Wednesday, June 13, 2007
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN — The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers has brought legal action against the owners of the Powerhouse Bar and Grill in Warren for playing copyrighted music at the bar without a license.
ASCAP hired a Cleveland law firm, Baker & Hostetler LLP, which filed the action in Youngstown Federal Court on Monday.
The suit says the bar, whose president is Dale Habosky, has been playing copyrighted music for customers of the establishment, at 999 Mahoning Ave. Northwest.
Richard Reimer, in-house counsel for ASCAP, said the society has corresponded with the establishment at various times, asking company representatives to buy a license, but they have refused.
Eventually, ASCAP hired an investigator to go to the Powerhouse on Jan. 7, where he noted a karaoke disc jockey at the bar playing five songs for which ASCAP owns the copyright, Reimer said.
The suit seeks to stop Powerhouse from continuing the copyright infringements and seeks damages between $750 and $30,000 for each violation.
Unclear
Habosky said he was contacted by ASCAP, but he didn’t know what the society was and refused to pay for licensing because none of the other bars in the area pays for such licensing. “I don’t even know what it is,” Habosky said of the licensing.
Habosky’s brother, Mark Davidson, a partner in the business, said he had a hard time telling what he was supposed to pay ASCAP because the amount was negotiable, dropping from $5,000 a year to $1,000.
He said the Powerhouse eventually decided to stop providing entertainment because of the visits, correspondence and telephone calls from the company.
ASCAP is a membership association of more than 295,000 U.S. composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers of every kind of music. The society protects the rights of its members by licensing and distributing royalties for the nondramatic public performances of their copyrighted works, according to its Web site. Its headquarters is in New York.