Campers targeted for singing campfire songs?


Media outlets have reported the fact that summer camps across the United States are being required to pay fees to the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) for use of their artists' songs by campers. The American Camping Association, which accredits more than 2,200 camps across the United States, negotiated a blanket license with ASCAP earlier this year and advised its camps to pay the negotiated fee.

Stanford FairUse

quote:

Vincent Candilora, ASCAP's vice president and director of licensing, vaguely suggested that dark forces may have been behind a Wall Street Journal article last week that disclosed that the songwriters' group had sought this year for the first time in history to collect fees from children's summer camps.

Candilora conceded that ASCAP had cast a wide and nondiscriminating net in notifying the nation's 8,000-odd summer camps that federal copyright law requires them to fork over fees to ASCAP for any songs they use.

But he said Lo Frumento had been quoted out of context when he promised to "sue them if necessary" if they didn't pay for their campfire songs. And he was particularly insistent that ASCAP wasn't picking on the Girl Scouts, even though it has already collected fees from 16 Girl Scout camps this year. Any fees collected from the Scouts will be returned, he said.
In the wake of news stories and editorials picturing ASCAP throttling tiny, hopeful renditions of "Puff the Magic Dragon," Candilora said the organization had been besieged with protests from both the public and its songwriter members.


Jeebus Frickin' Murphy.