BMI Hurting Artists, Yet Again

from the making-it-more-expensive dept

For many years, we've written about how, for all their talk of "helping" artists, ASCAP and BMI are often harming up-and-coming musicians. That's because many musicians get their start playing local gigs at coffee shops and restaurants and the like, who often don't pay ASCAP or BMI. That should be fine, so long as the artists play only original songs, but ASCAP and BMI usually tell venues that they need to pay anyway, just in case someone plays a single covered riff. TorrentFreak has yet another such story, of a restaurant that stopped having a local band perform every Friday night after BMI demanded $3,000:

"I said the hell with it! We only have music on Friday nights. It’s not worth $3000. How is a neighborhood restaurant running on a razor-thin margin in this economy supposed to afford an extra $3000? So I cancelled the band. Net result? Our customers suffered, local music suffered. A complete lose-lose situation."

The bottom line to BMI and other collective rights organizations? Your customers are not your enemies. Promoting live music is good for BMI and the artists they collect royalties for. Working together with local businesses rather than trying to bully and intimidate them will leave all parties better off.

Of course, BMI and ASCAP don't really care. In the end, they're not there to protect the up-and-coming guys, but the huge acts who get the large checks.

Filed Under: collections, licensing, music, restaurants
Companies: bmi

BMI Says Club Is Too Sexy For Standard Fees, Voids Check, Sues For Non-Payment

from the 'irreparable-damage'?-if-only dept

BMI is back doing what BMI does best: hauling in the "rent." This time BMI is going after a nightclub in Michigan for not taking advantage of its "services."

Broadcast Music, Inc., the music licensing group, is suing the Lady Godiva's nightclub and its owner, Mark London, claiming the club has violated copyrights. BMI filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, alleging the club played songs by artists Rivers Cuomo ("Say It Ain't So"), R. Kelly ("Ignition") and Amy Winehouse ("You Know I'm No Good") without paying the proper music license fees. The suit claims the songs were played at the club -- without BMI permission -- on September 27, 2010.

As has been shown before, BMI needs nothing more than a few songs to build a claim against a business and it got the songs it needed. The filing (embedded below) is light on details but runs long on hyperbolic doomsaying. It would appear from BMI's own wording that unless Lady Godiva's rogue actions are stopped, the very future of performance rights groups is in peril. Check these out (page 4):

The specific acts of copyright infringement alleged, as well as the Defendant's entire course of conduct, have caused and are causing Plaintiffs great and incalculable damage.

Holy hell! A single nightclub in Grand Rapids, MI (Pop. 188,040) has broken BMI's calculator with its alleged course of conduct! Somebody needs to stop Godiva before its kills/breaks math again! But who?

Unless this Court restrains Defendants from committing further acts of copyright infringement, Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable injury for which they have no adequate remedy at law.

It's worse than I thought! BMI will have to go on the Injured Reserve List! For life! How many among us have carelessly "infringed copyrights" without thinking of the little people, like BMI, ASCAP and so many other battered acronyms? Who will nurse their "irreparable" wounds? Will BMI have to resort to vigilante justice to collect its fees? Is that the way we really want it? Limping performance rights organizations operating outside the law? I submit to you that we do not.

But that's only half the story (and what a half it is...) According to Lady Godiva's owner, Mark London, attempts were made to pay the licensing fees, but BMI tried to change the agreement.

London tells WZZM 13 News that BMI is seeking to have him sign a licensing agreement registering his club as an adult entertainment business, which he says it is not. He says that while his club does feature women dancing it is not a topless venue, as a 2006 Grand Rapids city ordinance no longer allows nudity.

London says he is in good standing with ASCAP and other licensing agencies. But when he sent checks to BMI to pay for music rights, London says the group voided the payments.

So, suddenly, "enough" just isn't enough for BMI. It wants more and it isn't shy about dragging a business into court until it's happy with the dollar amount. Understandably, BMI's filing says nothing about this dispute over categorization and relies solely on the testimony of three well-known tunes. This is a pretty thin filing for BMI, which probably explains the overwrought language.

BMI may have an incredible success rate with its lawsuits but trying to convince a judge that a business that could not possibly be an adult entertainment business is, in fact, an adult entertainment business is going to be a pretty tough sell, no matter how much supposed ongoing "irreparable damage" is involved.

Filed Under: clubs, music, performance licenses
Companies: bmi

Restaurant Owner Ordered To Pay BMI $30,450 For 'Illegally Playing' Four Unlicensed Songs

from the the-riaa's-statutory-claims-now-seem-almost-reasonable dept

Most reasonable people would agree that the RIAA's incredibly high statutory fees for infringement are ridiculous. Of course, this is why reasonable people aren't allowed anywhere near the royalty collecting process. BMI, on the other hand, is right in the middle of the royalty racket and has just wrapped up a successful lawsuit against Fosters, a North Carolina restaurant. For all its hard work "protecting songwriters," BMI will be receiving $30,450 for four "illegally played songs." In addition, Fosters has been ordered to pay $10,700 in legal fees.

According to BMI, the royalty collection agency made numerous attempts to collect a yearly fee from Foster's (currently $6,060), but had no success:

Broadcast Music Incorporated sued Fosters and claimed in court documents that it called the restaurant 56 times and mailed 29 letters. BMI says Fosters ignored its requests to get a license to play music.

"We've been attempting to resolve this for two years now," said Robbin Ahrold, BMI's vice president of corporate communications and marketing. "It is our obligation when we sign an agreement with these songwriters to be diligent and do what we can do to collect their royalties."

Fosters' owners have declined to comment on the situation and the filed documents only represent BMI's side of the story. However, reading through the filed communication, an interesting fact jumps out. BMI began sending communication regarding the restaurant's lack of proper licensing back in September of 2009, but it wasn't until May of 2010 that BMI even bothered to visit Fosters to verify that the business was actually playing unlicensed music. (From page 32 of the PDF.)

Due to your lack of response, BMI found it necessary to have our music researcher conduct our own primary research into the music use [sic] at your business. That music researcher visited your business and confirmed that you are in fact publicly performing music which would require a public performance license.

So, let me get this straight: BMI, out of the blue, starts sending letters demanding payment for music licenses. Restaurant owner logically wonders why he should pay someone he's probably never heard of over $6,000 a year in order to have music reach his diners' ears. BMI continues on like any other collection agency, sending letter after letter demanding payment. Owner still figures this is some sort of quasi-legal shakedown and checks into his options. (The letter on page 31 of the PDF begins with "I understand that you are licensed, or are considering licensing with another performing right [sic] organization and are questioning the need for a BMI Music License.") Only after failing to get Fosters to write them a check for its "services" does BMI even bother to see if it's barking up the right legal tree.

To make matters worse, even if BMI was successful in extracting a "music license" fee from Fosters, there's nothing preventing ASCAP or anyone else adding to the restaurant's Accounts Payable folder. And while Fosters may no longer be the target (the restaurant closed recently for matters "unrelated to the lawsuit"), BMI's shakedown attempts are still ongoing. Despite BMI's claims that "lawsuits are rare" (undoubtedly, they prefer settlements), this statement paints a much different picture:

[BMI] has sued Alley Cat and Andrew Blair's, both in Charlotte, Sharpshooters Sports Bar in Jacksonville, Forty Rod Roadhouse in Mint Hill and White Owl Tavern in Mooresville. WRAL News found a total of 38 suits filed across the country this year.

Of course, BMI has this story posted at its website, touting it as a report that "explores the value of music and the costs of infringement." It also plays up the Herculean effort it took to mail 29 nearly-identical letters (a close look at the filing reveals multiple copies of the same letter) and make 56 phone calls over a 17-month period. There's no mention of the fact that BMI seemed to have little interest in verifying that it had a valid claim against Fosters until the restaurant refused to cut them a $6,000 check.

At the end of the day, a Pyrrhic victory is still a victory, no matter how much goodwill gets destroyed in the process. It always helps with the collection cause when a case goes your way. It makes those legal threats just a bit more threatening, and you can't properly "protect the copyrights of your songwriters" without the legal guns to back it up.

Filed Under: performance license, restaurants
Companies: bmi

BMI Says A Single Person Listening To His Own Music Via The Cloud Is A Public Performance

from the looking-to-the-sky-and-seeing-unlicensed-clouds dept

There's no time like late on a Friday to send out disturbing missives. Companies who need to let staff go often find it easier to let the week "play out" before handing out the pink slips. Congressmen who need to shove through some questionable legislation often wait until the papers have gone to bed, or at least a majority of the voting citizens.

Martin Berenson, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for BMI has decided there's no time like Friday evening to kick out an editorial about streaming music via the "cloud."

Berenson chooses to couch his arguments in the relative safety of Capitol Records (and others) ongoing legal battle with MP3tunes.com, a "subscription Internet music 'locker' service," before launching a grazing attack on "cloud-computing" in general. While the legality of MP3tunes' actions is still under question, Berenson expresses his concern that its legal arguments could "create loopholes in the copyright law relating to the public performance right."

There's a lot to unpack in this editorial, but what it all boils down to is this: BMI wants a chunk of this "cloud" money.

MP3tunes logically points out (in its arguments against Capitol Records) that a user making a copy on a "dedicated, private, remote storage device" and playing it back to himself is a private performance and, therefore, needs no licensing. Google, the EFF and Public Knowledge have all entered amici briefs (or "broad attacks on the performing right," according to Berenson) stating that, "if a user initiates a stream, it should not be considered a public performance" by the service.

This seems to be a logical thought: one person listening to his or her own music is not a public performance. But, won't someone please think of the licensing? No worries, Berenson has that covered:

As previously noted, BMI argues that the public performing right has long applied to on-demand, interactive streaming. Additionally, it makes no difference if the audience for the transmission is only one person, who may receive the program at a unique time, and that MP3tunes’ attempt to make one to one transmissions into private performances is contrary to established law. We stress that it was only the existence of the unique copy made by each subscriber that was the critical factor that saved Cablevision from being an infringer. MP3tunes cannot evade that essential aspect of the court’s ruling on the grounds it would be more efficient to infringe with one copy in storage for all recipients.

Well, there you have it:

1. The right to collect licensing fees has "long applied" to streaming services, and since it's been there before, it logically follows that it should always be that way, no matter the differences of each situation.


2. It makes no difference if only one person is listening -- it's still a public performance. BMI and their fellow performance rights groups have always been willing to grant individuals the rights of a crowd.


3. Storage efficiency = infringement.

But Berenson's just warming up, and this is where it gets really interesting (and by "interesting," I mean "ludicrous"):

The strength of the public performing right would be threatened by a ruling that broadens the Cablevision court’s private-performance ruling to otherwise-unlicensed services. Cloud computing will no doubt grow tremendously in the future and if MP3tunes’ argument is adopted by the court, unlicensed entertainment services in “the cloud” will steal audiences from existing licensed streaming services (as well as from more traditional media entities), and copyright owners will be harmed by such a ruling.

From that point, Berenson takes a quick run at Amazon's Cloud Drive, mSpot and underdog neo-Luddites, Zediva (in particular, noting that Zediva's DVD player farm "competes unfairly with licensed services" -- which is a totally understandable statement, because the film industry has always been nothing but fair when dealing with competitors and customers).

While Berenson does not specifically attack or threaten Amazon's new service/player, one can only gather from this editorial that the rent-seekers (BMI, ASCAP, etc.) are beginning to formulate their plan to get a piece of this hot, new action, if not already forming an orderly line outside the virtual door. The sentence, "The issues are not confined to MP3tunes," seems to indicate that he considers these services to be next in line for the MP3tunes treatment.

After all, Berenson equates listening to unlicensed music streams to "theft" and there's really nothing more sincere than an "editorial" from a self-interest group. In closing, he offers this baffling line:

These efforts to diminish or circumvent the performing right point up the need for heightened vigilance on our part.

Godspeed, BMI. The more you can do to separate people from their music, the richer you should become. And with an entire nation of individual listeners billable as one (1) crowd, the sky's the limit. (Hence, the "pointing up," I assume.) Just watch out for those pesky "clouds".

Filed Under: cloud, performance, public performance
Companies: bmi

Who's Who Of Clueless Music Industry Lobbyists Send Angry Letter To Wrong Publisher

from the nice-work-guys dept

Sometimes it just feels like the legacy music industry folks spend their time trying to make it easy for us to call them on their bizarre positions. The latest is a pretty laughable angry letter from a who's who of the organizations, who represent the past of the music industry. Signers to the letter include (among others) the heads of the RIAA, ASCAP, SoundExchange, BMI, SESAC, NMPA, AFTRA, Harry Fox and the Songwriter's Guild. The target of their scorn? Well, officially, it's the CEO of Ziff Davis, publisher of PC Mag, for publishing two articles in the wake of the shutdown of Limewire telling people about "alternatives" to Limewire. The problem? Well, beyond being totally pointless, PC Mag only published one of the articles (the one the letter seems to find less objectionable). The other article that they complained about was published by a totally different publication. Accuracy is not big with the old school music industry, it seems.

Yes, PC Mag published an article highlighting alternatives to LimeWire, just like a ton of other websites did. Anyone who was looking for an alternative to LimeWire didn't need PCMag to find them. In fact, many reports noted a noticeable increase of downloads of those alternatives pretty quickly after LimeWire went down. The lobbyists get pretty worked up about all this, though:

Let's be honest. The vast majority of LimeWire's users were interested in one thing and one thing only: downloading our music for free with the full knowledge that what they were doing was illegal. The harm done to the creative community when people are encouraged to steal our music is immeasurable. Disclaimer or no, when you offer a list of alternative P2P sites to LimeWire -- and include more of the serial offenders -- PC Magazine is slyly encouraging people to steal more music and place at risk the tens of thousands of music industry jobs -- including singers, songwriters, musicians and the technical professionals who put it all together. Even worse is offering a direct link to a "resurrected" Limewire as follows: "I went ahead and downloaded LimeWire Pirate Edition for *ahem* research purposes, and can report that it appears to be working very smoothly. In the event that you, yourself, would like to do some research, you can download the client here (direct link)."

Yes, they're quite upset about that article about the LimeWire Pirate Edition (which we wrote about as well). Only problem? PCMag didn't publish it. Nor did any other Ziff Davis publications. It was actually in PC World, which is published by IDG -- a totally different company than Ziff Davis. Now, it's not hard to confuse PCMag and PC World -- lots of people do. But when sending an angry letter condemning a publisher, you would think that maybe one of these super powerful industry lobbyist/mouthpieces would think to actually check the sources before mouthing off.

Apparently not.

Given this mistake, it should come as little surprise that the rest of the letter is also full of factually ridiculous claims, such as "job loss" numbers due to "piracy" -- numbers that have been widely debunked so many times that it's almost pathological that these groups still cling to them like some talisman. Also, it's kind of funny that they imply the publishing business would feel differently if it had also been decimated by free competition (they call it "piracy," but they mean free competition). Ziff Davis is, in fact, a shell of its former self due to exactly that situation. However, the company has been trying hard to resurrect itself by actually competing in the marketplace -- something the signers of this letter could learn from.

Of course, I'm sort of curious what these groups actually think they're accomplishing with a letter like this. If it's to pressure magazines like PC Mag (or, ahem, PC World) not to publish such stories, that won't stop the info from getting out there. It will only increase the irrelevance of those publications -- especially if they feel brow-beaten by a bunch of dinosaurs, who refuse to adapt no matter how many times it's been shown to them how they can embrace the future successfully. This really feels like the sort of letter that these guys signed onto so they can show their constituency that they're "doing something" by stomping their feet, rather than actually doing something helpful like helping those they represent to adapt and embrace new opportunities. The full amusing letter is included after the jump...

Filed Under: fact checking, journalism, lobbyists, music industry, pc mag, pc world, publishing
Companies: ascap, bmi, idg, nmpa, riaa, sesac, sga, soundexchange, ziff davis

BMI Appeals Ruling That Lets Venues Route Around BMI, Claiming It Somehow Harms Musicians

from the uh,-what-now? dept

At the end of July, we wrote about a court ruling that DMX, a commercial provider of music (a la muzak) to restaurants, bars and the like, had won a lawsuit, which would allow it to deduct money from the blanket license it had to pay collection society BMI if it did licensing deals directly with BMI artists. Not surprisingly, BMI is none too happy about this ruling and it has appealed it. What I find fascinating, of course, is how BMI tries to spin this:

"On behalf of our songwriters, composers and music publishers, we will not allow this ruling to stand without an appeal," said Del Bryant, BMI President & CEO. "Our writers and publishers should not be expected to lose more than half of their income from DMX based on the court’s erroneous holdings, which substantially reduce the value of their creative efforts."

But that makes no sense. If the writers and publishers made significantly less with DMX, why would they enter into a separate agreement with DMX? The "problem" would solve itself because no BMI covered artists would sign a direct deal with DMX.

Filed Under: blanket license, collection societies
Companies: bmi, dmx

Recording Industry Using Net Neutrality Debate To Try To Link Child Porn With Copyright Infringement Again

from the it's-not-the-same dept

We've already seen how music industry execs and lobbyists cynically use "child porn" to their advantage (even, sickeningly, declaring "child porn is great") by lumping it in with copyright infringement in trying to force filters or other third party policing of the internet on politicians and companies. What's amazing is that they don't seem to have any shame at all in doing so. The latest example can be found in the "open letter" put together by a bunch of music industry trade groups (RIAA, A2IM, AFM, AFTRA, ASCAP, BMI, NMPA, SESAC, SoundExchange, the Recording Academy, the California Songwriters Association, the Music Managers Forum, and the Nashville Songwriters Association International) to Verizon and Google asking them to make sure their proposed "framework" for net neutrality still doesn't cover forcing ISPs to be copyright cops. It's no surprise why they sent this letter, but the inclusion of "child porn" with copyright infringement is really ridiculous:

The music community we represent believes it is vital that any Internet policy initiative permit and encourage ISPs and other intermediaries to take measures to deter unlawful activity such as copyright infringement and child pornography.

The industry seems to work overtime to try to link these two concepts together, despite the vast differences between them. It's really an incredibly cynical, exploitative and disgusting move by the recording industry, and people should really start calling them on it.

Filed Under: child porn, copyright, net neutrality, recording industry
Companies: a2im, afm, aftra, ascap, bmi, nmpa, riaa, sesac, soundexchange

A Day In The Life Of Legalized Extortion: How The BMI Shakedown Works

from the sickening dept

A bunch of you sent in this NY Times puff piece that basically follows around a BMI "enforcer," for a day, watching as she tries to get restaurants, clubs, bars, skating rinks, etc. to pay up for playing music in their establishments. It's all legal, but it has all the hallmarks of a pure shakedown -- which is why operations like BMI and ASCAP are notorious for doing more harm than good, by making it much more difficult for up-and-coming musicians to find venues to play in. Many venues simply stop playing music, rather than deal with expensive BMI/ASCAP licenses. On top of that, because of the way these systems work, they tend to funnel money disproportionately to big name artists, again harming less well known songwriters. BMI, in fact, has been particularly obnoxious about this. Last year, when a songwriter who had not received any of the promised royalties was brought up, BMI responded that it wasn't their problem, and "I would like to tell him is that he needs to write a hit song." Nice, huh?

The NY Times piece highlights a few interesting points. I don't know if it was on purpose or not, but a VP from BMI in the article refers to one of the large group of folks who call and visit these venues as "salespeople." We've seen this before. The role that is supposed to be an auditor or an investigator is actually defined as a sales role, meaning that they often have a specific stake in squeezing as much money as possible out of the people they talk to. I don't know if BMI's compensation is structured that way, but certainly other Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) are set up that way.

As such, it's no surprise that BMI uses cheesey motivational techniques found in sales training:

One afternoon, I sat with Baker at her cubicle. Besides pictures of her fiance, Mike, and her nieces, she also has a smiley-face chart. Her boss made it up for all the licensing executives, to remind them that their moods and their tones will determine their success. The chart is like a traffic light. There’s a green smiley face, a straight face in yellow, then a face in red, frowning. "You never wanna be on the red," Baker said.

Then there's the new tools that BMI is using to track down everyone who's playing music. It's spying on more and more areas where music is played, and the reporter discussed with a few people, and they all found it creepy. BMI's response? They like that people refer to them as "Big Brother."

Friends I talked to had a similar reaction. To a one, they said: "Jesus. Sounds like Big Brother." When I mentioned this to DeBusk, he smiled ominously. "Yes. Well. We're here to help."

Finally, the closing vignette is really kinda sickening. The reporter follows the "salesperson" as she goes to talk to a struggling restaurant who has trouble paying the bills. After a bit of "negotiation" she gets them to pay up and then admits she knows she's taking money that the owners really need:

Baker accepted Ross's invitation and sat down in the booth with Ross and her pug, Frank. Out came the checkbook. "I could tell she was low on money," Baker told me later. "I could tell it was hard for her to shell out the money."

Sickening. This is legalized extortion. And, make no mistake. It's all very legal. But we should be asking why.

Filed Under: collection societies, shakedown
Companies: bmi

Court Lets Venues Deduct Fees From BMI License For Directly Licensed Music

from the this-might-be-a-bigger-problem-than-creative-commons dept

While ASCAP is busy attacking Creative Commons and refusing to debate, it appears that the performance rights organization may have a bigger problem on its hands. Reader Beefcake alerts us to an important ruling against BMI, the other big US performance rights group (there's also the somewhat smaller SESAC). The case itself involves a commercial music company, DMX (who provides music to various venues such as stores, restaurants and bars), that had been licensing some music directly from publishers and writers. But, as plenty of venues have learned, the big Performing Rights Organizations tend not to care whether or not you've directly licensed works (or just used public domain or non-covered works). They still demand a blanket license. This ruling, however, says that if you "directly license" works, you can get an adjustable fee blanket license, which would let venues decrease the amount they pay BMI (and, one would assume, ASCAP and SESAC), by deducting a portion for the directly licensed music: Now, it's important to point out that this seems to cover specifically deductions for when DMX directly licenses BMI music. The way DMX's fees are set up, it appears to pool all the royalties it needs to pay into a certain bucket, and then splits it up by percentage of music played. So, theoretically, playing lots of freely licensed music could also decrease the rate paid to BMI.

The key here, however, is that this not only gives venues more incentive to directly license music in some cases (many won't, of course, because it's too big of a hassle), it also may force more transparency on BMI and the others. One major complaint we constantly hear about ASCAP and BMI is the lack of transparency in how they act in terms of counting performances and determining payouts. But, as the analysis of this ruling notes, DMX appears to be the opposite:

DMX's accounting to publishers and writers for direct licensed works features quarterly accounting 45 days after the end of each quarter, as opposed to the typical performing rights organization schedule of 9 or more months after a performance. DMX also provides direct counts of the number of plays of each work.

So, for artists upset about the way BMI or ASCAP treats them, it can now make more sense to just deal directly with DMX, which will pay them faster, give them more accurate and up-to-data data, and potentially pay out higher rates. It creates a bit of a competitive element that BMI and ASCAP could really use.

Filed Under: blanket license, collection societies
Companies: bmi, dmx

Describing How To Create A Software Program Now Puts You At Risk Of Contributory Patent Infringement?

from the for-the-purpose-of-teaching... dept

A whole bunch of you have been submitting the following story from a Dutch developer who is being threatened by Landmark Digital, a BMI subsidiary which owns the patents on Shazam's music recognition technology, for writing a blog post describing how to build similar technology in your spare time. The story is a perfect example of the ridiculous situation with patents today. Basically, the guy noted that what Shazam does in recognizing music is really not that complicated, and explained how to create something similar yourself, which he did himself in a weekend. He had not released the code, but was planning to do so when the legal threats came in. The guy wondered what patents they were talking about specifically, especially considering that in Europe, the standards to patent software are much higher. In response, he was only told about two US patents (6,990,453 and 7,627,477 -- oddly, on that last one, Google still shows it as being patent pending, even though the patent was granted last year).

The developer points out how silly this is:

Why does Landmark Digital Services think they hold a patent for the concepts used in my code? Even if my code works pretty different from the Shazam code (from which the patents came).

What they describe in the patent is a system which:

1. Make a series of fingerprints of a media file and/or media sample (such as audio, but could also be text, video, multimedia, etc) 2. Have a database/hashtable of fingerprints as lookup 3. Compare the set of hashtable hits using their moment in time it happened This is very vague, basically the only innovative idea is matching the found fingerprints linearly in time. Because the first two steps describe how a hashtable works and creating a hash works. These concepts are not new nor innovative.

But, with a bit of imagination one could (possibly) argue that my code (again, written completely by myself in a weekend with some spare time) does the same thing as the patent describes.

After talking it over with some attorneys, he realized that it probably wasn't worth the potential lawsuit to publish the code he wrote over the weekend, as ridiculous as that sounds. But then things got more ridiculous, as the lawyers for Landmark demanded he take down the original blog post as well, saying that it could teach others how to infringe the patent:

As I'm sure you are aware, your blogpost may be viewed internationally. As a result, you may contribute to someone infringing our patents in any part of the world. While we trust your good intentions, yes, we would like you to refrain from releasing the code at all and to remove the blogpost explaining the algorithm.

Great, so now we have to worry about contributory patent infringement as well? Are we really going to keep stretching third party liability to such ridiculous levels? Explaining to people how they might possibly build a simple app is now putting yourself at risk of liability?

Filed Under: contributory infringement, europe, music recognition, netherlands, patents, software patents
Companies: bmi, landmark digital, shazam