Pentagon Owes Royalties for Torture Music?

I learn from this evening's SDPB broadcast of PRI's "The World" that the U.S. military has been blaring David Gray's "Babylon" into Guantanamo prisoners' cells over and over as part of our "interrogation" techniques. Hey—I love that song! How dare the Pentagon turn one of my favorite songs into an instrument of torture? (Um, how dare America be torturing anyone in the first place?)

David Gray is displeased, too, and understandably so. Suppose you created something good and decent, and someone took it and used it to harm others. Music is about fun, beauty, love, all that good stuff. Gray tells the BBC that his disgust isn't just about his own music being used for such evil purposes; torture is torture, whether you do it with Tchaikovsky or Barney the Dinosaur.

No comfort for the folks being tortured and detained without due process, but maybe Gray and other artists on the Guantanamo soundtrack can sue. Canadian intellectual property lawyer Howard Knopf notes that performance of music in a public place entitles the composer to royalties.

Let's leave artists out of our torture techniques. Or better yet, how about just not torture?