This is true. I was suggesting that you file where you live solely if you’d be representing yourself, for obvious reasons.
Never mind
And just hope that someone decides to pay you for that one?
Thanks so much for directing us to this site - lots of great minds here!
If you scroll down, third on the right on this page, you’ll find the contact info for the Chairman of the Copyright Committee for the New York Intellectual Property Law Association.
If he can’t help you it is probable he knows someone who can.
It sucks that they ripped you off. I think some good avenues have been offered. Here’s an option that you may want to do, maybe not: post a video on Youtube asking if people think they ripped you off or not? Play the two versions, then have them go to a site you set up and vote. This may also be a dumb idea from a legal standpoint. But it would feel good to let the world know that those guys are thieves.
[HIJACK]An administrative note here: It’s never a good idea to put your business in the street. This is especially true in cyberspace where indiscreet disclosures can hang out to haunt you and possibly create undesired outcomes.
You may be better served discussing the particulars of your case with competent outside legal help and not going to strangers on the internet.[/HIJACK]
Lemme get this straight: To prove your case of copyright infringement you would go to YouTube and commit . . . copyright infringement.
Save it for if/when it goes to court; they’ll play it straight up there. It worked against George Harrison.
Again, don’t let anything you read here take the place of competent real life legal help.
Which is why I put the caveat within my very own post.
But just to play devil’s advocate, what could possibly happen? The OP wouldn’t be making any money on it. The worst (again, not a lawyer) that could happen is a cease and desist order, no? But the beauty of the idea is that you WANT them to take some type of action. That puts them in a no-win situation: if they ignore it, they let the accusations and the judgement of the people stand. If they sue him, they bring attention to their own theft. And to top it all off, they’d be occupying the ground of the people who stole the song and then sued the guy who wrote the original. You gotta love that!
Thanks to everyone for your information and help.
The writers were very clever in how they lifted my work - long and short of it is this: Same lyric, same melody, same harmonic structure, even the same title. They wrote a new song around my chorus. The writers in question are known for very bubble gummy songs i.e., boy meets girl, boy loses girl, everyone’s sad, etc… My song is more a social comment thing, the idea of which they also lifted. So this tune was suddenly a departure from their stock in trade. I have contacted the local volunteer lawyers association - we’ll see what happens.
Through all of this, I have learned a couple things I can pass along: 1. Justice and Law do not live under the same roof and, 2. There are quite a few attorneys out there who will take as much of your money as they can for doing absolutely as little as possible, and then laugh about it at the water cooler with their associates. The law of averages dictates that there must be lawyers out there who run an honest practice, do good business, and deserve to grow their fortunes as large as they are able in return for their hard work. It has not been within my experience to have met one yet.