Touch and Go / Butthole Surfers dispute

[yesno]

I'm not sure I quite understand the vitriol against Gibby Haines in this. 

This is no doubt because I'm a lawyer, and the Butthole Surfers side was basically unassailable legally.  (They had a contract with Touch and Go where the Buttholes licensed their works to T&G for a 50/50 profit split, but because there was no specified length to the contract, bands were free to walk away.  You don't hold people to a contract *forever* unless the contract is really really clear.)

Now, this is no doubt a case where the band is a bunch of assholes and the label didn't do anything wrong.  That said, in the scheme of things labels have usually been the bad guys and bands the victims, so in cases where a band wants to walk away from a label (and take its back catalog with it) it should be able to.

[Christina]

The Touch 'n Go roster both past and present is unholy, it's true. However, I am pro-BHS on this one too. Handshake contracts may have seemed like an awesome idea all those years ago, but the Surfers had the right to approach T&G to make a change to that original agreement. And they had the right to protect their interests. T&G claiming that they owned the copyrights to the catalog doesn't sound right esp in light of said handshake agreement - a 50/50 one I think is what was agreed to.

[buffcoat]

I always side with management.

[JonFromMaplewood]

I always side with management.

I always side with this guy.

[timmx]

I'm not sure I quite understand the vitriol against Gibby Haines in this. 

This is no doubt because I'm a lawyer, and the Butthole Surfers side was basically unassailable legally...

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/touch-and-go-v-the-buttholes/Content?oid=898923

Some of Rusk's biggest defenders concede that the protections relied on by the Butthole Surfers are necessary. "Conceptually [the Copyright Act] is a good law," says MacKaye. "It happens that in this perverse situation it was used against something that's right. It doesn't surprise me. Courts don't understand this--it's outside of their domain. Courts are the domain of lawyers. If you have an oral contract, lawyers don't get paid. It's kind of perfect that a court would be offended by that."

[yesno]

I read that story.  Why is it "right" that a label would get to keep the rights to a band's recordings forever? 

The court, anyway, didn't care that the contract was oral.  Oral contracts are enforced all the time.  The problem was they didn't spell anything out.  The problem with oral contracts is when people disagree about what was said.

Bands that license their works to record labels, need to have some mechanism to revoke that license if they have legitimate complaints.  They shouldn't have to wait for a label to do what Lookout! did (which was to breach its side of a lot of contracts by not paying royalties, afaik).

Gibby Haines view was that "you are getting 50% of the profits of a backcatalog whose value has gone up because of our major label success, and I don't think you deserve this windfall so pay me more."  Maybe this is "greedy" or just socially unacceptable or something, I don't know.  As a starting position I don't get outraged when a band wants more money from a label, even when it's a not-good-anymore band led by a prick, and the coolest record label on earth.

Mike Monteiro, graphic designer of "Fuck you, pay me" fame, talks all the time about the importance of contracts.  All you're doing is deciding how to proceed just in case things go wrong and both parties start to hate each other's guts--you don't need a lawyer for that.  Shit, just have a long conversation about it and tape record it or something.

[fonpr]

Dear YesNo,

I am going to attempt to summarize your last two posts.

The Buttholes are assholes with a point.

Agreements should be documented.

Did I get it right?

[Christina]

Fredricks, you talk pretty!

I'd say maybe a 1/2 point to add to the second, which is: agree to a timeframe.

[fonpr]

Thanks Auntie!

Revised:

The Buttholes are assholes

with a point.

Agreements should be documented and

 framed by time.

[yesno]

Yeah, that's about right.

I think it's pretty undeniable that the Buttholes are assholes (ha!), but I can't come down on one side or the other whether their basic argument (Touch and Go was getting an undeserved windfall from our backcatalog) is really valid or not--I think the answer to that comes down to social context. But I can think of enough situations (Lookout! again) where it's really obvious that you need some way to resolve band/label disputes that doesn't just depend on everyone being a cool dude about everything. That won't happen when there's money involved.

[fonpr]

That won't happen when there's money involved.

Stupid money.

Look what it did to American democracy.