Heck no, its never pointless to point to the idiocy of current law.

Its fun to watch the extremes some "artists" will go to defend their "creativity", that's all. There is nothing wrong with the concept of copyright. However I strongly believe the current law is absurd since it has no real means testing to determine use of some "work" deserves protection or what rights if any the public has to use it in innocent ways that has NO impact on the revenue stream of the artist. Spot always gets all hot and bothered blindly defending the absurd no matter how many times the topic comes up BECAUSE he PROFITS from the current system.

Its really a tempest in a teapot. While the same tired few constantly bellow and whine the reality is laws are broken all the time with the most absurd laws broken most often. In many towns its illegal to cross the street in the middle of a block. Tens of millions do it every day anyway. Its illegal to go to your public library and photocopy pages from a book, yet nearly every library I have visited has photocopy machines and they get a real workout daily. Obeying speed limits and buckling up everytime you drive are also common laws. They get broken tens of millions of times a day.

Spot and other "artists" forget Vegas is used by a wide spectrum of people for all kinds of projects. Somebody using music without permission and selling tens of thousands of copies of a DVD is something very different than somebody making a handful of wedding vids or slide show DVD's where few people will see it.

I KNOW ALREADY, the law makes no distinction. That's the problem. The real issue to "legally" conform to all the laws invoved is a fool's errand and most times next to impossible and not worth the bother.

So many would likely agree the law should be changed. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

When this type of question comes up, reading between the lines what the original poster is really asking is what happens if I use some popular song without permission?

Short answer: Nothing.

We don't need another lecture from some Utah "artist". As previously stated most already know using a song lets say from the Beatles without permission is wrong.

In my opinion, the concept of right and wrong balancing somebody requesting a song they fell in love listening to transcends the "rights" of some greedy recording company getting "cheated" out of a few more bucks. As its already been said, usually the artist doesn't mind such use, its the middlemen with their hands out.

While I'm not suggesting anyone break the law, its a judgement call. The reality is nobody will know, and even if some greedy recording company found out that Joe Blow made 5 DVD's using song X their legal recourse is extremely limted in the real world.

Lesson for Spot and other whining artists worried about their rights:

To collect damages, one MUST prove that you were damaged. Its the bedrock all civil law is based on. Even getting some attorney to write a letter would set back the plaintiff a couple hundred dollars or more... or far more than they could hope to recover, not even factoring in the cost of some trial. Besides, any judge would throw out such a frivolous case in the type of situtation that is often brought up... ie making a lousy few DVD's or something similar.

To collect damages, one MUST prove that you were damaged
Wrong. It's now a criminal offense. No damages must be proven.

I KNOW ALREADY, the law makes no distinction. Wrong, the law makes a HUGE distinction. Look around, you'll see lots of specifics. I only speak in generalities, because I'm not an attorney.

he PROFITS from the current system. You bet your a$$ I do. And so would you, if you had any intellectual property. So does everyone else in this forum profit from their creativity, and the control thereof.
What if someone were to take Will Schermerhorn's excellent DVD and broadcast it on a community cable station without his permission? Or Bubblevision's hard won underwater footage? Or Vic Milt's commercials? Or Filmy's properties? Maybe someone likes PMaster's script so they decide to post it all over the web. Duh. It don't take a genious to figure out that this business is driven by capitalizing on creativity. It's what creative people do. It's how they fund their continual drive towards creative excellence. It's what drives America. That's why entertainment is still America's #1 export, because we're good at it, we protect it, we cherish it, and we as a general society, respect the property rights of others.
Some of the methods in which things are done in our industry are archaic and need to change. I can't deny that. But at the same time, if I built it, it's mine. Always and forever. It's sad that you've never built anything worth stealing, BB, because then you'd understand. Didn't you ever build a tree house or fort you had to defend when you were a little kid? Anything like that?

Thanks for the answer, and minimal name calling (do you not like Utah?).

I now understand your point better and agree in some issues. But I think you would agree that defining the crossover from a few DVDs to friends and DVDs for profit will be difficult. How many DVDs are too many, is a gift different than a purchase etc.

Again, another interesting, if not frustrating thread.

Dave T2

A few extra dvd's, a few hundred dvd's, indeed, where is that line......

I'll put this example in, I should have earlier..

Personal experience....I don't make my living playing music. I don't even make a substantial portion of my annual income playing music. One year, however, (before getting into video) I made a few thousand bucks playing music on the weekends. I didn't claim it and got audited, because it is the law. It was not a substantial part of my income (hence I didn't place too much importance on it), and the laws are written such that I could not claim it as hobby income, and I got nailed. Plain and simple. And there was really nothing I could do, because I made the money - no denying that - so I paid.

Is this different than copyright? Yes and no. In the context of this particular thread, just because you or I think the law is ridiculous doesn't mean we don't have to abide by it - unless you don't get caught, right? <wink> I didn't think the money I made was substantial enough to claim, I thought it was income from a hobby...but Uncle Sam thought otherwise.

Epilog of my tax dilema - I had no records of expenses incurred during the year (travel, equipment, etc) and after all the penalties and fees, the bill came to 50% of the unclaimed income. Ouch!

DaveT2, I guess I don't understand the question. I didn't refer to Utah anywhere, did I? I love Utah, it's why I stay here. I'm not a big drinker, and as far as I know, it's Utah's main shortcoming...

Spot, as always, you crack me up with your legal "knowledge".

Take all the room you need to explain why any federal prosecutor would file criminal charges against Joe Blow for making 5 "illegal" copies of a DVD where he included some copyright protected work.


Put it here ======>

Sorry Spot, I was responding to BB's message. I must have tagged to yours somehow.

He refers to a Utah musician.

Dave T2

Geez Spot, I wish someone would invent ego deflating oil or something you could rub all over yourself since you constantly need to boast to keep that oversized ego from shrinking.

BTW, while you were still crawling around in diapers or just a twinkle in you mom's and dad's eye, I had played my guitar on the radio. That's going way back... the 50's. Want to see a picture of me back then in my cowboy outfit? Damn, I was cute, if I say so myself. <wink>

In the fifties....when artists routinely got ripped outta royalties because they signed away copyrights and publishing, if they signed anything at all.

Did you write the song you played?

Billyboy, obviously he probably wouldn't bother to file charges, but that doesn't make it right.

As I see it, if someone makes 5 copies of my DVD without permission, there's no difference between that and him just wandering into my apartment and helping himself to 5 originals. It's theft.

> Epilog of my tax dilema - I had no records of expenses incurred during the year (travel, equipment, etc) and after all the penalties and fees, the bill came to 50% of the unclaimed income. Ouch!

I got an even better story. I wrote an article that was published in . They paid me $700 for it. I CLAIMED IT on my income tax as Other Income and paid my taxes. (or so I thought) Three years later, the IRS calls me in and says that I own a business and need to file a Schedule C and pay Social Security Tax on that money. I too had no expenses records because I didn’t own any stinking business, I just wrote an article in a magazine and claimed the money fair and square! I had to file a Schedule C for a dream business: pure profit with no expenses. How ridiculous is that?

~jr

Billyboy, please don't wink at me, especially when you're wearing a cowboy outfit. It gives me the creeps.

As has been pointed out, this topic surfaces often and the results are pretty much the same every time. And it usually starts when someone presents a "situation" to the forum that they have probably already acted on. Hearing the "negative" responses that subsequently come from forum members, they go on to argue the problems in the "system", just trying to rationalize the fact that they have broken a law. I agree that there should be some micro-publishing/licensing/payment scheme, and it's true people are working on it, but right now, throwing someone elses intellectual property on any distributable medium, without paying for it, especially (but not limited to) on a product for sale, is illegal. We all know that the kids in school want to use their favorite tunes on the video yearbook. We also all know that if we don't do it, the kids will find someone who WILL break the law & do it. What's interesting here is that as cool as Vegas is, and as many inroads as Sony is trying to make into professionnal broadcast & editorial environments, it is still primarily a videographer's tool, a tool for people who want or need to work in one application to get the job done. So that is who populates this forum. And the videography community is all over the map when it comes to the issue of intellectual property. It's the elephant in the closet they don't want to talk about. Let me say this: there are several bodies & lobbies looking at thiis very issue RIGHT NOW. So we should all take warning. If the kids come to you and want you to use their favorite song and you do it, remember that you MAY have taken the job from someone who WOULDN"T do it for them. And that person can call up the RIAA and report the incident, and they WILL take the report. Don't try to bend your rationalizations to fit acts you know are outside the law. Work to change the law.

My cowboy suit doesn't fit anymore...

Just once I wish people would see the humor in these type of discussions. Of course if Spot or another artist wrote a song and somebody ripped off thousands of copies and tired to sell them on the black market I'd defend Spot and of course such things are obviously illegal and can harm the artist and should be punished.

That's not what comes up in the forum anbd everyone that defends artist's rights knows it. When somebody asks geez, isn't it alright to make a few DVD's of somebody's wedding and include songs X, Y and Z, and oh, by the way will I get in trouble for it, give them an HONEST answer not some double talk about copyright law that wouldn't be enforced in a million years.

I always try to be truthful if not blunt. Sure it may be illegal. There are tens of thousands of laws still on the books for crazy things like its against the law in some cities to drive your auto unless someone walks 50 feet in front of it with a lantern so as to not spook horses. Surely nobody thinks anyone follows that kind of law or that they could get in trouble if they didn't follow it to the letter.

It isn't should you pick and choose which laws to follow, its that some laws are so absurd that common sense says they are stupid, can't be and won't be enforced and that's the kind of laws people break. I named a few common ones.

Nobody is fooling anybody that it isn't common knownledge that right this minute thousands of people are burning DVD's or CD's with songs they didn't get permission to use. Its the music industry's own damn fault for being so anal about how hard it is to get permission to use them "legally". Otherwise many would pay some trival fee for their use.

Right after I'm done writing this I'm going upstairs and rip off all the do not remove stickers from every mattress.

"Right after I'm done writing this I'm going upstairs and rip off all the do not remove stickers from every mattress."

Crazy Hippies ;-)

Dave

Its the music industry's own damn fault for being so anal about how hard it is to get permission to use them "legally". Otherwise many would pay some trival fee for their use.
100% correct

Right after I'm done writing this I'm going upstairs and rip off all the do not remove stickers from every mattress.

ROTFLMAO!!!

"I got an even better story. I wrote an article that was published in Dr. Dobb’s Journal. They paid me $700 for it. I CLAIMED IT on my income tax as Other Income and paid my taxes. Three years later, the IRS calls me in and says that I own a business and need to file a Schedule C and pay Social Security Tax on that money [...] How ridiculous is that?"

You must have gotten a 1099. If you had charged $599.99, they wouldn't have had to send this to you (and to the IRS).

The thing is that for salary income, you have already had Social Security etc. taken out, here you haven't. They don't want you to sit there in your old age without enough accrued SS to pay for a daily newspaper and a cup of coffee. :O)

Just wondering how many notes on a page does it take for it to become a 'work' that I can claim copyright over? Mathematically how many variations are there of that many notes?
So it seems to me I can just have a big number cruncher do its thing for a few days creating each and every one of those, post the results on a web site and stop all future creation of music as derivative works.
Sounds absurd but didn't Bach do or try to do this with the fugue?

Can I just add that whilst I agree with what SPOT is saying 100% and what BB is saying just as much this really is shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. We all need a reality check, every PC or Mac ships with the tools for Joe Average to sync whatever he likes to whatever he wants. Gone are the days when you needed expensive gear and determination to edit a video and add music to it, even the Sony Vaio we just bought ships with the tools to do this, a few mouse clicks and bingo, I've added someones copyrighted music to my wedding DVD and broken the law. So we can all tut tut about this, it matters zip, it's happening and happening more and more. I'm not saying it's right but somehow the industry needs to catch up with reality otherwsie all their complaining is going to fall on deaf ears.

Bob.

2 quick questions Bob Greaves (or anyone that knows)

When I do contract work for a church that has CVLI does that cover the work that they pay me for? or do they have to have me employed in order for the work that I do for them and they pay me for to be covered? 2 does a blanket or per video thing cover sync things as well? (If the answer is not what I want to hear (interms of the sync "?") please don't answer it or tell me that you don't know ;-) )

Dave - Thanks for any input

Its not just the variation of notes, but the variation of the duration of each note, bpm, measures, so the answer is, an infinite amount of music could be created.

Dave T2

All of the terms for the United States are found here -

http://www.cvli.org/CVLI/Terms.cfm?Country=US

It pretty much just covers the public showing of videotapes or DVD's. I don't see where it allows you to sync audio material to video - neither does a church's CCLI license.

Again...doesn't meant that it isn't done regularly.

DANG IT!, I said don't answer or say you don't know. That was aimed at everyone.

Thanks dmcknight

Dave