CBS Signs Licensing Deal With ‘Peanuts’ People To Duck Legal Issues From Colbert’s Last Show
from the lucy-pulling-away-the-copyright-football dept
I can’t say I know for sure that Stephen Colbert is a Techdirt reader, but I very much believe he is. His interests align somewhat with ours, he often comments on some of the same topics we do, and, it turns out, he decided to troll his previous employer during his last show in a very Techdirt-ian manner.
After CBS decided to sacrifice Colbert at the altar of American fascism, the wind down of The Late Show culminated in a final broadcast weeks ago. During that broadcast, Colbert was covering a story about Lee Mendelson Film Productions, which owns the music catalogue for the Charlie Brown franchise, suing several targets for use of its copyrighted music. As he did so, the show band began playing the Charlie Brown theme song. Colbert mused afterwards sarcastically that he hoped that wouldn’t cost CBS any money.
Well played, if only to highlight the absurdity that such a short performance of an iconic song like that could actually result in threats, lawsuits, or demands for payment. But many speculated that the show had already gotten the rights to play the music before it aired, or that Lee Mendelson Film Productions wouldn’t actually do anything about it all to avoid inserting itself into the public spat between Colbert, CBS, and our current government.
Wrong. The company did apparently reach out to CBS, which eventually had to enter into a licensing agreement to avoid any legal issues.
The agreement will see CBS take a license for “Linus and Lucy,” the unofficial Peanuts theme that Colbert’s band played on the air during the show. The proceeds from the deal will be donated to the charity World Central Kitchen, run by Chef José Andrés.
“LMFP found the music’s use on The Late Show funny and entertaining, and is proud to support World Central Kitchen’s mission,” the group’s chairman Jason Mendelson said. A spokeswoman for CBS confirmed the agreement but declined to comment.
On the one hand, I guess it’s nice to see some of CBS’ money go to a good organization like World Central Kitchen. But I do indeed wonder if similar arrangements were struck with the other four entities against which LMFP filed lawsuits. I somehow doubt it. I would guess instead that such treatment was reserved for CBS, in order to make this story more lighthearted and warming.
It’s not, this is stupid, and none of this is as it should be. Colbert shouldn’t have been forced out of his job by a combination of a thin-skinned gibbon and a compliant CBS. It’s insanity that copyright law is in a place where such a diminutive use of a famous song could result in the requirement of a licensing arrangement, never mind actual potential lawsuits. And if it’s so necessary to protect copyright in this instance that lawsuits need to be filed against multiple parties, it should be important enough that any licensing fees and/or damages obtained shouldn’t just be given away to charities.
But as a final poke in CBS’ eye, this was a good one.
Filed Under: charlie brown, copyright, licensing, stephen colbert
Companies: cbs, lmfp, paramount, world central kitchen
Comments on “CBS Signs Licensing Deal With ‘Peanuts’ People To Duck Legal Issues From Colbert’s Last Show”
Live by the copyright, shell out for the copyright.
Given that Colbert’s band played it—meaning they were using a composition but not a recording copyrighted by others—why wouldn’t the network have just used a compulsory license, such as through a performance-rights organization? I mean, what is CBS but a bunch of lawyers who should be on top of this shit?
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Compulsory licenses often cost far more than a negotiated one; AFAIK they only exist for when the rights holder won’t talk to the user. For broadcast it could be a couple of cents per viewer, so it adds up to real money.
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Okay, fair point, but that band played music every show, right? Had they only been playing public-domain stuff till now? Or did they normally ask permission from their music-licensing people in advance, and neglect to do so this time?
The article mentions “speculation on social media that CBS had cleared the song ahead of the episode airing, or that it already held a blanket license”—but then, itself, only speculates that neither was the case. Based on this deal, I assume the latter speculation is correct, but nobody seems to have any actual information on what differed from the norm here.
I’ll be honest. That we haven’t resorted to firing squads for downloading music yet actually surprises me.
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Listening to RIAA rhetoric back in the day, you know they daydreamed about it.
The IT Crowd did a great parody for movie downloading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
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Why did you write this in the past tense? Neither they nor the MPAA really changed, and even on Techdirt people still refer to copyright infringement as “piracy”.
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No doubt they haven’t changed their song, but we don’t listen to their bullshit as often anymore. Techdirt doesn’t cover them like the old days. And the current use of the term piracy is often a linguistic reappropriation. The pirate bay folks, et al., turned it into a regular word rather than a pejorative.
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They’re hoping to do it, but I do not consider them to have been successful. People talk about it as if it’s vaguely immoral, sometimes using related terms such as “stealing” that I don’t think they’re meaning to reappropriate.
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I guess it depends on who you’re listening to or where you’re visiting on the internet. I see a bunch of random discussions of people saying things like, “this software costs too much” “just pirate it, man!”
I’ve seen college professors say things like, “the textbook is expensive, so consider options like borrowing from a friend. I don’t recommend going to the pirate bay to search for it because piracy is bad for the textbook publisher and VPNs are important for safe web searches…” in a wink wink smile kind of sarcasm.
I usually only hear the term used seriously from MBA types who are typically exploitative, insufferable people anyway and who definitely aren’t experts on copyright law.
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You’re suggesting “bad for the textbook publisher” is part of the sarcasm? I suppose it’s possible, but it’s far from clear and hardly seems like an attempt at “re-appropriation”. If they really didn’t believe it to be bad, why wouldn’t they simply say “here’s the URL for Library Genesis”? Why the pretense of siding with publishers? I think it’s because, to them, it’s a “lesser of two evils” type of thing—but still “evil”.
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If you heard the professor in person, you’d likely not be confused that he was being sarcastic. It’s not just the word choice. It’s the smile and the tone. The “piracy is bad for the publisher” was sarcasm meant to cover his ass in case someone asks him if he encouraged copyright violation and the subsequent random mention of VPNs indicated that he wanted people to be safe and not get caught when they download copyrighted content.
And that’s just one example. I’ve spoken to a bunch of college professors who are recent enough students themselves that they hate the high cost of textbooks and the recurring edition upgrading scheme where they add five pages and mix up some quiz questions to charge $80 more for a new edition while sending a free copy to the professor to encourage adoption. College mailrooms are full of free/sample/example/preview copies from publishers who hope professors will pick their book and thus force scores of college students to buy them. Book reps will walk into open buildings at college campuses to the professors’ offices to try to encourage adoption. It’s a big profitable racket.
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Okay; but, again, I think many examples are not so obvious. Even your message has what I perceive as a “justifiable evil” tone, with mentions of rackets and such. We should be sharing knowledge and culture because we want everyone to have access to it—not as a “fuck you” to some corporation, but because it’s immoral to perpetuate a system that would withhold it.
There’s still very much a culture on the Internet for people to claim “ownership” for things they created, or sometimes just things they put online without authorization. Look at the fan fiction with “DO NOT POST TO OTHER SITES” comments. For every professor or activist using “pirate” or “steal” ironically or for reappropriation, probably 10 people use it with no such intent. Or no obvious intent, anyway; it’s always hard to tell online.
I went to uni before LibGen (like 25 years ago), so there were books I simply didn’t have access to. Some professors knew we wouldn’t and emphasized they were optional. Two professors, though, had assigned their own textbooks, and both provided digital copies to us. Still, for all the indicators of author/publisher discontent, we should have an overwhelming amount of free/libre books by now; instead, people keep working with those assholes. And I’d love to see some professors just saying outright to download the books, with no pretense; what’s tenure for if they can’t even suggest fair use, which education damn well qualifies as?
I just wonder who will bring us, “Hormuz News You Can Use”?
After the latest Hormuz News, Trump needs booze! $300 billion to Iran for those tankers to Cruz. Well Donny, you Snuz you Luz.
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The Hormuz News created such a conditioned reflex in my mind that even if someone spoke about the Strait of Hormuz anywhere else, I automatically heard the horn and Colbert saying it.
It didn’t fade away yet. I had it again when reading your comment, so I had to respond.
Yes
Yes, it cost CBS money. Well played!
About that song...
…its actual name is “Linus and Lucy”, and the version that everyone has heard 98,271 times is by The Vince Guaraldi Trio. They were quite accomplished jazz musicians – Guaraldi’s composition “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” won a Grammy. Unfortunately and sadly, he died suddenly in 1976 – between the sets of a show in California.
I really trusted that all this money would be going to Charles Schultz personally, to encourage him to draw more Peanuts cartoons! If it’s not, why does this copyright exist?
It's the arraingment
specifically, did CBS talk to Peanuts and say “sue us, we’ll make a heartwarming story out of it”?
It’s not any crazier than the current state of copyright.
CBS approves/bleeps jokes, are we to assume they blindly don’t review the music?
CBS: 'We don't do 'news' any more'
Given what happened to Disney over the, as it turns out short-lived sacking of Jimmy Kimmel I expect that paying out over a short bit of music will be the least of CBS’ financial pains in the coming months after sacking Colbert and killing The Late Show to appease the regime…
Mwa Mwa!
Mwa mwa mwaa waaa. Mwaa mwaaa wa mwaa mwaa mwaa ma. Mwaa?
“Linus and Lucy” was written by a man named Vince Guaraldi, not “the Peanuts people”. Anyway, there have been numerous cover versions of the song. Personally, I tend to lean toward Gary Hoey’s interpretation.
This is a song that belongs in the public domain. Vince Guaraldi passed away in 1976. How can anyone claim the rights to music whose COMPOSER passed away a half century ago?
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Capitalism and captured legislators
Womp womp womp womp.
That’s not a sad trombone, that’s just what adults sound like when they talk.