I remember as a small child there was a show on TV (probably local) where someone would show the comics from the Sunday newspaper and read them to the camera. A strange thing looking back. I’m not sure what the point was.
In any case, would such a thing even be legal? Wouldn’t the local station have to get permission (and perhaps they did) from the newspaper or comic strip before airing them? I can’t imagine that the newspaper would be happy about it.
The short answer is it wasn’t just done; one person became almost famous for doing it. The reason was often a newspaper strike and this is the best recorded (and possibly first) time but I am also positive I remember it being done on TV at least once in my youth (early 60s). The legalities I am sure involved some kind of payment to the cartoonist or permission granted but I can easily see it being done.
Note that the previous reply about LaGuardia refers to the comic strips actually being read over the radio not shown on TV. I seriously doubt any payments were made, but if they were, they’d not go to the cartoonist(s) but the syndicates who owned almost all of the strips, and who billed for those (like Prince Valiant) they didn’t. It’s possible there were a few self-syndicated strips read.
I’ve never heard of anybody ever getting paid for printed material being read. I’ve never heard of anybody asking for permission to do so.
Music is different because there are actual laws in place to govern permissions. I don’t know of any such laws for printed materials and I imagine they’d be declared unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The first-sale doctrine might also apply.
People stage marathon readings of James Joyce every Bloomsday. Similar celebrations are done for other authors.
Reading comics should be fine. IANAL.
Certainly people are paid to read the “books” you can purchase on tape or CD. And publishers or authors holding the copyright are compensated. There may be no payment involved in some projects like books for the blind, but that is voluntary. But you may be thinking of someone standing up on stage and reading a book live. However, I’d be amazed if you could read a copyrighted book live on stage and charge admission and not be in violation of copyright. I could be wrong of course.
I think what you’re thinking is different about music is not the law but organizations like ASCAP. They have agreements with copyright holders, etc. which let anyone play a musical piece with fees fixed in advance. There is no need to negotiate. But those are voluntary organizations. You needn’t “enter” your music into such an agreement.
Nope, I mean that music has a specific section of copyright law that covers performing rights.
After looking more into the question, I’m thinking you’re probably right about public readings of books for money. Private reading is certainly allowed and some quotation from a book would fall under fair use. Renting a hall would require permission, though I can’t figure out whether the copyright holder or the publisher is the one to ask. I can’t find any specific cases on the subject in a brief search and as I said I don’t remember this ever coming up. Plenty of sites say that posting a video of yourself reading a book to YouTube violates copyright, though no specific case law is ever mentioned.
The ones I remember being shown on TV I couldn’t find a cite for. It was one of the big newspaper strikes in Pittsburgh and they had a daily kids show on the one station – “Adventure Time Theater” or “Popeye and K’nish” or something like that. Memory is they actually showed the strips as the host read the balloons. But again, that is off of my brain and not something I can document.
If you read the wiki page you cite, it’s essentially what I said. You can perform a song in a public performance by paying ASCAP a fee. These fees come on a schedule and you don’t really need prior permission to perform. That’s the whole point of ASCAP so you don’t have to chase down the copyright holder to get permission. If a song is not in ASCAP (or a similar organization), then you do have to get permission to perform it. ASCAP is not mandated by law, it is an organization set up to facilitate things.
You don’t need to pay to sing it to your friends in private, just as you wouldn’t need to pay to read a story out loud to your kid. There is no ASCAP-like organization for books because, I presume, there is not a lot of interest in public readings to be worthwhile setting one up.
You just triggered my memory. I lived in Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and the show was Adventure Time on Pittsburgh’s WTAE channel 4. The printers unions struck both Pittsburgh newspapers in 1971 and I have definite memories of host Paul Shannon reading the funnies, which were enlarged and mounted on a storyboard. I presume the station paid the appropriate fees to the syndicates which distributed the steps.
Chuck McCann used to read comic strips on TV in the 1960s , as recalled on this blogsite:
See also here:
http://www.chuckmccann.net/earlytv.htm
And here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/chuck-mccann-absence-restraint-article-1.822427
I thought I remembered “Officer” Joe Bolton reading comics on the air on WPIX, but I can’t find any reference to it.
Yes, of course. ASCAP and BMI stand in the place of publishers. But they only have status because of the copyright law. That’s the critical point.