Blatant copyright violations?
 

Hey all, I've been wondering this for ages.

You know how during every variety show, special news report, or basically anything on Japanese TV with music in the background, the music is from some famous American TV show, movie, album, or pop culture reference?

Do you think these Japanese producers are actually buying the right to use the hundreds of different songs I hear every day? I don't. I doubt anybody outside of Japan is really watching this junk (TV is particularly bad over here), but I've just always wondered.

Insights?

edit: title is meant to be "blatant". Jeez, never thought I'd see the day I'd be THAT guy that mispelled something in the thread title... >_>;

Fixed that for you - Nyororin

No idea, but probably not. I'm not sure about these kinds of copyright issues. Is it true that for stuff released in one country, when it's played in another region they'd have to have some kind of release license to actually claim royalties on it?

Also isn't there some kind of loop-law that you can play a fragment of a song and provided it's under a certain length you don't have to pay for the right. And radio-shows confuse me as well. Surely each station isn't writing off thousands of small checks for each artist of each song they broadcast. :confused:

Anyone know any more than me?

Eight seconds or under is OK for free use (or maybe it is 13). I am sure when TV shows use non-Japanese songs for themesongs, etc. they do have to pay.

And you would be surprised the volume of Japanese TV that is seen outside of Japan. Heck, I get "TV Japan" in my house, which has 24 programming of Japanese TV.

And radio stations do pay rights to play music...they just pay to a single body that then distributes to individual artists. This is why radio stations submit playlists to that body so they can figure out how much goes to each artist. This is partially why one hit song can keep an artist above water for a life time.

MMM you got it right (as usual). When copyrighted music over the sampling limit is broadcast anywhere in the world that the big guys who oversee copyrights for musicians (ACSCAP, BMI, etc. ) are sampling, and the broadcasters pay up. Actually music stations have to send in their programming logs. Then the holders of the copyrights are sent their checks. Depending on the size of the check, the payment is sent monthly, quarterly or annually. And no matter what small pittance it may be the check is mailed. I used to get a royalty via ASCAP of less than $5 annually. It was an error because someone reported the song title incorrectly and it took a while to straighten out. I am sure ASCAP spent more money trying to correct the error than either of us ever received for the rights.

But if the musician agrees to "mechanical rights" you can perform the work live anywhere without financial penalties. (BTW do not even attempt to get mechanical rights or anyother for John Denver's work - the copyright holders are notoriusly nasty.)

Ah, well, that explains it then.
I suppose then with things like request shows where they won't know their play list till their live, they send it to the companies afterwards.

Not sure abotu that, but 20 years ago they either sent tapes of the show or a play list once they were finished.

This is something I wondered about too a while back, and actually looked into. Believe it or not, all of the use is legal and paid for. There is little discretion on the part of the artist when it comes to where the material is used, which is why I think it seems so odd to someone from outside of Japan. If you pay for the license - you can use it quite literally ANYWHERE regardless of the opinion of the artist.

It`s also interesting that a lot of the time shows have no clue where the music comes from. They are presented with a sample collection to listen to and choose songs from it - if anyone is at fault it`s JASRAC and the groups that make the compilations.