NBC: audience recording

[Chas Winans]

It depends on the musician.  Some don't mind, and have never cared.  The Grateful Dead was one of those bands.  Most, however, mind.  They mind a lot -- to a point where they do about everything affordable to prevent it.
   
  And no -- it is NOT more important to be thinking about playing the music instead of who's out there recording it.  
   
  Imagine this:
   
  Musician does a show of lots of new material -- I mean, material that has just been composed over the past few days.  Musician tries out new material at gigs.  Someone in the audience records those gigs, knows the songs being presented are brand new.  Then audience member who did recording goes home, writes down the lyrics and files them with the U.S. Copyright Office as his own.  
   
  An unlikely scenario, I grant you.  But it could conceivably happen.  The original author would probably win a case like this in court, but he/she would also have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on attorney fees to gain indiputable possession and rights to his intellectual property, even though he KNOWS he wrote the song to begin with.  
   
  Good IP lawyers cost $400 to $500 per hour for their time.  Got bucks and don't care?  Then you must be The Rolling Stones.
   
  Chuck

Fernando Toral <ftoral@mecon.gov.ar> wrote:
  Walter Potter wrote:
> Realistically, though, an artist on stage cannot any more avoid being 
> > photographed or videotaped than they can avoid breathing when they are on stage. 
> > There are too many people with cameras, too many people in the crowd to try to 
> > "police". 
> 
>
> That was my original point in this thread. Devices that record images, sound and/or video are just too commonplace now to try and control them. The divisions between still cameras, video cameras and sound recorders are starting to blur, at least on a non-professional quality level. Hand held devices like cell phones and PDAs are entering the mix as well. Hell, there are wristwatches with low quality cameras and voice recorders in them, how long before the quality gets up to a level that is acceptable to the YouTube audience? 
I'm not a musician. I don't believe I'll ever be one.
Even though, something I read today made me think about this subject.
Antonio Saramago, a 85 years old portuguese writer, was asked if 
technology is forcing literature, due to electronic documents that are 
nowadays replacing books.
He answered that he is not concerned about that, not if the writer has 
something to tell.

Now, let's turn this statement to the music thread (and not commenting 
about legal subjects)
How much does it matter to musicians if somebody in the audience records 
them?
Isn't it more important to play the music, than to be thinking if 
someone there in the crowd
is "stealing" their performance?


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