Served and witnessed. Your ass is sued. 

If the campaign has bought the appropriate ASCAP/BMI licenses, a standard practice, this suit is headed for summary dismissal. It’s a publicity stunt, nothing more. Which, who could use some publicity more than Survivor?

Hopefully they’ll Charlie Crist him.

This post comes from a reporter that uses aggregation

Newt and the GOP. 

Instead of “Eye of the Tiger” you should have used the Clash.

The Clash.

Yo, Adrian. All he wants is to do is go the distance.

Tommy –

Can’t believe you missed this.  One of the lines of “Eye of the Tiger” is: “Still we take to the streetFor the kill with the skill to survive.”

Gingrich is saying that he now has the skill to kill Obama!!!!!!!!!  Can you believe the racial undertones of this? 

And Tigers – come from Asia.  Asia used to be a bigger part of the massive continent Pangea – which Africa was also part of – until the continent pulled apart, and became seperated by large oceans. 

Africa is where the ancestors of Barack Obama came from.

Holy crap!!!!!  By using this song, Gingrich obviously wants black people like President Obama to be seperated by oceans of injustice from the rest of the world!!!!!!!

I gave these GOP baggers all figured out!!!!!!! 

why does everything have to be a lawsuit?…  pencil in a phone call and kindly ask them to cease and desist…  conversely, if this goes back to 2009, why not wait until newt is done, one way or another, for maximum cash-in value?…  this song is so ubiquitous the company in question probably exists for no other reason than to sue their way into generating income…  then there is the question of “damages”…  jeez, what an embarrassing way to “survive”…

Actually Pablo, it is a referendum on music.  True conservatives would never vote a man into office that “liked a band on Facebook” to tell his story in songs and words.

Tommy, generally speaking I usually read your articles and sometimes even think you are trying to be fair (sometimes). But you were all over the place on this one. You start out with a decent recap of the lawsuit and then you uncomfortably segue into blustering about SOPA and end it with a diss on Survivor.  They may not have a super-deep catalog, but they do have a one hit wonder that connected with millions of people and is still in rotation on radio stations everywhere.

the clash is too cool for newt…  but better selections would have been “know your rights” or “should i stay or should i go?”…

They KNOW they would never get permission from the artists whose work they want to use so they use it until told to ‘cease and desist.’

Begging for forgiveness is easier than asking permission.

It shows just exactly how the GOP feels about artistic intellectual property. Remember that. 

Damn, you’re good at these dog whistles! :)

All you have to do to get “permission from the artists” is buy ASCAP/BMI licenses. Can you imagine if every time anyone wanted to play a song they had to contract directly with every artist? The system doesn’t work that way. Copyright holders contract with the licensing agencies, and the agencies contract with the users. Then, they distribute the proceeds back to copyright holders.

Your little screed is long on hatred and short on facts.

romney knows so little about this that his campaign asked kid rock for permission to use one of his songs, to which he enthusiastically agreed to, at no charge…

Kind of like Shepard Fairey, who violated copyright terms by doctoring a 2006 AP photo of then Senator Barack Obama for Fairey’s famous “Hope” poster of Obama.

You mean the GOP feels something like that? 

But abstraction in art is different. He used the photo as a template for the actual artwork..he didn’t just take the photo into photoshop, toss a text box with the word HOPE in there and call it an original work.  Not to mention that AP settled and are doing business together. 

…..don’t forget about all the righties who were on his side when it came to SOPA/PIPA. 

That’s actually exactly what he did. 

yeah, I’m sure.  I’ve been involved in digital marketing for about 10 years and it’s an on-going debate amongst the design community.

A settlement means that the March trial between Fairey and the AP in New York will not take place. As part of their settlement, Fairey has agreed he will not use another AP photo in his work without obtaining a license from the news organization. 

The two sides also have agreed to share the rights to make the posters and merchandise bearing the “Hope” image. In addition, Fairey and the AP have agreed to additional financial terms that are confidential.

That isn’t a settlement that a guy with a good case makes.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/01/shepard-fairey-to-settle-hope-poster-case-with-associated-press.html?cid=6a00d8341c630a53ef0148c78c8694970c

that may be true among career political hacks, but the money in hollywood desperately clinging to their antiquated business models is largely lefty…  and we haven’t seen the last of this bad idea, they’ll trot it out again under a new name…

i think fairey’s work in this case was fair use…

Since the song is registered with ASCAP Is it asking too much for lazy reporters to find out if the Gingrich campaign has a license from ASCAP to use the song.  

WRONG–WRONG–WRONG!!!!

You CANNOT use someone else’s work which is copyright protected without the direct permission from the copyright holder or legal representative.  What you are referring to is performance end of the industry, i.e. top-40 bands, that license the use for entertainment only and which those fees are paid usually by the venue or promoter.  Political campaigns using a song as a theme does not qualify under either the public performance clause of the fair use exemption.   As a previous ASCAP member and now BMI, I can tell you that those 2 clauses above do not go far enough as there is no enforcement arm or monitoring method (soundscan, etc.) to track where fair-use ends and licensing begins off of the wires.  

Your observation is a common mistake.

Its a grey area – that is for sure.  Problem is, he was making money off of it.

But you might say that Newt using “Eye of the Tiger” is also fair use.  Being totally political in nature (which is given high First Amendment Protection), not for commercial profit, and not detrimental to the song in any way (okay, that is open for debate), I’d say Newt has a strong case of fair use as well.   

Doesn’t matter…the artist has the final say over the use unless it’s used in editorial reference, or Fair Use, etc.  A campaign theme doesn’t qualify.  If it did, why does every conservative who is asked to stop playing an artist’s song against his will cease immediately upon complaint?   

That can be said about the AP as well since they dropped similar law suits against a few retailers.

http://www.adweek.com/news/television/ap-settles-suit-over-hope-t-shirts-126008

Agreed, gk123. This really isn’t the first time that a politician has used a song by a relatively popular artist (at one point in time or another..maybe not today) and is then later asked by the artist to no longer use it. 

As mentioned above, Romney flat out asked Kid Rock if it was okay to use his song. Now, how ASCAP/BMI comes into play is another story…though I think that since they’re not being used for the purpose of selling the candidate, it likely falls under fair-use.  But if an artist says “no”, they kind of have to honor that.

WRONG–WRONG–WRONG!!!!

http://ascap.com/licensing/generallicensing/types.aspx

No, it would seem that they settled because they’re getting their cut.

His campaign song should be Starman by Bowie

@PabIo:disqus Agreed..and it so it goes for Fairey, as well….so maybe it’s safer to say that it was an equal win-win for both parties…a nice creative deal doing some work for AP,  not to mention that it was a nice dose of free publicity for him, resulting in him being put out into the mainstream.  Win-win.

POLITICAL CAMPAIGN seems to be missing from the list.  I wonder why?  Answer this please….every campaign season some conservative gets called out by a recording artist for using their song without permission.  According to your theory, the politician could simply tell the artist to go screw themselves because they legally paid for the right to play that song.  Instead, the song is immediately nixed from the campaign…..why is that?   

Just re-read this and realized that I wasn’t sure what you were suggesting in response to what I said…I’ll assume that I probably need to clarify my point.

As I said, he used the AP photo as a template..a basis for his design which is very different from pasting the original photo in photoshop, doing nothing to it to make it different, and then adding the word HOPE and calling it a design.  That’s not what he did.  What Fairey does is a great deal more complicated that…..therefore, abstraction in art is different…that’s where the fair use part comes in.  Though our opinions on the case are different from that of the judgement and those parties involved.