On the other hand, a composer may only have one great song in them. Music also has a much longer “lifespan” than a prescription drug. Nothing is coming down the pipeline to replace “Happy Birthday”.

And while music is definitely for the public good it’s not the same level of public good as a prescription drug. So it makes sense that copyright laws for these two are different.

This is not a defense of the Sonny Bono law at all.

It really doesn’t bug me that a quartet sang a “bad word” on TV. We are a modern vibrant art form just like a lot of other kinds of music and I don’t have an issue with lyrics more in the modern vernacular. This doesn’t mean I WANT to hear barbershop music laced with obscenities (I don’t consider the bad word in question an obscenity); I think the “old-fashionedness” of barbershop is somewhat comforting, just that I don’t see isolated instances like this as a big deal.

What is the difference from the copyright laws standpoint between selling music by mail order versus online downloading (i.e. what extra hurdles would we have to go through to make it available online to the members)?

We’d hoped we were doing right by the Society by not showing up in t-shirts and sneakers, and refusing the spandex body suits and hula hoops. There’s no accounting for taste (less ness.)

What could be more wholesome than singing praises for Betty White? She’s an American institution.

Honestly, on my part there wasn’t a thought given whether it would be appropriate to make people laugh in this silly way. Barbershop Quartets strive to entertain, to showcase joy of life and make people’s lives better even for just a moment.

Our biggest concern, as a hometown quartet, was to sing well enough that people would enjoy the harmony, the genuineness, and the accessibility of the craft, and would laugh at the joke, not the quartet.

We had a great time, and hoped that barbershoppers would enjoy another moment of positive face-time for the craft.

The feedback we got was happy audiences, happy producers, and happy barbershoppers.

Now if we had been performing on the Ed Sullivan Show, he probably would have had something even less risky for us to do.

I think you’d be surprised at the quality of performance and art that would come out if you were to allow Society members to freely tinker with Society content in non-commercial ways. And if it DOES become commercially viable — say, as a synchronization to a really cool little video that someone wants to use in a big way — then the Society and the performers could perhaps share the wealth.

I guess these guys operated under the maxim that it is better to act and beg forgiveness. Let the more responsible parties act, too, and you just might find the E in SPEBSQSA grows a few points or picas.

You mention in one response about the Society becoming copyright cops, and then in another reference 4-men singing a 70-year-old song for their own enjoyment.

The only copyright policing I saw from the Society were NOT 4 guys around a kitchen table, but very high quality, high profile groups singing songs WELL below 70-years-old.

Some may view that as simply a matter of semantics, but I think it is an entirely different shade of argument.

Now even with the Society owning the rights, the quartet still chose to do the song (probably because the arr. is owned by SPEBSQSA) and sang the parody lyrics (likely provided by the TV producers). IMO this is not quite the quality of “wholesome” we as barbershop singers strive for.

This is not a case of paternalistic. Much of our concern is protecting the organization…YOUR organization. Not strifling creativity. If we were concerned about that we’d be policing anywhere there is woodshedding!

But that’s a little farther than I want to go right now. I only advocate that if the Society owns the copyright and they are not making it commercially available, then they release it into the PUBLIC DOMAIN, or better yet, Creative Commons with limitations on commercial use.

As far as the Society’s stance on ALL SPEBSQSA-owned material that they wish to maintain the quality of the work, I think that’s a bit paternalistic. If we are Society members, and pay yearly for the privilege, then how about being allowed to perform it as we see fit, and let the public — or other barbershoppers decide? Could we have a place where we could post links to our performances and let the other Society members judge?

I think it’s the “permission required” part that stifles the spirit of Keeping The Whole World Singing (with permission of the BHS, who reserves the right to judge the caliber of your performance, and who may or may not approve it for the general public, provided you submit your performance in advance to the unadvertised entity inside the BHS in charge of such approval). See what I mean?

Let’s take it out of the realm of “legal” and into the realm of “art”, and let the market judge the quality. The BHS can still retain commercial use rights, or even have an up-front 50% stake in any commercial use. Either way, I’ll bet it’s more than they’re getting right now.

It’s that second part that the Society is not currently interested in doing, and what I disagree with.

Allan

This is exactly the kind of blinkered thinking that is going to mean the demise of the Society. Unless it is prepared to change its way of thinking, there is no point in trying to “work within” the BHS to get copyright laws changed.

Jeff White and others may not be happy with the law as written, but as long as it exists BHS has no choice but to observe it scrupulously. I’m sure Jeff feels that he did the “right thing” in letting his membership lapse over this arcane issue, but a better choice would have been to work within the BHS and the existing system to effect desired change. Leaving the BHS does nothing to advance either side of the argument.

The ideal of barbershop harmony as an art form is the promotion of casual, amateur singing. Modern copyright laws serve to discourage casual, amateur singing. It ought to be obvious which side of the fence we should be on.