John M.

I chose 500 as an arbitrarily small number, your vote for 1000 is noted.

Re: ASCAP, We had a situation in this area. Barnes and Noble used to allow Singer/Songwriters to performs their own music at mini-concerts in their store. ASCAP threatened them with a lawsuit even though they were performing original material. B & N couldn't afford the hassle so they stopped the concerts.

Re: "trying to have it both ways." Not really, I think that the copyright laws need to be tempered with some common sense (as anonymous said above). I don't see anything wrong with allowing non profit (or very little profit) use of a song whether it's kids 'round a camp fire or a singer struggling to make it, that's not exploitation. But, if someone is making thousands of dollars of from someone else's work then there is no reason that they shouldn't pay standard royalties.

Bert.