Midnight Oil

[Powderworks] US Radio Spot

Rhonda kayak at sympatico.ca
Sat Sep 4 09:32:35 MDT 2004


It surprises me that he would be able to use that clip then....I'm not 
sure if Aussie copyright rules are the same, but as it works here in 
Canada, to use copyrighted material one has to obtain permission from 
the performing rights organization that represents artists & 
performers...it's SOCAN here...they (Limbaugh in this case) then license 
the track or portion thereof from the performing rights agency via 
whoever holds the rights to the song (artist? record company? publishing 
company?  depends on the contract) and then royalties are paid out 
depending upon frequency of usage, how much of the song is used, how 
it's used, etc.

In many cases, songwriters assign the publishing rights to a publishing 
or record company in order to get a recording deal / financial support. 
 After a set number of years, whatever's stipulated in the contract, the 
rights revert back to the artist...sometimes there's a holdover clause 
though or they revert back "x number of years after the last release" 
which can be open to interpretation and is frequently a source of 
contention...trust me on that one, I helped work on one of those 
cases....ahhh, the legalities of the music business, such fun.

Even if the Oils don't hold the publishing rights to the song (and I 
have no idea whether they do or not), they can prohibit its use on moral 
grounds from being used by someone or for something they are totally 
against.  I'm guessing they're probably not even aware of its current 
use in Rush Limbaugh's ad, and would be totally pissed if they found out.

-Rhonda


James Warren wrote:

> In Philadelphia in August of 1993, at the Oils show between the first 
> and second song, Peter went off about how absurd Rush is, along with 
> the fact that he had a new show on television. Peter also encouraged 
> us to throw our tv sets away.
>
> After the show, I got to speak to Peter, and he claimed that the Oils 
> and Rush were about as far opposite in worldview as you could possibly be.
>
> -Jim
>
> p.s. Although I don't listen to Rush, I do know that for years, he has 
> used that "back to Ohio" Pretenders song as background music.
>
> On Sep 4, 2004, at 7:28 AM, Robin Johnson wrote:
>
>> Hi:
>>
>> I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet (I haven't read through 
>> all the posts lately), but I thought you all might find this interesting.
>>
>> I was getting ready for work earlier this week and I had the radio on 
>> in the background.  All of a sudden I heard a bit of "Power and the 
>> Passion".  "Cool" I thought.  Since we don't often hear the Oil's on 
>> US radio, I stopped what I was doing to enjoy it.  Unfortunately, it 
>> was a super-short blip of it in an ad for a radio show........now, 
>> I'm not sure how many people outside of the US know about the show it 
>> was advertising........I don't know if the Oil's would 
>> approve.......it was for Rush Limbaugh!  The most hateful, 
>> right-wing, "there is no such thing as global warning", who came up 
>> with "strong women are femi-nazi's", "What wrong with Yucca Mountain 
>> anyway" person in the US.  He's evil.
>>
>> Since Monday, I've heard the ad every morning.
>>
>> Yikes.
>>
>> Robin
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Powderworks mailing list
>> Powderworks at cs-lists.cs.colorado.edu
>> http://cs-lists.cs.colorado.edu/mailman/listinfo/powderworks
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Powderworks mailing list
> Powderworks at cs-lists.cs.colorado.edu
> http://cs-lists.cs.colorado.edu/mailman/listinfo/powderworks
>