ASCAP: Legalized Mafia?

I went to the Black Rose Caffe tonight to pay owners Mariah and Demetrius a visit, and to find out exactly what had gone down with ASCAP. The few details I'd heard about their decision to nix live music came to me secondhand. Maybe my earlier post on the subject was unfair, too hasty, too inflammatory. Maybe there was another side to this story.

Turns out my last post wasn't inflammatory enough. Mariah and Demetrius were happy to regale me with tales of the organization's misbehavior:

• ASCAP lawyers have been hammering Black Rose with phone calls and e-mails, pressuring them to pay the $800-or-so yearly licensing fee, plus back pay for the three years they've been in business. (BMI calls them too, but they're not as relentless.) Sadly, this is the most honorable tactic on the list.
  
  
• Sometimes Mariah and Demetrius get calls from people that go something like, "Hey, my buddy and I have a bet going. What band played at your place last week? There wasn't a band? Sure there was. You know, the band that played covers?"
  
  
• On one occasion, a homeless guy came in asking what the event was going to be for the night. When told that there was no event, he insisted there had to be one and looked around the room searching for it. (It's possible that this man was simply a little unbalanced, but in light of everything else, that's not my first guess.)
  

In my last post, I tried to give these guys some benefit of the doubt, saying I understood that they don't have the resources to send spies out to every little coffeehouse in the country. But if the above is any indication, they do have the resources ... and it doesn't matter. Truth be damned, their goal is to keep the pressure up until Black Rose caves and pays them.

"It's like the legalized Mafia," Mariah said.