Monday’s congressional briefing on music consent decrees (CD...
Monday’s congressional briefing on music consent decrees (CD July 22 p9) featured a panel that was “hardly ‘diverse,'” said music industry attorney Chris Castle on his Music Technology Policy blog (http://bit.ly/1pb5HYd) Tuesday. Castle represents artists and musicians, but has also…
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worked with digital music services. The briefing was temporarily disrupted by David Lowery, a songwriter and business lecturer at the University of Georgia, when he threw bags of T-shirts on the panel’s table, saying Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) paid him $17 for a song he had co-written that had more than 1 million plays. “The Digital Media Association [DiMA] is in the business of selling songwriters music but [DiMA General Counsel Gregory Barnes] is afraid of having a songwriter speak,” said Lowery on The Trichordist blog Monday (http://bit.ly/1qy6WEy), which he edits. Lowery felt some members of the audience didn’t want Barnes to allow him to ask a question of the panel. “I can only assume that the Member of Congress who authorized the use of the [briefing] room was unaware that this censorship was taking place or they would have moved to stop it before it started,” said Castle. “I see people air their laundry before Congress all the time; I've never seen it done literally,” said Matthew Schruers, Computer & Communications vice president-law and policy, by email. Schruers was a panelist at the briefing. “Had Mr. Lowery simply shown some patience instead of storming out (twice), he would have had a chance to comment,” he said. Barnes “eventually handed the floor over” to an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers representative, “which rather undermines the dramatic conspiracy theories these gentlemen are weaving,” said Schruers.