You’re right, I was mistaken. Thanks for correcting me. I also see that you now have to pay a 1 cent royalty on each stream of a cover song (I knew they were proposing this but I didn’t know it had been enacted). You’re also now required to pay a royalty on a cover song even if you give the CD’s or downloads away for free.
Not to make excuses, but I was going by soundclick’s disclaimer about posting covers that I had read through a couple years ago. I see that it has now also been changed. I guess I better remove my cover of “Close to You” before Burt finds out!
It seems your Negativland thing would be considered a “derivative work” and also enjoys protection.
However, I notice there’s some grey area regarding use of sound recordings under the rubric of “fair use:”
_Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
The nature of the copyrighted work
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work_
I’m not sure what to make of this vis-a-vis your use of audio snippets, or my “homages”
At least I consider those original sources I use as higly educational & may therefore act on the authority of
§107, par. 1
Next question: what does a mechanical license do for me when I want to release & eventually sell music on the web since the license itself is designed for the U.S.-market only?
I’m pretty sure those licenses are recognized by all the signatories of whatever international agreement is in force (I thought I read the last one was in 1989 and was negotiated in Uruguay? Really – Uruguay? ) There are some absentees from the list of signatories, notably China
In the UK it’s usually the MCPS/PRS that polices copyright. You cannot have a CD made or online distribution or whatever (by any reputable company) without a licence, that includes original work too.
The copyright laws ARE different among the various countries; the international convention is just an agreement to abide by each other’s laws, as far as they pertain to those works made in any given country, within certain limitations (for example, if a Scotsman covers a song originally published in the USA, he must abide by US copyright law. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think the convention allows a work to published in more than one country)
You`re right! Now I remember that our neighbours the Dutch have a - yes, is the right word here - copyright law. Well, the Netherlands have always seemed to be a country where milk & honey flows…
I just stumbled across this thread… and I HAVE YOUR ANSWER !
In fact - you just answered it in the quote I listed above!
HOW can you create if you have no story to tell?
I think what you are doing can then be ‘shaped’ to fit within the boundaries of REPORTING !
Maybe you can find relief in that direction.
News… current topics… past topics.
If the USA History Channel paid $1 for every 30minute television program they created about WWII they would have been bankrupt their first week of operating
You can be a MODERN DAY BARD or something. Traveling around - telling news…
Simply report the news - musically !
Ever wonder how “E” Entertainment news channel can give a review of a concert without getting copywright to the live music looping in the background?
I really appreciate your input, sav, because you`re right on the mark!
I suppose, my musical output would trade under the name :
"Plunderphonics is a term coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative. It has since been applied to any music made by taking one or more existing audio recordings and altering them in some way to make a new composition. Plunderphonics can be considered a form of sound collage.
Although the concept of plunderphonics is seemingly broad, in practice there are many common themes used in what is normally called plunderphonic music. This includes heavy sampling of educational films of the 1950s, news reports, radio shows, or anything with trained vocal announcers." Wikipedia
This thread has been dealing mainly with stealing (passages of) other peoples music. This is not really what I am doing. I have a vast collection of inflamed speakers from radio call-in shows, sermons (often recorded from shortwave radio), news, announcements, commercials from the 50s & 60s etc. etc. Im not just focussing on the subjects being discussed there but the expressiveness of voices.
Funny enough this morning I started to paste some news into a piece of music I had composed.
Copyright is not just about the money. It’s harder to enforce but for political and religious reasons one may not have a desire to offend others by spreading one’s word or music in the wrong place or context. Live and/or locally performed music will rarely get to that state but it’s also good manners to ask the composer / owner.
Bernstein’s America. I’ve probably been corrected but I believe an injunction was applied which stopped it’s US release for a while. At this time-distance I’m not too sure whether Bernstein succeeded permanently (I understand it was released after several years if memory serves) but it was released immediately at least in the UK. The point was that release was objected to on political and aesthetical and not financial grounds.
25th anniversary re-release of “My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts” by Byrne/Eno
"The album was reissued on March 27, 2006 in the UK and April 11, 2006 in the US, remastered and with seven extra tracks. To mark the reissue, two songs were made available to download online, consisting of the entire multitracks. Under the Creative Commons License, members of the public are able to download the multitracks, and use them for their own remixes.
The track “Qu’ran” was excluded from this release without comment. However, in an interview for Pitchfork Media about the 2006 reissue, Byrne said:
Way back when the record first came out, in 1981, it might have been '82, we got a request from an Islamic organization in London, and they said, ‘We consider this blasphemy that you put grooves to the chanting of the Holy Book.’ And we thought, ‘Okay, in deference to somebody’s religion, we’ll take it off.’ You could probably argue for and against monkeying with something like that. But I think we were certainly feeling very cautious about this whole thing. We made a big effort to try and clear all the voices, and make sure everybody was okay with everything. Because we thought, ‘We’re going to get accused of all kinds of things, and so we want to cover our asses as best we can.’ So I think in that sense we reacted maybe with more caution than we had to. But that’s the way it was." (Wikipedia)
One of the most bizarre shortwave recordings I have is that of a Muezzin chanting the Quran when all of a sudden The Voice of America sneaks in with a woman saying, "...to Syphilis..." Once in a while it happens that a nearby station that is very strong interferes with the station youre actually listening to. Id never use that sample for a song, thats for sure.
Bernstein’s America. I’ve probably been corrected but I believe an injunction was applied which stopped it’s US release for a while. At this time-distance I’m not too sure whether Bernstein succeeded permanently (I understand it was released after several years if memory serves) but it was released immediately at least in the UK. The point was that release was objected to on political and aesthetical and not financial grounds.
True – I didn’t read the article but I have little doubt that Leonard didn’t want his work bowlderized by a silly rock band. My understanding is that the complainant has to show that the cover version departs enough from the original as to represent an assault on the aesthetic integrity of the song, which of course is subjective. Apparently Bernstein didn’t prove that in this case.
