LONDON—Legendary guitarist Eric Clapton, already in the news for winning his lawsuit against a German widow who unwittingly listed a bootleg CD of one of his concerts for around $11 on eBay, is now making international headlines after his lawyers said he is suing everyone and anyone who has ever attended one of his concerts and has memories of them for copyright infringement.
Clapton’s legal team, which has more members than the production crews at his concerts have, said that the British musician, who has a net worth currently estimated to be $300 million, is filing the latest lawsuit in order to protect the rights of all musicians around the world. One of the team’s lawyers, who requested anonymity for fear of being sued for remembering who his client is, said that, as with the recent legal win in Germany over the bootleg CD, Clapton is actually fighting for starving artists in the music world who are being cheated out of royalties and other income after performing live. “Mr. Clapton’s viewed as the bad guy here,” the attorney said, “but he’s really doing this for the little guys and girls in the industry. Most concerts prohibit recording of the performance without permission. Yet attendees record the event in their heads, and then they leave with the memories of a bloody lifetime. Memories that they get to replay over and over again for free. How is that fair for the performer?”
Another Clapton lawyer, who would comment only if this writer would erase her name from his memory, said that concertgoers are currently being identified using video footage from the performances. She noted that for this particular use Clapton is perfectly fine with bootleg/amateur recordings, as the additional coverage they provide has been very helpful in determining who has been infringing on his copyright. However, she added that even if the footage were helpful the legal team would still be pursuing the creators of those unofficial versions, because Clapton believes in right and wrong. Off the record, she said that Clapton often wishes all his concerts were like his infamous Birmingham performance at the Odeon theater in August 1976, during which he made shockingly racist comments (which he later apologized for), because, ironically, no one recorded it.
Thomas Jones, a music industry analyst based in London, said that Clapton is reportedly in talks with his financial team to figure out the best strategy to be compensated for the memories he creates. “I’ve been hearing that he really likes the way syndication is used in TV as well as the subscriber-based business models that Netflix and Prime use,” Jones said. “Eric has suggested a lifetime subscription fee based on those. He doesn’t want people to worry that they’ll have to pay again because they’ve exceeded their memories for the year.” But, Jones said, some of Clapton’s financial team argued that as memories fade over time, many concertgoers might be reluctant to spring for a lifetime subscription, which is said to be priced at more than $5,000, even for his worst performances. When asked how Clapton intends to prevent copyright infringement should he win the lawsuit but concertgoers refuse to pay for the memories, Jones said that Clapton is a big fan of personal freedoms and science. As such, Clapton has proposed, going forward, to restrict tickets to people with Goldfield Syndrome, who suffer from the inability to remember anything longer term, and to Buddhist monks, who literally live only in the moment and never get attached to anything, even Clapton songs, or, only if absolutely necessary, to having security at the exits use a memory-eraser–type device a la the neuralyzer in “Men in Black,” which UC Davis researcher Brian Wiltgen is working on.
