Musician Archive

"Bands/artists can perform cover versions to a live audience without any permission but they need permission to use a cover version on any recording. However, at the moment at least, the venue at which they perform the cover version will need a Performing Rights Society license and, if they are deemed a high profile venue they need to let the PRS know of any cover versions used. "

This is from the advicenow.com legal advice website. Hope it helps. I'm all in favor of player-crafted songs, but it ain't gonna happen IMO.

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Mojodamm wrote:

Oh, and btw, Lyrics AND music in songs is copyrighted, not just the lyrics...

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I hope you are not saying that the lyrics by themselves are not copyrighted. I don't think you are, but the ambiguityof your sentence could lead one to believe that is what you are saying.

<< "Bands/artists can perform cover versions to a live audience without any permission but they need permission to use a cover version on any recording. However, at the moment at least, the venue at which they perform the cover version will need a Performing Rights Society license and, if they are deemed a high profile venue they need to let the PRS know of any cover versions used. " >>

I'm an attorney myself, and while my field isn't copyright, this summary is consistent with what I've found so far. It's actually more complex than this. A song usually involves two copyrights: the rights to the song itself (including lyrics), and the rights to any sound recording of the song. Even if you re-mix "Stairway to Heaven" with your own MIDI controller, thereby bypassing Led Zeppelin's sound recording, you're stillcopying the song itself. As the excerpt above indicates, you can cover songs for live audiences in some circumstances, but uploading arecordedremix of "Stairway to Heaven" involves recording and replaying the song -- in an enterprise (SOE's SWG) that is a profit-making business.

My initial instinct, then, is that the only workaround would be for SOE to establish a song ombusdman -- someone to screen songs for copyright violations before they are uploaded into SWG's song database. My guess is that such a system would be very costly and impractical. Yes, SOE could try to rely on volunteers (I for one would think it might be fun), but MMORPG companies are leery about using "volunteers" after litigation in which volunteers have claimed compensation. Also, even the most savvy musician won't recognize every tune; you'd have to have a committee of ombudsmen to screen effectively.

If I can tear myself away from the cantina, I'll spend a couple of hours in the law library learning more about this. Also, my best friend is a copyright attorney, and I've yet to consult him in detail about this. But my initial guess is that SOE would have to protect itself by screening all uploaded player-songs.

Copyright law is a complicated thing, but I think it's a fallacy to say nobody understands it (least of all the Supreme Court -- they define the law, so I would say they understand it). Online music involves several different rights granted by 17 USC 106. At the very least: 1) public performance, 2) copying, and 3) transmission of a digital audio recording. There are usually three agencies that you have to make deals with in order to play music in the way you are describing: ASCAP/BMI/SESAC, the Harry Fox Agency, and whatever record label owns the artist. ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and the Harry Fox Agency represent songwriters, who are not necessarily musicians or the recording artist. As I understand it, Faydra is suggesting that musicians be able to enter their own music, very similar, actually, to the way midi files are done. Frank Music Corp. v CompuServe Inc. involved users sharing midi files over Compuserve for their own private use. The settlement of that case required that users pay the statutory licensing fee for the copying of the music (see http://www.nmpa.org/hfa/midi.html [Harry Fox Agency]). If players had the ability to write the music, too, there would be a public performance of the musical work, so a license from ASCAP/BMI/SESAC would be required as well. There would be a fee every time the work was transmitted. The statutory licensing fee is currently about 2 cents per minute per song. ASCAP/BMI/SESAC fees are a little more complicated to figure out. In any case, SOE would pay a rather large amount of money in licensing fees.

I'm not even going to go into what it would take to get actual recordings of the songs, but suffice it to say it's even more expensive and complicated. I think it's fairly safe to say neither of these scenarios will ever happen.

(There you go, NewJedi)

Gramon Blatt, Master Musician/Master Entertainer, Chilastra

yes newjedi and I talked adn the fact that Sonny is a leader in the music field adn a strong defender of music copywrite law I think this will not be so

so the next question for the legal eagles is what about old songs realy realy old songs

how far back do you haev to go beofre you can use a song?

I know a lot of realy good bac, batoven, and chicosky songs vogner has a lot of tunes that can be starwarsie

what about old long ded composers?

im not talkinf our own system but a remix system or jsut using the songs themselves diffrent instruments to make them more SWG like hummm?

the point would be to have a huge library of songs that the DEV could take and use for some nice new songs or a system where we cant take thiese and do remix type of stuff

anyway I hope we can get some new songs and a lot of them

there are more clothing types there are more weapon types food types droid typesmineral types ect... then we haev instruments and songs

we need to be as destinct from eachouther as we can be and the more songs the better

I hope we can get a stedy stream of new songs so people will want to gather in canteenas for more than jsut a quick fatuge healing then dash out

Hehe, Atiknin, I'm happy to see that our conversation in-game last night prompted you to post here today. I enjoyed our jam session, by the way.

Faydra, I've replied briefly to your question about older composers in the other thread you started, but I readily defer to Atikinin's far more comprehensive knowledge of the law. Atikinin, in the other thread I said I thought pre-20th century composers' works were in the public domain, but nonetheless that recordings of those works are copyrighted, and that inevitably SOE would have to worry about someone uploading Gould playing Bach or Barenboim playing Chopin. What do you think?

I read the other thread, and I think NewJedi's concerns are precisely correct. Determining how long a copyright will last is actually kind of tricky, because it depends on the date the work was created (or published). For works after 1978, it's life of the author plus 70 years; or in the case of works for hire, it's 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first (see http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#hlc).

I forget the current year before which nothing created could possibly still be protected by copyright. In any case, works from the 1800s are safely beyond the protection of the copyright law.

However, there's still that practical problem that NewJedi brought up: either SOE will have to screen the player made pieces or players will simply use copyrighted works. Or SOE will have to create all music that Musicians can play, which is the way it is now and the way it will continue to be I would bet.

Oh I have given up the our uploading songs im a fighter but I know when the battle is impossible to win

what im talking about now is for the Dev team to use the very very old songs and add them to our play list

my suggestion is mearly to use some old composers and a SWG twist adn woola a lot of new songs

More of a concern than copyrights for recorded music is what happens when you steal the song I wrote that I played in SWG? (you and I being hypothetical pronouns)

Faydra,

According to some sources that I've read (I know, don't believe everything you read, but it's been confirmed by a number of different sources), as long as an author of a copyrighted work is dilligent in ensuring that they renew their copyrights, nothing created since 1923 will enter the public domain until at least 2018, unless said author died more than 70 years ago. Check into the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act for further details if you're interested.