Pribek

Funkmeister uber alles, George Clinton, just won an interesting copyright infringement lawsuit. From the Tennessean…

Bridgeport Music, the company that administers Clinton’s work, sued Universal Music Group for copyright infringement over those words in 2001. At issue: the 1998 release of “D.O.G. in Me,” a song by hip-hop and R&B group Public Announcement, one of Universal’s artists. In the song, Bridgeport claimed, Public Announcement wrongfully used the words “bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yea,” as well as a repetitive use of the word “dog” in ways that infringe on Clinton’s copyright…

…A federal jury agreed with Bridgeport and awarded the company about $89,000 in damages.

Hunh!!??

I kind of get the “bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yea” thing…kind of. But, does George Clinton own the word “dog”?

Here’s what Clinton’s lawyer, Richard Busch sayeth…

“It confirms that even the use of the word ‘dog,’ if used in an unusual way, can be an original part of a composition” and protected under copyright law, he said.

If you like, you be the judge. First up, “D.O.G. In Me” by Public Announcement then, the Clinton opus.

As always, do the dog catcher and click pause on the music player located in the side bar before playing the YouTube.

Hey folks, Jayne here, again. Just spoke to Brother Pribek and although the rain has stopped the problem with the internet persists. The problem appears to not be insurmountable, but a few real life annoyances must take precedence before he can get back online.

I called the Brother after I checked over his comments and found an amazing reply to a recent nod Jack wrote about ReverbNation. Artist Johnny Rei had a beef or two to air in response to that post:

I was around top 10 in global all genres charts for whole April 2009. To my huge disappointment, my Fair Share for April was $5 (Five Dollars). I’m really, really disappointed. So if you are an artist who is working really hard for a whole month on promoting and if you think you gonna earn big money, forget it.

Click here to read the whole post and Johnny’s comment.

Below is Jed Carlson’s (co-founder & COO of ReverbNation) succinct reply:

Johnny Rei,

I was disappointed to read your criticism of ReverbNation’s Fair Share program. It appears you misunderstand the nature of the fair share program in terms of what it is, how it works, and what you should expect from it. While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, I would hope that you could be better informed before you editorialize in public. We have always worked on behalf of the artist, and it shows in almost every aspect of the site and decision we make.

Under the program artists share advertising dollars where their content is instrumental in generating the revenue. It was initially designed as a response to Artists’ concerns about how they were being treated by sites like MySpace (driving fan traffic and generating ad $$$ for MySpace, but not receiving a cut of the money). It was never intended as a primary revenue source as the total pool of advertising dollars is too small to accomplish this.

Viewing ourselves as more of a business partner to the Artists, in 2007 we launched the Fair Share program with a commitment to split 50% of the net ad revenue with those who enrolled in the program. We have been sharing that ad revenue ever since, and we can’t think of any other site that has been bold enough to follow our lead.

Admittedly, the amounts per Artist ‘will not make you rich’ (as stated when you sign up). But those payments are essentially ‘free money’ for Artists who are going to be promoting themselves with our tools anyway. If you are going to use our email tool, music/video players, Facebook app, gig finder, digital press kits, digital distribution, etc, why not signup to get something back? It’s not all that different than a Discover Card or a Costco Membership that pays you back some cash at the end of the month or year.

In your case, you actually earned the equivalent of $2.47CPM (per thousand impressions that you drove to your ReverbNation page, where we show ads) for the month of April. This is significantly higher than the average CPM. It should be noted that ReverbNation does not place ads on widgets, emails or application pages. We refrain from this in an effort to preserve the integrity of the artists’ content (we don’t think shoving an ad into your music player on your blog will enhance your efforts to become a successful musician). Additionally, we must be sensitive to where widgets are placed. If we were to place advertising into a widget on MySpace, we would be violating their terms of service.

But, it’s important to note that Fair Share is not designed to replace making great music, gigging, selling merch and tickets, getting sponsored, etc as an income stream for a musicians. This isn’t a ‘get rich quick’ plan of any kind.

Let’s take a look at the math to understand how Fair Share is calculated and distributed to the Artists:

At the end of every month, we take 50% of the net ad revenue and create an ‘Artist Pie’ full of money. We use a proprietary formula (so people can’t cheat with automated bots, fake emails, etc) to determine how big a slice each Artist receives. So, each Artist will receive a monthly ‘slice’ based on:

1. The overall size of the ‘Artist Pie’.
2. The Artist’s portion, based on the formula.

It’s very important to understand that the size of the pie varies greatly from month to month due to overall ReverbNation site impressions (growing over time), and the dollar value of each advertisement shown on the site (which is down significantly, due to the economy).

It’s also important to understand that the portion any individual Artist receives depends on how many other Artists are enrolled in the program. If you have to divide a pie among many more people, each slice will be smaller. As you would expect, we sign up lots and lots of new Artists every day to the program.

My final point it that the program is 100% voluntary. It is not a requirement in order to use our site or anything we offer. By the sounds of it, you might be happier opting out of it.

Johnny, while I am happy (but somewhat confused) that you are still using our widgets on your MySpace page, I really wish that you would have contacted us prior to flaming a good program like Fair Share on blogs and to our user base. I have reached out repeatedly in an attempt to speak with you directly, but so far you have chosen not to have that conversation. That is your choice, but it is difficult to reconcile your actions when you write so strongly, but refuse to confront the problem directly.

To anyone else that has questions about Fair Share, I’m happy to answer.

-Jed Carlson
Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer
ReverbNation.com

Direct, over the phone quote from Jack after I (Jayne) read him this reply:

“Since I wrote the original post, in my opinion ReverbNation.com has done nothing but improve and become more user friendly which is why I am still happy about using them on my blog. Also, everytime I have contacted somebody at ReverbNation.com about any issue they have replied promptly and in a professional manner.”

And, on that note, let’s all go out with a bit o’George Clinton! Don’t forget to put your funk on and set the player on the sidebar on pause. Enjoy.

Well, the story is pretty good too. Seems that Sly Stone (!) had a gig booked and George Clinton (!) booked as a special guest. From LA Weekly…

This from Weekly correspondent Daniel Siwek, who barely missed Tuesday night’s five-minute Sly Stone Variety Show surprise performance at Little Temple. The secret show, one of a few that the legend has done around LA in the past month, was cut short, however, when the health department came in before the show and shut Little Temple down. Apparently it had something to do with hot water heaters and proper temperature — though rumors that the department was worried about the roof either catching fire or blowing straight off the minute Clinton and Stone took the stage do bear consideration. But the timing was terrible for all involved.

BumSpace Mannnn! Sly can’t catch a break. Hot water heaters; yeah right.

Even though the gig got shut down, we were fortunate enough to get this great pic…

George Clinton sez…

‘Sir Nose’ was in the house, and that ‘they’ don’t wanna give Sly a chance. He said, ‘We rehearsed and everything. This time, nobody was high or nothing, they just don’t wanna see Sly do his thing.’

George knows man. If he says Sir Nose was in the joint, I believe him.