McCain Caught Stealing Democratic Music
By Nicole Belle Friday Jun 13, 2008 11:00am
If my memory serves me well, the first time I spoke with John Hall was when I found out Joe Lieberman was using his classic smash, "Still The One," as a campaign song in his fruitless primary campaign against Ned Lamont. Knowing John is a committed progressive, I called to warn him that the reactionary, warmongering Lieberman had misappropriated his much-loved song. Since Lieberman was still claiming-- albeit falsely-- to be a "Democrat" in 2006, even if he wasn't voting like one, Hall let it slide. Blue America endorsed him anyway, he won and has served with great distinction, one of the best of 2006's freshman class.
MSNBC is reporting that Hall just found out that one of Lieberman's closest conspirator's, John McCain, is also using his song without permission. Although Hall still isn't calling out Holy Joe, he has pointed out that song theft is just another in a long list of ways John McCain is just like George Bush (another crooked pol claiming to worship at the alter of property rights who stole "Still the One" without paying any royalties).
"This is yet another example of John McCain not learning anything from George Bush's mistakes,” Hall wrote First Read in an interview over e-mail. “First, McCain adopted Bush's failed policy of an open-ended war in Iraq, then he wrapped his arms around the failed Bush economic policies that have put the squeeze on middle class families. Now, he's making the same mistake George Bush made illegally using a copyrighted song without asking either the writers or the performers for permission."
Login or Register to post comments.
McThief '08!
who cares?
Too bad that he can't steal the song back and make it a Barack song for Obama's ads. Oooh, but that wouldn't be nice to McCain and Democrats are always nice and never attack the Repugs. But wait a month or so until McCain gets the song into people's minds as his own, by theft.
"Barack's still the one"
I noticed the congressman (I forgot his name) on lead guitar...nice!
bryancri @ 2:
I think that's the basis of the McBush line of thought along with all the rest of the Right Wing Wackos...they don't care, they put themselves above the laws, ethics and morals that they expect the unwashed masses to follow. Their followers are stupid enough to believe it.
What does the law say? If someone wants to play Still The One at a high school dance, do they have to get legal permission from John Hall? Do people have presumed permission until the artist or record company complains?
I've seen a few articles on this, but I haven't seen any actually report the real legal issues involved.
Perhaps a more fitting campaign song for Grampa would be Older Than You.
Like scioto above, none of this fully means anything to me until I understand how this is suppose to work. Could someone explain? I'm sure John Amato could.
Explain to the idiots among us how this was wrong and what would have made it right.
Lieberman should have used "Lola."
IANAL but I believe that using a song for campaign purposes would be a commercial use. And I believe you need permission and/or buy the use of the song for that purpose.
EG when Moveon.org was conducting their contest for a new grassroots Obama ad, they explicitly pointed out that if you use music and it had be in the public domain, or you had to have proof that you obtained permission/rights to use it.
Again, IANAL and it would be nice to know definitively. And if it is an issue...hey, John Hall, what are you gonna do about it? You gonna let em get away with that? Or just complain?
I think could be actionable copyright infringement - technically, you cannot play a copyrighted song without the composer/publishers permission.
If someone playing a pre-recorded version, then that is really another violation.
Go check any local club in a big city and you will find they pay a license fee to BMI and ASCAP.
Anyway, John Hall could have a lot of fun with this one - plus, he is entitled to his royalties - plus they have to pay his legal fees if he sues.
McCain is stealing his work - period.
McCain can use one of those Kobi Tooth's songs. They are very patriotic.
Here's the music McCain should really use: "Don't Know Much about the Economy"
If anything shows McCain's true colors, it's what he just said about the Supreme Court decision upholding the Constitutional right of habeas corpus:
"The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."
If McFascist considers defending the Constitution to be in the class of "worst decisions", stealing intellectual or artistic property isn't even going to register with him.
He should take a page out of Reagan's old campaign and use "Born in the U.S.A"!
(It'd be extra ironic because he wasn't even born in the U.S!)
STILL THE ONE (Legal Title)
BMI Work #1411532
Songwriter/Composer Current Affiliation CAE/IPI #
HALL JOHANNA D BMI 66040696
HALL JOHN JOSEPH BMI 61219995
Publishers
EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC BMI 223437493
SIREN SONGS BMI 16477678
Denotes BMI Award Winning Song!
http://bmi.com/
wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn the s.o.b. stole rice patties from his fellow american g.i.'s at the hanoi hilton..
bryancri @ 2:
You would, if you were the musician getting ripped off. Or if you were considering casting a vote for a candidate who was breaking the law.
As for me, I'm a musician and I'm tired of this "art should be for free" shit. Get over it. Unless the artist chooses to give it away, pay what you owe, stop trying to steal a free lunch and don't spout your lame justifications for stealing.
*rant over*
scioto @ 6:
Do a search on copyright law.
If a DJ is hired for a HS dance, then the DJ has payed copyright for the play (if he/she is compliant, that is). People do NOT have presumed permission. Using a song in a movie, play, commercial or political campaign is considered use. Royalties must be paid and, if distribution is wide enough, permission is needed from the artist as well. This is all assuming that there will be a profit from the media/event. As for a rally, where no cash would change hands to benefit the candidate, I really can't say.
It's just a GOP thing I guess, Stealing from the people.
And lying to the people, like here are the latest from Fact Check dot org.
Ask FactCheck posted these new items
during the week ending June 13, 2008
(Click the links to read complete answers)
Q: Is it true John McCain voted with George Bush 95 percent of the time?
A: Yes, it's true, according to Congressional Quarterly's assessment of McCain's voting record.
Q: Do the poor drive farther than the rich, as McCain claims?
A: No. McCain is wrong when he claims repeatedly that low-income people drive more. In fact, the affluent drive twice as many miles.
Q: Is a letter from an anonymous teacher about illegal immigrants getting school grants true?
A: No. It cobbles together misleading statements to give the impression that illegal immigrants are receiving perks from taxpayers, when, in fact, they are not.
Hey, if McCaveMan is going to steal one of John Hall's songs, he could at least get it right and steal Business As Usual, from the same album (Let There Be Music.) I think those lyrics more accurately convey the notion that McCain's 'change that we can believe in' translates as a great stinking heap of the same old, same old.
"Is this the way the world ends?"
Still the one who graduated in the bottom 1% of his class.
Still the one who set the Forrestal on fire
Still the one who got shot down by some farmers on his 5th mission.
Still the one who thinks Putin is the Prime Minister of Germany
Still the one who doesn't know a Sunni from a Shi'ite .
Still the one that is computer illiterate .
Still the one in bed with more lobbyist than anyone period .
Still the one who helped Keating raid senior citizens retirement accounts .
Still the one who voted with bush 95% of the time .
Still the one that sucks Ass.
Why isn't John Hall suing his ass, if all this is true? Seriously, this just encourages more of the same.
It is Still an exciting song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73uHLQDSBYo
Before Reagan used "Born in the U.S.A." for his campaign he asked Mellancamp if he could use "Little Pink Houses" . J.M. declined, then stated the obvious in an interview-- that the song was not meant to be patriotic, but an ironic jab at Reagan's first term policies.
Since irony is beyond the understanding of a Republican, as evidenced by Steven Colbert's appearance at the Press Club dinner, I say let McCain use the song . "Still the one" seems to drive home the point of a third Bush term quite nicely, I'd say .
On another front of corporate stealing of creativity- the Orphan Works Act. Please stop Congress from letting the corporation be the only ones protected by copyright. Us artists need your help!
http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/
So what is John Hall going to do about it? Just issue a statement, thus giving John McCain yet another pass?
Speaking of Republicans stealing, our Royal Corporate Chronicle newspaper finally has printed an article on the ongoing theft of billions of our dollars through unregulated electronic oil futures trading. The page 3 story is entitled, Bill would limit trading in energy markets." It seems that even corporate Feinstein and corporate Libermann want to limit this ongoing corporate theft of our money in the form of ever-rising oil and gas prices.
I repeat below some of my earlier comments to help bring folks up to speed on this massive ongoing theft:
We’re being ENRONed again: this time by oil futures contracts speculators who are unnecessarily and very profitably driving up the price of crude oil and hence retail gasoline prices. Curious as to why you are suddenly paying over four dollars a gallon for gasoline? No, it's not due to "supply-and-demand," no, it's not due to "OPEC," nor is it due to "peak oil." It's due to totally unregulated electronic oil futures trading in world markets. Check out the very lucid article that explains the unseen financial machinations in oil futures markets written by F. W. Engdahl on May 2, 2008, entitled, "Perhaps 60% of Today's Oil Price is Pure Speculation." It may be viewed at .
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2008/0502.html
In a nutshell, he suggests that the Bush Administration dropped the ball in January 2006, when they allowed totally unregulated electronic trading of oil futures contracts in New York. Previously these electronic trades had been made at the London Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) Futures Market. With that decision by the Bush Administration, all of the world's oil prices were then opened to upward pressure from speculative futures contracts. In essence, oil futures contracts made by speculators, banks, hedge funds and pension funds all competed with real demand on the spot markets and had the effect of driving up both wholesale oil prices and retail gasoline prices. Speculators have made billions of dollars on their trading of oil futures contracts. All of their profits come right out of our pockets.
Even with a stable oil supply, there is a slow worldwide increase in demand for oil, which creates a long-term upward pressure on oil prices. However, with the relentless saber-rattling and war-mongering by Bush and Cheney in the last several years, and the more recent war talks by McCain and the Israelis, the oil futures markets are rife with speculation and paranoia. This war talk keeps ratcheting up the prices on the oil futures contracts and hence the wholesale spot market prices. It is an endless spiral of greed and paranoia.
As long as there is no tough and effective oversight of the electronic oil futures markets by the Bush Administration, the oil prices will climb endlessly. These oil prices will be quickly followed by hikes in the retail gasoline prices at the pump. The 60% speculation share of the $4.25/gallon gasoline price, is about $2.55/gallon, which is what we consumers are paying to these oil speculators as a "service fee." Not a bad "fee," since the speculators produce no usable goods or services...Just a few large greedy oil futures traders helping themselves to your gas money.
Without this added-on oil futures "service fee," you would be paying about $1.75/gallon for gasoline. Write, call or smoke-signal your Representatives and Senators today and suggest that they read the June 2006 report by The U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations entitled, "The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices." Then demand that they investigate and then force the Bush Administration to firmly regulate the computerized oil futures contracts trading in New York, London and Dubai.
This electronic oil price futures scandal is costing US drivers about $969,000,000.00 per day! That number is based on 60% speculation fee of a gasoline price of $4.25/gallon and on US 2004 consumption of 380,000,000 gallons/day. Tell you Senators and Congresspersons to simply shut down this unregulated electronic oil futures contract trading market. Then the price of gasoline will slowly drop to about $1.75/gallon…The only way that oil price futures contracts make money is if the price of oil goes up in the future, say, 30, 60 or 90 days later. This futures market serves no social need. It is just for corporate greed. The corporate speculators are probably also gaming/ENRONing the wheat and corn futures markets the same way.
"So what is John Hall going to do about it? Just issue a statement, thus giving John McCain yet another pass?"
I suppose Mama Pelosi gave him orders that "song royalties are off the table".
Have the presidential campaigns descended to this level of trivia? What's next? McCain caught using extra packets of hot mustard on his Chicken McNuggets.
I hereby grant McNumbnuts permission to use the song, "Screw the World, and Lobbyists Too", as soon as I write the words and music.
If McCain is taking theme song suggestions... how about "Assholes On Parade" by Timbuk 3?
I don't think there's anything you can do about someone using your song but it just shows the lack of creativity and imagination on the side of Conservatives.
Who are they gonna turn to besides John Ashcroft?:
Let the Eagle Soar! > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woLQI8X2R6Y
I remember seeing Dick Cheney waddle out on stage to a Mellencamp song and I thought, "no she didn't!".
Mellancamp had just appeared with Kerry the previous day.
John Hall is my congressman in New York. "Still The One" is used by a local car dealership in their commercials. I hear "Still The One" & "Dance With Me" by Orleans all the time on my local adult contemporary radio station.
14All @ 22:
I don't need him to sue - but I find it very upsetting that he hasn't called the campaign and told them to stop.
I believe THAT'S a mistake.
*
You don't mean:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho1yJwvWCrw
!
How about this for a mccain themesong?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD5w6HPZTpE
BIGBONEDED @ 21:
still the one who wrote the famous 2007 ditty, "bomb iran"
still the one who claims iraq's so safe, general petraeus can stroll down any street in his penny loafers
still the one who hides when he hears the word "youtube", because he thinks one of his docotr's is about to make him change his catheter
still the one with the dad that folks say helped cover up the attack on the u.s.s libert in 1967
still the one married to a stepford barbie blow-up doll beer heiress, who by his own admission, is a bit of a trollop
still the one who's teeth look yellow and crusty
still the one the GOP chose to take one for the team like a good little pinata this fall, so they can begin regrouping and building momentum for their 2012 james inhofe / michael savage ticket
*doctors
*liberty
(sigh)
14All @ 22:
Yoko Ono tried to sue the producers of No Intelligence Allowed for using John Lennon's song Imagine, but lost at court.
The court said it was Fair Use, but I don't think that court understood the concept. Something like Johnny Appleseed, Blue-tailed Fly, and John Henry may be fair use, but most other songs from the 20th century have copyrights.
Conservatives are really only concerned with their property rights and everyone else's moral life. It is much easier to reach a state of narcissistic bliss that way.
this is a quick read regarding sophisticated stealing
http://www.dawn.com/2008/06/02/ebr17.htm
I think MC Cain is missing the so obvious song for him. Im thinking War Pigs by Black Sabbath
In the fields the bodies burning... as the war machine keeps turning.
james k. sayre @ 27,
The kind of gaiming of the system you talk about, which is theft that had to have been foreseen by Bushco, is typical of the amoral, or at least anethical, thinking and behavior of GOP and corporatist Dem types. (Whether it's McCain steling intellectual property or a bunch of money grubbing GOPers ripping off the world, they're all the same). What they are doing though, is hastening the extinction of the oil companies' centralized control and monopoly over fuels. At current pricing, I can produce carbon-neutral biodiesel, sell it and make a non-avaricious and reasonable profit for less than half the price I would pay for diesel at the pump. Anybody can. This same biodiesel will work as home heating oil, or would run a gas turbine power station. And, I'm doing it with non-food source feedstocks. I can't help think that part of this speculation isn't part of an overall "gouge-'em-while-we-still-can" plan that is happening, because the oil companies realize that it is only a matter of time before they lose their monopoly and centralized control over this huge portion of the energy sector. Brazil, for example, achieve fossil fuels energy independence in 2005; the oil companies have no control over them. It's got to be their worst nightmare.
Abba already turned Mc Cain down for " Take A Chance On Me" . Springsteen doesn't even want Mc Crazy listening to his stuff. I have a few other suggestions for songs that best exemplify Mc Oldbugger.
Your Flag Decal Wont Get You Into Heaven Anymore by John Prine
We Cant Make It Here Anymore by James Mc Murtry
Living On A Prayer by Bon Jovi
Crazy Train by Ozzie
Just A Gigalo - David Lee Roth version of course
Hope i can help ole Sid find a song.
I suggest McCane use the old Frank Sinatra/Nancy Sinatra hit, "Something Stupid".
I love you guys and read C&L religiously every day, but I have to tell ya, the title of this post made me snort! Is there "Democratic music" and "Republican music"? Of course not. Now McCain's unauthorized use of copyrighted material to support a cause the copyright holder doesn't agree with is certainly an issue, but I don't think I'd call "Still the One" purely "democratic" music. LOL.
I thought that Bush used it in 2004 and Hall put the Kibash on it immediately
bryancri @ 2:
anyone in the industry. For the record, a writer or performer gets an advance to record the song. The singer/songwriter then have to wait for the Label (RIAA) to make back the advance. Then and only then does the singer/songwriter see any money from sales. If McCain (or any other) violates copyright and performance rights, they should pay. Not the label, but the singer songwriter. But judging by your comment, you just don't care that a musician ba able to pay bills. or eat. or control who does what with his (or her) music.
cat scratch fever? ted nugent is probably his only real option....
Epitaph by King Crimson is my recommendation for McCain's campaign song. Some excerpts:
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams...
Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules.
The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools...
Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back
And laugh.
But I fear tomorrow Ill be crying,
Yes I fear tomorrow Ill be crying.
kerplunk @ 28:
first comes the C&D from his lawyers. THEN comes the lawsuit if the campaign refuse to comply
Gretchen @ 18:
even for a benefit, permission must be obtained.
What? Toby Keith won't write the McCain campaign one his lame ass country-pop turds?
Or maybe C.S Lewis Jr. , he's a great Patriotic Country Singer.
I'm a friend of Larry Hoppen, who lives around here, who was the lead singer of Orleans, and someone I performed "Still The One" with live, as a performer with him in concert around here. He did a solo show.
He's one of the biggest Democrats I know, and if Rep. Hall wasn't already on it, he'd be having a bitch fit, just like when Bush used it. We've had Bush bashing sessions together, many times.
McNapalm should use the song,"My Little Ladyboy Gook C*nt from Hanoi".
Had he stolen "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's Addiction, would have been a perfect merger of medium and message.
Meanwhile the RIAA will sue a single mother for $10,000 if she downloads that song.
McCain? he goes free.
Didn't 50 Cent have the same complaint about Barak Obama using P.I.M.P. as his theme song?
Same Old Song And Dance by Aerosmith.
Karoli @ 46:
It is if a Democrat has used it on a campaign before, same with McKinnon and Joe 'H' Lie****** with their borrowing of backdrop styles, its deliberate confusing or stealing of concepts and themes.
All to confuse and distract the voters.
the man @ 58:
not free he costs the US taxpayer $58,000 a year in 100% disabled veterans pension after he was declared 100% fit and put back on the active duty list.
He needed that brief 20 month tour as pretend commander of that Florida training squadron for his political resume and DC career.
Login or Register to post comments.