@ErickaSimone @mirlo
Forgive me, I guess I missed a beat: What's the weird verbiage in the Bandcamp contracts? I haven’t heard about this!
@inthehands @mirlo I gotta scroll back a bit, but one of the music besties pointed out verbiage that reads like “if you do not have a proper PRO or publishing company in place, we’re taking your publishing cuts” and now we’re all looking for legal fedi. lol.
@ErickaSimone @inthehands @mirlo
That is not how I read it. Their verbiage seems to say (essentially) - “if you upload somebody else’s work and we discover it is covered by a proper PRO, we’ll take money and pay them.”
I could be wrong on this, but that essential language has been part of Bandcamp’s TOS since the beginning, iirc.
@icastico @inthehands @mirlo here we go. Let’s figure it out together. lol. https://mstdn.social/@caitp/113883604111806561
@ErickaSimone @icastico @mirlo My read is that the language is trying to solve this problem:
- My student friend Ericka writes a song for me
- She has no PRO; it was just for fun on the weekend
- I release it on Bancamp and tell them she has no PRO
- Then Ericka gets serious, goes ASCAP, hits it big
- But I don't update my Bandcamp data because I have a life
→ Bandcamp can say, “Hey, Ericka should get paid for this now!” without having to harangue me about it
That makes sense.
I see nothing in that language that lets •Bandcamp• grab the PRO cut for themselves as the OP suggested — only pass it on to the songwriter.
Reading the language with a suspicious eye, it does seem like Bandcamp •could• have latitude to do the crap all these services do where they just scrub alleged rights abuses without proper review, and it's a headache for musicians.
CAVEAT: I am not a lawyer (and it is a sad world where musicians have to try to be one for even 2 seconds).