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Legal
More on Springsteen, ASCAP and pub singers doing Boss songs
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 9 February 2010
Some in the US music publishing sector are quietly fuming at Bruce Springsteen’s decision last week to publicly distance himself from a lawsuit launched by collecting society ASCAP against a New York bar which allowed a band to perform two of The Boss’ songs in 2008 without the appropriate performing rights licence. A spokesman for Springsteen last week told reporters the singer did not give his permission to be named as a plaintiff on the lawsuit, and that he did not support the action.
But some publishing insiders say that Springsteen is being hypocritical, hitting out at the ASCAP action because he doesn’t want to be seen to be part of the litigious music industry establishment, yet continuing to cash performance royalty cheques from the collecting society; an income stream that couldn’t be sustained unless the likes of ASCAP enforced its members’ copyrights through legal action whenever they are known to have been infringed – ie he wants the rewards of copyright, but without being seen to be the enforcer of intellectual property rights against ‘the common man’.
Meanwhile, Digital Music News says it has discovered a number of other previous lawsuits against US bars and restaurants for similar violations of Springsteen’s copyrights, through unlicensed public performance of his songs, in which the singer was also named as a co-plaintiff, but where he didn’t object to involvement in the litigation. Though it isn’t clear if Springsteen was aware of those other legal actions.
