Clay Shirky speaks on Ted Talks About why SOPA/PIPA is Bad.

I watched a great video of a Ted Talk presentation today.  Clay Shirky gave a speech about why SOPA is a bad idea. In this speech he talked about the Stop Online Piracy Act. This act will allow the government to censor what you can or cannot put onto your website. This act is a bill in congress right now that states if you put media on your site that does not belong to you.. Ie..music, pictures, movies, video’s . ect… The government can shut your site down and will have all the search engines take their link to you down. Also they can come after you and prosecute you for steeling. The concept is actually to have a way to control online piracy over seas, however it gives a lot of leeway for the government to step into the domestic domain and control everything we do online.

 I speak for myself when I say I totally do not like this ideal. I am against online piracy, but I don’t agree with controlling what I can put up or not. Its kind of a catch 22. As a Record company owner, I 100% do not want anyone to use our music without paying for it. It’s like a painter painting a picture and everyone in the world being able to get it for free. The difference is the original painting is always worth more then copies, where as with music a copy is just as good as the original. As a person who loves music, I would like to continue to get music for free. I love being able to get all kinds of music without having to spend money to get it. I would be the customer that put’s my record company out of business.  SO the question is how do we fight this. Well we can call, write, and downright bother the mess out of our congressmen. With this being said, the choice is yours how you would like this to play out, but if you take no action do not be upset when the bill passes and you are now under more control. Peace!!! If you want to take action click this Link!

A.S.C.A.P.

The entertainment industry is one often depicting the glamorous or fun side of life, often leaving the business side out of the public’s eye. However in order for a lot of people to get paid for their work they must collect royalties. Royalties are money paid for the use of a writers, or composers works. People purchase the use of their music, usually licensed to them through a music publisher. The money for radio , club, elevator, and all other non-dramatic public performances of their copyrighted works are collected by performance rights organizations. Organizations such as American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

         A.S.C.A.P. is an organization made up of music writers, composers, and publishers. They collect royalties for the composers and writers, and distributes them accordingly. They along with a few other Performance Rights Organizations, have made it easy to collect royalties. Years ago a publisher would have to have connections with every radio station that plays there music. With organizations like A.S.C.A.P., Radio stations along with others pay them for a blackent license fee for the use of songs published by a large number of artist. The data of plays are sent to A.S.C.A.P and A.S.C.A.P will divide the royalties according to equal statistics for the music played.

         Performance Rights organizations allow writers such a s myself to be able to focus on our music instead of collecting money. I am a member of A.S.C.A.P. and have been for the past 6 years. It greatly effects my ability to make money. I highly recommend anyone that is in the music industry should deafeningly have a membership with one of these companies to get their fare share of the pie!.