My friend is a musician. I am helping him put videos of his performances on youtube. He has a great clip of him singing Prince’s - The cross. We’d like to put it on youtube but all of the DMCA notices in the past (see: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9778087-7.html) are steering us away. Is there any legality in these days of the DMCA to put a public performance of a covered song on Youtube or any other medium?
If you’re having a hard time getting your head around this, type “Prince” into a Youtube search.
So Prince is “crazy” because he chooses to stand up for his rights? Perhaps your friend should consider contacting Prince’s lawyers and offering to pay the royalities that an artist is due for his work if he wants to post a performance of someones elses song on the internet. Or better yet, just write his own song, or would that be too hard?
I guess I just never understood the idea that someone can be against getting free publicity for their music.
Nice little jab you got in there but my friend has a CD of all his original stuff, he was singing this prince song at a church because they asked him to do it…
If the church has regularly attended performances of music, they probably already pay ASCAP - which means Prince got paid for the song. The general rule with copyright is this: the more recent the medium, the more restrictive and expensive the rights. Just playing a song in public is the least expensive and has the greatest flexibility; if you’ve paid ASCAP you can perform any song, by anyone, as long as you want before a paying audience. If you want to record the audio, you have to pay per copy for each song; but you can record any song you wish as long as the rights are paid (generally through the Harry Fox Agency). But if you wish to combine your own recording with visuals, or use someone else’s recording - the sky is the limit.
Personally, the OP should be able to post his own performance of a song as long as the ASCAP fee has been paid, but tragically the more restrictive situation exists and Prince is waging war on his own fans.
Myself, I’d post the video but not have any reference to “Prince” or the title. “Cover of a song by a short skinny guy”.
Artists should be paid for their work, but it’s hard to defend the idea that they should be paid more depending on the medium.
Perhaps the fee is paid by the venue? IIRC don’t bars with sound systems pay some annual fee that’s intended to cover any music played in the establishment?
Maybe. I don’t know. I just know I’ve never been asked to pay anything. I’ve also never been asked to provide a list of the acts whose songs I’ve performed, so I don’t know how the bar and club owners would know who to send the money to. If they pay out some general ASCAP fee, I guess that would make sense, but then how does ASCAP determine who should get paid? I played some pretty obscure covers sometimes. For instance, I used to do kind of a revved up, speed metal version of a song called “Cows” by an 80’s era Minneapolis band called the Suburbs. That’s pretty obscure. Do they get the same amount of money every year as the Rolling Stones or Bachman Turner Overdrive (to name a couple of the most commonly covered acts by bar bands)?
As long as the venue is paying their annual ASCAP or BMI fees, there is no problem whatsover.
Also, to the best of my knowledge (IANAEntertainment Lawyer but I do engage one and this is what I understand from him) those fees are the problem of the venue inthe case of the live performance.
It is also entirely legal to record anything you like, the only thing copyright law reserves in that regard is the ‘right of first recording’ ETA: royalties are still due in this case, but they can’t stop you from doing it.
recorded versions for distribution get a little hazier, AAUI. If money is generated from the performance, statutory rates apply unless otherwise negotiated with the copyright holder. However, it’s a little grayer if they are released for free - I believe that the law is still on the side of the copyright owner, but it’s a lot more murky.
Witness for example, all those thousands of legally traded bootlegs (Phish especially comes to mind) that include cover songs. I would think that the performance fees paid by the venue cover the fees, but I would probably seek the advice of an Entertainment Attorney in this case.
It is within the scope of a copyright owner’s exclusive rights to perform a work in public. There are certain exceptions for performances and religious venues that aren’t going to be broadcast; however, putting a clip of a performance of the work is definitely a public performance. You may purchase a “compulsory license” (meaning that the copyright owner can’t refuse to grant you a license) through royalty collectives such as Ascap, BMI, and Sesac. Otherwise, you are infringing on the copyright owner’s exclusive rights.
Gfactor, I went through some of your links and rapidly developed a headache. The Creative Commons people should be promoting the heck out of their system by pointing to the traditional licensing regime and saying how difficult to use it really is.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I think the system is good–just that it’s complicated. I agree, it’s way *too * complicated and there’s no real reason it needs to be.