to be a public performance, it need not be received by the public every time.' It also claims the promotional ring tone previews that carriers offer online are a public performance. Now, ASCAP contends that once downloaded into a phone, a ring tone file can be played in public, so there is 'no question' it meets the definition of a public performance under terms of the federal Copyright Act of 1976.ĪSCAP says the tones are 'public, regardless of whether some customers' phones may be sometimes switched to vibrate, turned off or located in the home. ASCAP claims that some wireless providers, which were previously paying for ring tone licenses for public performances, used that decision to justify canceling those payments. The current dispute stems from a 2007 rate court decision that determined the act of downloading music files from Internet sites could not be considered a public performance. Performance fees are different from fees collected by other music industry organizations from the sale of recorded music. District Judge William Conner in White Plains, N.Y., whose court has the jurisdiction to set rates for fees ASCAP collects on behalf of more than 350,000 composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers in the United States.ĪSCAP and other performing rights organizations like BMI collect licensing and royalty fees when its members' songs are heard in public, such as on the radio or TV, or at a concert, club or shopping mall. It's more of a business-to-business issue.'

'We're going to fight hard for the very principle that the livelihoods of our members is at stake,' said ASCAP attorney Richard Reimer. They strongly denied that the group was going after consumers and said critics like von Lohmann were using 'scare tactics.' 'We may be annoying people, but we're not infringing copyright law.'īut officials for ASCAP said the New York organization is only trying to collect its fair share of revenue from the businesses that are profiting from ring tones. 'Clearly they are pointing a finger at every consumer that is holding a cell phone that goes off in the park or at the beach,' said Fred von Lohmann, the digital rights group's senior intellectual property attorney. If ASCAP proves its case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation of San Francisco says it could cost consumers and technically turn millions of ring tone users into copyright violators. retail sales in 2008, the last year the publishers' rights group made such forecasts. (BMI) said ring tones would generate about $510 million in U.S. One study pegs worldwide ring tone revenue at $5 billion in 2009. The case is the latest skirmish in the battle between the music industry and technology companies over copyright law, and one legal expert says it threatens to drag consumers into the middle of it.

wireless carriers, AT&T and Verizon, to pay for public performance licenses for cell phone ring tones. That's the question raised by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a music industry licensing group that is asking a federal judge in New York to require the two largest U.S.

Good ringtones for cell phones