No one told Dennis Rodman that he has to pay licensing fees for the right to play copyrighted songs at his California restaurant? Either he didn’t know, or he was trying to get away with it. Either way, the free ride is over for the former NBA defensive demon, who has agreed to pay licensing fees back to 2002 and has signed a new agreement with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), his publicist, Shannon Barr, told the Los Angeles Times.
Rodman said he wasn’t feeling ASCAP’s rule that commercial establishments must pay fees for the use of any of its eight million copyrighted songs and compositions performed live, bumped on jukeboxes or piped in from radio stations.
"But hey, what can you do?" said Rodman in an e-mail to the Times. "We are under new management now, and I have taken every precaution that things like this do not happen again.”
Rodman’s, formerly known as Josh Slocum’s, was one of numerous restaurants across 15 states – and the only California spot – named in a lawsuit filed by ASCAP.
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