ASCAP vs. GITMO UPDATE

Today I received an email from a Meredith Topalanchik from a company called CooperKatz that describes themselves this way on their site:

"CooperKatz, one of the first communications agencies to recognize the enormous impact of consumer-generated media on business products/services and corporate/brand reputation, factors Cogence into our strategic response to every client challenge, helping organizations to:

• Find the online influencers who are their biggest evangelists and vigilantes
• Listen actively and transparently to these vocal individuals via as many online channels as possible
• Engage constituents in a dialogue through social media channels
• Empower individuals to spread the organization’s message online

At CooperKatz, Cogence – our proprietary communications discipline – is a key part of the breakthrough strategic thinking and creativity that enable us to achieve exceptional results for our clients."

She was contacting me on behalf of ASCAP about my recent post dealing with the group ASCAP and the Guantanamo Bay detention center. For fairness sake, here is the entire email she sent me:

"Hi Matt- I hope you are well and had a good weekend. I wanted to reach out to you regarding your post from Saturday http://sorelevant.blogspot.com/2008/07/ascap-vs-gitmo.html ASCAP vs. Gitmo. We work with ASCAP and their PR/communications team and after reading your post wanted to send a note of clarification.

In your post you noted a story on Wired.com and referenced that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (“ASCAP”) “might sue the government for using their member's music in torture...”

We wanted to reach out to you and let you know that ASCAP has not made any such demands. I believe that certain commentators, in blogs and elsewhere, have posited that under copyright law such uses of copyrighted music may in theory be public performances that require licensing. However, all such discussions were of a theoretical nature as far as ASCAP was concerned. Again, ASCAP does not pursue licenses for such uses.

We hope that you will consider including a note of clarification on your blog so that this confusion does not perpetuate. Please feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions regarding ASCAP.

Best~

Meredith"

So it looks like the articles written were based on possible "wishful thinking" rather than cold hard facts.

What is possibly most exciting to me is that I could maybe be one of the "online influencers who are their biggest evangelists and vigilantes"...I am hoping maybe more of an evangelist and not a vigilante.