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 The first item in p2pnet’s World Headlines, yesterday, was a clip from The Australian headlined, “Copyright staff get more than they give to authors and artists”.

Surely not!

But Yes. It’s the truth.

Said the story >>>

The body established to pay authors for the use of their copyright last year spent more on its own staff — including more than $350,000 for a chief executive — than it paid authors and artists directly. The Copyright Agency Limited was formed in 1989 to raise money from institutions using copyrighted works, such as newspaper articles, photographs and book excerpts, to reward the creators of these works.

But the collection agency last year paid $9.4 million in salaries, compared with a $9.1m direct allocation for authors and artists.

Among the highest paid at CAL was its chief executive Jim Alexander, who earned more than $350,000 last year, while another senior staff member earned between $250,000 and $299,000, another between $200,000 and 249,000, and five others between $150,000 and $199,000.

A further 21 staff earned between $100,000 and $149,000. In addition, the agency spent more than $300,000 on travel for its top executives, including a trip for its three senior executives to an International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations conference in Barbados, and a trip for four employees and board members to the Beijing Writers Festival.

“Anyone have salary data on Sound Exchange or SOCAN or ASCAP?” – wondered p2pnet regular Robert in a Reader’s Write, going on:

“They probably covered that up well, but it would be interesting to see the numbers.”

Nashville entertainment lawyer and p2pnet contributor Fred Wilhelms was able to help with UnSoundExchange.

“Here are the numbers from the 2008 IRS-990?, he said >>>

John Simson, Executive Director – $356,855
Barrie Kessler, Chief Operating Officer $355,636
Michael Huppe, General Counsel/EVP – $325,196
Ryan Lehning, Senior Counsel – $177,282
Colin Rushing, Senior Counsel – $140,409
Anjula Singh, Controller – $168,709
Chris Dean, Director of IS&T $134,480
Kirstine Patton, Director of Distrubution $120,218

They are the only eight who made more than $100,000 a year.

The total for these 8 is $1,778,742.

The payroll for the rest of the staff was $2,140,492, which means the Simson, Kessler and Huppe ($1,037,687) represented about a third of the total payroll.

The top 8 represent about 56%.

Fred adds:

“It’s a tad top heavy, especially for an organization that has managed to accumulate a quarter of a billion dollars in unpaid royalties and appears to think that is acceptable, but I have to say the Australian news makes SoundExchange look like Little Leaguers. I wouldn’t be surprised if SoundExchange hasn’t considered sending someone down there to learn how they did it.

In the meantime, I think we can expect Dick Huey and Laura Williams to latch onto this story as “proof” of how well SoundExchange does in comparison. They won’t do it anywhere anyone can make them accountable, but that’s not their concern anyway.

“The object lesson from the Australian news story is that SoundExchange isn’t unique. There is not an organization on Earth that purports to look out for both creators and those who hold the copyrights in those creations that doesn’t favor one side over the other, and it always seems to break in favor of the copyright holders.”

Thanks, Fred.

Now, can anyone help with SOCAN and ASCAP?

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