ASCAP/BMI/SESAC licensing fees cover public performance of a copyrighted work, which includes playing the recording in a bar, a cover band playing the song in a venue, playing the recording over the radio or on television, etc. The intention is to funnel some of the money that the venue is earning from playing your song back to the artist. These amounts tend to be relatively small, but prevent situations where radio stations, say, can make tons of money off of advertising around your song without paying anything at all to the artist.

Using a copyrighted work within another work is something else entirely. "Another work" might refer to a stage play, a television show or film, an opera, and sometimes a staged presentation or demonstration. Those rights are called "grand rights" in the case of stage works and "sync rights" in the case of television or film and are not handled by ASCAP/BMI/SESAC. So, in cases where music is being used WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF ANOTHER WORK, explicit permission needs to be given by the copyright holder. The idea here is that, if Real Housewives of the OC wants to use your music as the opening of their show, they have to work it out with the composer/publisher and actually pay for that use.

Now... whether or not a political rally qualifies as a "dramatic work" is up for serious debate and is a question best left for a copyright lawyer. In the case of a television commercial, that is definitely something where explicit permission would need to be granted to use the song.

Caller: Hi, I'm calling from... er... Google... and it says here in this text file that you have a credit card number on file with us. Is that right?

Victim: Yes, that's right.

Caller: Cool. Would you mind giving me that account number so I can verify your identity?

Victim: Let me get my card...

Before we rush to blame big media consolidation for the flood of crappy content, let us consider that "Mall Cop" made more money than "Inglorious Basterds,"District 9," and "Up in the Air ". The Hurt Locker has a box office ranking of #116 for that year. "Star Wars: Episode III" is the top film of 2005. The #2 film of 2010, "Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen," has grossed over $400 million.

As long as people keep paying for crap, crap will continue to be made. It's a no brainer.

Let's pretend for a moment, that these people aren't just trolls looking for quick settlements. Difficult, I know.

But in what universe does it make sense for a patent holder to sue the end user? That would be like Apple suing a consumer for buying a Samsung tablet.

I would like to see one of the troll victims post an open letter that says something along the lines of, "Go away or prepare to be counter-sued into oblivion." Alas, TFA makes it sound like someone could try that and still lose. :(

We just need to give students real, live human hearts to study. MWUAHAHAHAA!!

No. The vast majority of artworks DON'T make their money in the first few months. That may be true for Britney Spears or the Star Wars prequels, but the vast majority of music and film is made by independent artists and may take years just to catch on. A one year term of copyright would be completely devastating to the art community.

I make music for a living. When I released my first album, it took months to get the music on Pandora radio and then took most of a year to start getting noticed and listened to. Now, after more than a year, sales are starting to happen, and I'm finally getting recognition and a little financial compensation for my work. If the copyright term were one year, Universal Pictures could take my music, use it as a soundtrack to one of their films, and pay me exactly $0. Kanye could take my album, do nothing but rap over it, make millions in the months following it's release without crediting me, and pay me $0. Sure, copyright protects the entertainment industry. It also protects artists when the entertainment industry wants to screw them.

Independent film would die tomorrow. What investor would put up money to help a young director make a film, when any distributor could hold out for a year and then release the film for free without compensating the director or the initial investors? Hell, in a one-year copyright world, another studio could legally have rushed to make Star Wars 2: The Adventures of Chewbacca, before Empire Strikes Back was even completed.

Copyright terms might be too long, but it's a HUGE mistake to think that cutting them down to nothing would make the art world a better, more fair place. Far from it.

In his spare time he works on ice-nine and various other potentially apocalyptic substances.

Comments questioning the artistic merit of this piece are ignoring the last 100 years of art history. There is at this time a long and rich tradition of conceptual art that this piece fits into. Just look at Duchamp's Fountain and follow the history of conceptual art to today.

And while we might criticize a piece of conceptual art or even criticize the movement as a whole. Some art relies on technical skill. Some art, like this piece here, relies on conceptual insight or social awareness. I would argue that it's just bad form to dismiss an entire portion of art history because something's not made with oil paint or chiseled out of marble.

As for my opinion, the piece is interesting but far from brilliant.

http://xkcd.com/915/

Big ideas are happening all the time, but you can't look for them in all the old places and expect to find anything. We're making huge advances in neuroscience that are completely revolutionizing the way we look at the human mind. We're finding novel ways to collect energy, discovering new ways of communicating that are having powerful societal effects, making advances in artificially intelligent machines, moving the power of manufacturing into our homes with the promise of 3D-printing, building autonomous vehicles, putting space travel into the reach of civilians, changing our genes, developing regenerative medicine technologies, and on and on and on...

That's no run-on sentence. It's a space station.

However, there IS incorrect comma usage in the first sentence of the summary, and the last two are fragments. Yay, pedantry!!

Best of all, the DRM is built right into the stone.

It's not a flash mob unless at least 80 people participate in the mugging. txt me for details!!!!!

I can see the headline now:

Astronauts Worry That HD Camera's Strain on Internet Connection Will Interfere With Ability to Check Facebook From Space

Yeah, it'll piss off every person who has ever lost their wallet or been a victim of identity theft, but really... the best way to deal with this massive identity theft problem is to freeze these peoples' bank accounts and explain to them that the unauthorized transactions on their credit cards have been directly funding thieves and terrorists.

Yeah, it'll piss off every person who wants to go outside, but really... the best way to deal with this massive crime problem is to have four cameras on every street corner so we can keep track of what everyone is up to at all times.

Yeah, it'll piss off every Muslim with a friend of a friend who's linked to a terror group, but really... the best way to deal with this massive terrorism problem is to detain these people for years in secret prisons and question them using enhanced interrogation techniques.

Yeah, it'll piss off every person who's ever smoked a joint, but really... the best way to deal with this massive drug violence problem is to arrest the buyers and throw them in prison for the rest of their lives.

Yes, by not shooting people or threatening witnesses at gunpoint.