Artits and Their Legal Issues

The Spanish Ballet and Flamenco dancer Joaquín Cortés is considering suing the production team in charge of his show planned to be held in the Mexican Blackberry Auditory. The performance was scheduled for this past Friday, October 19. The dancer claims that in his arrival to the arena, he noticed that it was completely empty and there were no production staff members around to explain what happened.

Among dislikes, in a press conference Cortés highlighted that in his 30 years of dancing trajectory he had never lived such experienced. Feeling embarrassed with the public he guaranteed that his lawyers were already working the situation and assured his fans that the next presentations will be done as planned.

Is really sad seeing how the entertainment industry is still affected by people who do not understand the power of the human word. About legal issues, breach of contract is basically the principal cause of legal problems between parties. This is why it is extremely recommended to build strong clauses in the contracts to resolve this issues as friendly as possible.

American rapper Chris Brown is in risk of facing another legal problem. After being sued for the brutal beating he executed against his girlfriend and pop artist Rihanna, he was sentenced to community service and to keep good behaviors. At this day, he has not accomplished with none of his obligations and even though they broke up when the lawsuit happened, rumor has it that they are getting back together.

I do not think Rihanna should get back together with Brown. His conduct demonstrated that he does not fully respect the female gender and less respects the law. He should be concerned about accomplishing his obligations and be a good example for his fans.

Another artist facing legal issues is American actress Lindsay Lohan. After several former problems with the law, now she has been accused and arrested of doing a “hit and run” in New York. Apparently she ran over a pedestrian and escaped. Accused for running away from the scene, paying a fine was the only thing necessary to free her. Still, the legal situation will not finish there because she is still in probation for a previously lawsuit for jewelry robbery.

These situations are example of how artists should protect their image in order to keep credibility. These actions only demonstrate that they do not care for the public safety, the law and the United States politics. Both Brown and Lohan should work with a PR that can provide them a crisis management plan and a lawyer to resolver their legal issues.

Puerto Rican Digital Distribution: CEMCA Records

Digital development has transformed how the public delights the entertainment. Thanks to these changes, music and its distribution require a transformation in the traditional training of the musician. Being “music-talented” is simply not enough anymore. To be successful in a competitive market, the musicians must acquire knowledge and skills in self-management in how to promote and distribute their creative content, and be successful entrepreneurs. Here is where CEMCA comes in.

The CultuArte Musicians Business Center (English for Centro Empresarial para Músicos CulturArte and better known as CEMCA) is the first and only center in the island of Puerto Rico led to the strategic education in music and arts. CEMCA is an initiative of the Music Conservatory School of Puerto Rico that looks to propitiate new ways to benefit musicians and music students in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Some of the digital distribution channels used by CEMCA in their educational programs are: AOLMusicAmazon, ECD Hong Kong Limited, eMusic, FNAC.com, Napster, MusicMatch, OD2 (and their licensees, including HMV, Cokemusic, and VirginMega), iTunes (Worldwide), Listen.com/Rhapsody, Puretracks, Real.com, SonyConnect, MSN Music
Loudeye, MusicNet (and their licensees, including AOL and Yahoo! Music), Liquid Audio, SnoCap, and Walmart.com. This long list of channels help the school and the musicians (the students) to have many and better ways to distribute their music or artistic content.

CEMCA is basically the first record label in the island by this school focused in the digital distribution of intellectual content through the Internet. The school prepares its students to become professional in the music industry and its distribution thanks to programs like CEMCA. Other strategies used to collaborate to this education are workshops of business plan making, market analysis and financing sources, national and international internships with successful music-related companies, and lessons in entertainment law and media publishing. CEMCA’s programs not only prepare these professionals in the music industry but also boost them to be administrated entrepreneurs. 

Creative Commons: the Next Best Thing for Distribution Solutions

Each day more and more people become artists and authors, where thanks to their talents new intellectual content is being created. To facilitate the distribution of these contents –without having big companies interfering the distribution process- many organizations and webpages have excelled providing strategic alternatives to distribute and publish such works.

Besides the existence of self-publishing Print-On-Demand (POD) websites, there are other organizations like Creative Commons (CC). This last one is an American non-profit organization dedicated to provide legal models and applications to facilitate the distribution and use of content within the public domain. Creative Commons present their legal models as licenses, inspired by the General Public License granted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

This organization (FSF) has dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, understanding, and modifying of computer programs. Therefore, the licenses granted by CC are aimed to allow authors to decide the way in which their creative content will circulate on the Internet, providing freedom to quote, reproduce, create works and offer them publically. Although these licenses were written in English originally, they have been adapted to other languages and various laws in other countries. The languages in which the licenses have been translated are: Galician, Catalan, Spanish, Basque and Portuguese. Some of the countries that have adapted the CC benefits and have granted operating licenses (also adapted to their legislation) are: Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Spain, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Puerto Rico.

 

Currently all intellectual creations by default fall under the protection of the copyright laws, with the long string of restrictions that it implies. Anyone who wants to use a specific work must enter a complicated process of finding the copyright owner and obtaining his or her permission, which often involves the payment of royalties. Because of this, many projects never become materialized.

Therefore, CC provides a system that automates the content search. To license the work, the creator strictly establishes general conditions that later are incorporated into the work digitally, so that a search engine can identify them. Apart from establishing a database containing all licensed works, the organization intends to establish a creative file available for public sharing.