[skippy the wonder dog]

But who set the $600,000 price? If no one is willing to pay $600K for the house, it isn't a $600K house, is it?

The seller always sets the price. That's how the world works.

It is possible to set a price on all rights to a creative work. And in every single instance I've ever been aware of, the buyer always balks. Not because the price isn't fair, but because the reason they want all rights is that they don't want to pay a fair price.

Cherry pays for himself and/or makes money for the show. Does the theme do that? I think not.

So you think branding is of no importance?

CBC treats the theme music as an important element of the brand. They play up the history of HNIC at the opening of every broadcast, and the theme music is the most recognizable element of that history. (Saving the Bob Cole jokes for now.)

I think the onus is on the copyright holder to prove what the market rates would be if they offered the HNIC them to anyone who wants it.

First off, the copyright holder doesn't have to prove anything. They get to demand their price, and its up to CBC to pay it, or not.

Beyond that, market value when you deal with copyrights isn't the same as market value of oranges. If you want my photo for the cover of your magazine, with distribution of 100,000 copies and a full page ad rate of $10,000, I might ask for $1000. That's based not on my photo being worth $1000, or on how many covers I can license in a year to make a living, but on the value of the photo to your particular enterprise. Cover photos move magazines off newsstands, readership drives ad sales, and ad sales buy your bacon, so the license cost of my photo is tied to your advertising rate. If you're National Geographic, the price just went up. If your circulation is 400, and your ad rate is ten bucks, either it goes down, or I don't deal with you at all. One client's price is not another's.

Same same here. HNIC is CBCs cash cow. If they want all rights to a theme song that defines their brand, they're going to pay through the nose. What another user might pay for it doesn't much matter.

(On that note, I don't know why they're talking about other buyers. That doesn't make sense to me.)