Creative Artists Deserve Compensation

Michael Schrage writes arrant, indeed, wicked nonsense when he issues his “Call to Arms on Record Industry Home Taping ‘Tax’ ” (Aug. 29).

Not once does he consider in his hysterical diatribe against manufacturers of recorders and blank tapes (and the coming blank CDs) that the issue of royalties concerns artists--writers, composers, publishers, for example. For those are the people who create what he wants to copy for his convenience.

For years, as a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers, I have lobbied my representatives in the Senate and Congress to find a way to enforce the law of copyright, meaning the obligation to make royalty payments, for those whose work is disseminated via the media.

Schrage, while inveighing mightily against DAT tape makers, never mentions that he should be paying a royalty to “Guns ‘N’ Roses, Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen and Milli Vanilli.” And to our jazz and blues artists, as well as the Los Angeles Philharmonic or Isaac Stern and all the other great performers.

Yes, I mean a royalty for the new privilege of taping their artistic and copyrighted performances. The addition of a penny or two to every blank tape or CD sold is meant to be pooled for distribution to artists!

Most writers, musicians and artists live and die poor, often without Social Security. When people sell photocopied Salvador Dali or Joan Miro lithographs and there is a worldwide trade in this racket, who gets the money? Not the artist and not the artist’s estate.

The bills pending in Congress, against which Schrage protests, are enlightened measures that aim to preserve the life of the geese who lay the golden eggs: the creative artists themselves.

If Schrage is not being just dumb about this issue, then his complaint is actually in sheer bad faith, which is morally heinous.

JASCHA KESSLER

Los Angeles