.