ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings

[p2p rules]

ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it without a license. At least that's the import of a brief [2.5mb PDF] it filed in ASCAP's court battle with mobile phone giant AT&T.

This will doubtless come as a shock to the millions of Americans who have legitimately purchased musical ringtones, contributing millions to the music industry's bottom line. Are we each liable for statutory damages (say, $80,000) if we forget to silence our phones in a restaurant?

ASCAP's outlandish claim is part of its battle with major mobile carriers (including Verizon and AT&T) over whether ASCAP is owed any money for "public performances" of the musical ringtones sold by the carriers. The carriers point out that the owners of the musical compositions (i.e., songwriters and music publishers) are already paid for each ringtone download, but ASCAP claims that it's owed another royalty for the "public performances" (i.e., ringing in a restaurant) of those same ringtones.

EFF

[wonderer]

If this stupidity goes on it might going to be very costly to win the Olympics for instance...
How much will they take to have the national hymn of the winners played.

[White Stripes]

i wonder how big of a fine you would get slapped with if your ringtone were white noise (static) ... since it contains every frequency needed to produce every song in exsistance...

[Forested665]

i wonder how big of a fine you would get slapped with if your ringtone were white noise (static) ... since it contains every frequency needed to produce every song in exsistance...

idk that this applies for other countries  but......

3G cell phones operate at a frequency in which they cause interference with pretty much all conventional speaker near by.
usually producing pink and sometime white noise during transmission and reception. If you cant hear it coming out of your phone go near a stereo turn the volume all the way up and then mute it. Send a text and your speakers will make sound due to the board traces picking up the signals and the transistor not being able to switch back fast enough to accurately reproduce them causing it to generate frequencies within the audible range.

[White Stripes]

never heard white nose from the signal but i have heard chirping noises when it looses then finds a tower.... and a general buzzing when a call is about to come in.... but i think we're getting even more off topic...