Pay for Play
The given research paper will consider the concept “pay for play” in different spheres of life. The concept “pay for play” is used for denominating the situations in which money is exchanged for services or privileges. The sources used as references for the given paper were useful and gave a detailed understanding of the researched concept.
Every state, directly or indirectly, prohibits bribery in obtaining government contracts. Only a few states, however, have implemented some form of pay-to-play restriction, though the ranks appear to be growing in light of new contracting scandals (Public Citizen, 2004).
In politics, “pay for play” is displayed in a “political corruption”. Political corruption is a special form of race for power, in which not political interests of all groups of a society win, but multimillion bribes and other types of bribery of certain politicians and parties. Political corruption allows converting the power into the capital, and the capital - again into the power. Any corruption, which comprises political motivation, is a political corruption.
The specific of political corruption is that it represents the top type of corruption considerably different from a local level. The matter is that the mercenary motives at subordinate levels of the social organization have, as a rule, a definite material embodiment: accurately stipulated sums of money or volumes of required services. In the situation with a political corruption both amount of remuneration and the fact of this remuneration are often hidden from the public eyes and law-enforcement structures. The paradox is that an absolutely destructive, from the point of view of the law, phenomenon in the opinion of theorists of political management turns into an original detail of the administrative tools.
The deviance of a political corruption is connected with the basic shifts in the system “purpose - means”. The regulatory base of state legal relations means an accurate correlation of the means of political administration with its strategic and tactical targets. The corrosion in this process is displayed in the usage of the non-law means. The deviation of goal-setting is found in the deformation of the process of a political corruption.
As a result, corruption is defined as “behavior which deviates the formal duties of a public role under the influence of the private material or status purposes or violates the rules forbidding certain types of rather private influence”. Therefore, a political corruption is an act, made with the intention to provide a certain advantage, not compatible to the official duties of the official, who uses the situation or the status for the extraction of any advantage legally and illegally, opposite to the duties and the rights of the other people.
As a result, the model of the perverted understanding of own political opportunities and tasks by this or that politician leads to the sacrifice of such primordially democratic phenomenon as a public interest. The act of corruption breaks responsibility in relation to the system of a public or civil order and is therefore destructive for these systems. Because of the fact that a public interest is higher than a personal one, the violation of a public interest for the extraction of personal benefit represents an act of corruption.
A “shadow” character of a political corruption is defined, first of all, by the absence of the monetary essence of a corruption act as remuneration is traded on not the official, and for others - imperious and political. Secondly, a political corruption is a condemnation of not so much a fact of mercenary motivation of the official, but of the ways of its realization. Thirdly, a political corruption includes externally harmless political dividends if they are called in question, not so much from the criminal and legal point of view, how much from the positions of injuriousness of corruption actions for the conceptual ideas of democracy and a constitutional state.
The concept “pay for play” in politics is a difficult social (asocial, immoral and illegal) phenomenon, which arises in the course of the realization of the imperious relations by people who use the power provided to them for the satisfaction of personal interests and also for the creation of the conditions of implementation of corruption actions, concealment of these actions and assistance to them.
Another meaning of the concept “pay for play” is called “payola” in music industry.
The professionals working in labels (on radio stations) understand that payola is a delusion, but the beginning celebrities persistently continue to condemn corruption and bribery in musical business.
The thoughts of the beginning actor or label about the radio stations and media groups, which do not allow the talented musicians to break through, passing in air only the actors signed by big labels who can “buy air”, are delusions and waste of energy. The beginning actor or independent musician is an actor without distribution, tours, press support and marketing budget in $30000 or less which in any case should pay services in production and replication of disks, promotion, PR, retails, organization of concerts and other necessary services.
It is also necessary to mention some delusions of independent musicians about the procedure of work with radio stations. Amazingly, many actors think that the order of advertizing for radio or granting radio station of the compact disks is illegal. However, the advertisements of CD are lawful, because it is openly mentioned on air that it is advertizing; musicians pay money to radio stations, instead of to specific people. It means that all payment documents are prepared according to the requirements of the law and the radio station pays a tax on the received money.
According to the FCC, there’s nothing wrong with a radio station’s accepting money in exchange for playing a song. The payment only becomes payola - and illegal - if the station fails to inform listeners about the cash changing hands (Boehlert, 2001).
The bribery of radio stations is not an option of receiving rotations for the beginning actors. The additional options of payola are intended for those who have money, who already employed a PR manager, a radio promoter and personnel, which are engaged in the organization of concerts. These options are intended for those who are going to construct the strong relations with consumers in small markets, to conclude the contracts with distributors and to develop the concert activity, organizing larger and frequent concerts.
Break the law and you might be fined up to $10,000. Payola is a misdemeanor. Theoretically, someone might spend up to a year in jail, but according to “Hit Men”, published in 1990, nobody has ever spent a single day behind bars (McCarthy, 2001).
The concept of “pay for play” is also widely used in sport. Bribes in sports are a usual business. For example, very often different football clubs are expelled from the list of participants of the world championships for the attempt to affect the results of a match by means of bribes. However, the problem of corruption concerns, of course, not only football, but all sports and sports competitions.
The criminal law, being an effective mechanism of the regulation of public relations, is capable to provide the protection of the interests of its participants. Criminalization of the norms, which negatively influence a normal course of the processes in the sphere of business activity in the field of show business and professional sports should be timely recognized and justified.
One of the forms of violation of normal functioning of the public relations is bribery. In the cases when the choice of this or that option of behavior is socially significant, and when the observance or violation of interests of the personality protected by the law depends on it, societies and states, bribery gets the signs of a socially dangerous act. Taking into account all above-said, the establishment of a criminal and legal ban of bribery of organizers or participants of professional sports competitions, spectacular commercial competitions is represented logical and socially caused. The bribery of the called persons with the purpose to make illegal impact on the results of professional sports competitions or spectacular commercial competitions perverts the essence of such actions, undermines belief in the principles of honest and uncompromising struggle, and generates the feeling of corruptibility.
The economic arguments for public financing of stadiums are, on their own merits, wrong. Reason’s demolished them a couple times but that shouldn't even be necessary. The fact of it is, sports teams make money for sport team owners, not cities. And when they stop doing that, owners move them. Sports teams are not a publicly owned resource committed to the good of the city, and the city should not pretend as if they are (Klein, 2005).
The concept “pay for play” is also reflected in sex work, or prostitution. For more than 26 centuries prostitution, as a phenomenon and as a profession, excites the minds of millions. After all, all attempts to pursue, forbid, supervise or legalize it gave rise to the mass of the questions mentioning moral, religious, social and other global problems.
At present, the attitude to prostitution is different in various countries and cultures. In some countries prostitution is a normal phenomenon and is considered to be a legalized kind of a commercial activity; in other countries, prostitution is an offence and even a crime. As a rule, prostitution is understood socially organized forms of a pay for sex. A spontaneous form of such an organization includes the relations of prostitutes with pimps - men providing the safety of prostitutes and delivering them to clients. A more difficult form of the organization of prostitution is brothels, in which there is a labor collective of sexual workers.
In the 19th century the self-organization of people, involved in the occupations by prostitution, was supported by the activity of the state directed at the establishment of a certain control of this sphere of life - for the purpose of the reduction of its criminogenity, withdrawal of a part of income and prevention from the development of sexually-transmitted diseases; there are different forms of the legalization of prostitution all over the world.
At different times there were a lot of attempts to criminalize prostitution in different countries. Nowadays, in some countries of the world a criminal liability for prostitution is absent. However, in all countries there is a criminal punishment for the involvement in prostitution of minors and persons with limited mental capacities, for coercion to occupations by prostitution; in some countries prostitution organization as a business is penal. Prostitution, or “pay for play”, appears in a city society when a woman is exempted from the power of a sort and can choose a sexual partner for herself. According to a number of researchers, “pay for play” or prostitution was preceded by the forms the so-called “ritual” and “patriarchal” (hospitable) prostitution which actually was not prostitution and had a cult value.
