Re: Constitutional Challenge to (C)

On March 3, 1998, Karen LeFevre <kblwrite[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> Suppose that such a concert (or some related event) WERE staged and
> publicized nationally, with ticket sales at enough of a price to cover
> the event AND be donated to a non-profit fund for preservation of the
> public domain (and, if necessary, for legal defense). This is the type
> of publicity that I think has been lacking. Perhaps the intangibility
> of the public domain needs to be made concrete and vivid from time to
> time so people can see that it exists and has supporters?

     I'm all in favor of such an idea. However, as a member of the Board of Directors of a non-profit performing arts organization, I am compelled to point out that ticket revenue generally covers less than half of the cost of presenting a concert. The rest is made up through a combination of individual and corporate donations and government/foundation grants. You would need to sell a lot of very expensive tickets to cover the event AND to have some left over for legal defense. In order to make it work, you would need to convince the musicians to donate their time to the event, as they do for musicians' pension fund concerts. That might be a little difficult, since many of the musicans are likely to be sympathetic to the claims of the composers' heirs.

Sorry to be a wet blanket.

Tyler T. Ochoa
Associate Professor
Whittier Law School
tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu Received on Mon Apr 06 1998 - 18:20:02 GMT