Sorry it's only an audio job but this Australian novel makes extensive use of many, many lyrics of quite famous songs. The author devotes several pages to acknowledging the copyright and the holders thereoff and apologises for any he's missed. These include some pretty big time guys such as Blind Willie Johnson and many well know poets.
This work has now been recorded as a talking book complete with the original music.
Point I see here, I don't think anyone paid a penny for the rights, the author and subsequent producers asked for and were granted permission. They do acknowledge those sources and their rights and do thank them for the granting of permission.
In the process of doing this project I got to hear some music I'd never have heard otherwise, pretty likely I'll be expanding my CD library.
Point of all this, well I've said it before, it's amazing what you CAN get the rights to for nothing, if you ask, and give credit to your sources. The music industry spends zillions trying to get airplay for their product, they want publicity, they don't want you stealing their product either. However I don't think it'd be too hard to ask the right people for the rights to use stuff that wasn't top 40 material in exchange for a proper credit including the publishers details.
Bob.

The two main debators in this thread (Billyboy and Spot) are, in fact both right.

Spot is correct in his working knowledge of the law.

Billyboy is right in his assessment of real world risk as it pertains to small projects.

I don't recall anyone here saying that there should not be copyright protection for intellectual Property. We all are creators, we all know the work that goes into creation and we all want to protect it.

But Billyboy is dead on. Don't blame him for speaking what most think. It is absurd how difficult it is for a person to go the legal path in securing rights to use IP in small projects! So, many just ignore it, knowing that they probably won't get caught. Is it right? No. Is it a fact? Yes

So....The real question is: What to do?

The industry has a few options.

1. Ignore the small timers. Keep the laws as they are and focus attention on the big cases of copyright infringement.

2. Keep the law as it is and focus on the small timers as well. Drag the little guy into court and tell him he is a criminal because he made 10 DVD's for his sisters wedding that had a Top 40 song on it.

3. Adapt. Find a way to allow the little guy to obey the law that is within his means. (example: Offer a one-time sync liscense good for up to 10 copies that are sold to no more than one client.)


We all know the law (maybe not the details, but we get the gist of it). We want to obey the law. We want to respect the rights of the creators. But we demand the the industry acknowledge that times have changed and the law needs to adapt.

All right BillyBoy, I do lots of things for fun (just got married this past year, so now I do someone for fun too ;-) ) As for the question of fat - that's a VERY good question, but I don't think that I'm gonna go to jail for that one :)

Dave

(EDIT - SCORE!!!! #100, RIGHT ON! [is this really something to be proud of, no, but is it a bit fun - that's something that I do you know... I have fun ;-) )

You forgot option 4) Move to Australia where we do have option 3) and it's for 35 copies.
Bob.

"That pretty much puts me out of business. Because of the laws that are out there and no way that I can get/afford rights to songs that people want to use. I basically will have to quit doing video."

That's one of the reasons that I got out of the Wedding Video business. I know that I am small potatoes and the labels would probably never even notice me, let alone do anything beyond a "cease and desist" letter, but I'm not anarchist enough to routinely break the laws in this area.

Steve Mann

"hobby income"

What the heck is "hobby income"?

Remember the evil eye of Mordor?
Crap, He's right. Everybody be quiet.

n19093 -

re: "hobby income" In the US it is income derived from a hobby as opposed to Self Employment