How Can You Tell If Uploading Your Cover Song To YouTube Is Infringing? You Can't
from the broken-systems dept
If there is such a thing as a functioning copyright system, one of its tenets should be that it is quite easy to know if what you're doing is infringement. Of course, as we've discovered over and over again, people infringe unkowingly all the time -- and it's not just because of negligence or ignorance. Often it's because it's simply impossible to figure it out. Take, for example, the quite common practice of uploading a cover of a song to YouTube. This happens all the time. Lots of people record themselves singing popular songs and put them on YouTube. According to Andy Baio, about 12,000 such cover songs are uploaded each day. Justin Bieber became Justin Bieber because of some YouTube videos of him singing someone else's songs.But is that breaking the law?
Andy Baio dug into that question and discovered that it's almost impossible to determine that. Now, if you're merely recording a cover song for release, there are compulsory/mechanical license fees you can use. This is why you see cover songs on albums all the time. They're not done with "permission," but rather because someone paid the compulsory rate set by the government. The problem, however, is when you add video to the mix. Once you're talking about a video with music, a second license has to be secured: the sync license. And there are no compulsory rates with sync licenses -- meaning that the copyright holder can (and often does) demand exorbitant fees if they even respond to your request at all.
Now, as Baio notes, Google did sign a deal with the National Music Publishers Association to allow publishers to join a program where they get some money in exchange for allowing their songs to be played by others on YouTube. But no one knows whose publishing rights are actually covered by that agreement, meaning that it's effectively useless.
The end result? It's likely that a rather large number of the cover song videos uploaded each day are infringing -- potentially opening up the uploaders to huge statutory fines for violating copyright law. This is a clear sign of where the law is broken. The law clearly wasn't mean for these kinds of situations, and it's easily fixable. Baio makes the point that here's an easy reform to copyright law that would decriminalize a very common behavior:
The real question: Why is it illegal in the first place?Seems like a simple enough thing to fix... which is why it's unlikely to actually happen.
Cover songs on YouTube are, almost universally, non-commercial in nature. They’re created by fans, mostly amateur musicians, with no negative impact on the market value of the original work. (If anything, it increases demand by acting as a free promotional vehicle for the track.)
The best solution is the hardest one: To reform copyright law to legalize the distribution of free, non-commercial cover songs.
Copyright law was intended to foster creativity by making it safe for creators to exclusively capitalize on their work for a limited period of time. Cover songs on YouTube don’t threaten that ability, and may actually prevent new works by chilling talent that could go on to do great things.
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Filed Under: compulsory license, cover song, royalties, synchronization
Companies: youtube
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Reproduction?
The FBI warnings on movies are similar, no reproduction, duplication (whole or part), etc..
Don't you need permission to cover, even if non-commercial?
SOCAN thinks so. Any song in their repetoir requires a license and collection of fees based on ticket sale percentage or minimum, depending on which is greater (their website). Yes, venues can sign deals, I am just telling you what's on SOCAN's site (as I looked it up for my wedding, they wanted $40 for SOCAN music and even the venue would not know that my unregistered songs were not SOCAN licensed and no fee was applicable).
Hell, if I register with SOCAN and perform my own songs, SOCAN expects a percentage of the performance ticket sales. Do you honestly think they'll give that back in full to me?
If you do covers, it is understandable, you are playing others' music and therefore they deserve the small percentage SOCAN estimates.
I could be wrong, but this is what SOCAN has on their website, or did back in 2010.
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Re: Reproduction?
Now if you're stripping the audio straight off the music and voicing over it, maybe, perhaps, but then again it's not a song but a video at least in this case so you aren't 'copying' the original but transforming it.
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Re: Reproduction?
I don't believe it does. I think a reproduction is when you are making a copy. When you are performing a cover, that's not a copy (it's you performing), but you are using a song written by someone else.
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Re: Reproduction?
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Re: Reproduction?
SOCAN sounds like it's exploiting the uncertainty in the law that this article is discussing. The point here is that it's ridiculous to consider a cover infringing, not that it doesn't happen.
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Re:
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Typo
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Re: Typo
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Devil's Advocate Time
What qualities are judged to ascertain a cover (sound, words, emotion, sales?).
Yotub is just one of latest nervous mouthpieces. There will be more and they will fade. And then the more will fade as more come forth. And do on. So who is the ultimate arbitrator (not for 'merica, but for all existence)?
Does the ancient british invention of copyright extend beyond the planet? The solar system? The Milky Way? The Universe? How far? Says who?
If you cover a successful cover of an unsuccessful song and there are several other unsuccessful covers, who has the right to sue?
Why does it always come down to non-entities (politicians), lawyers and courts? Would the world be better off without them?
At what point in history did or will mankind stop creating?
Is this just an adjustment period?
When will it all end?
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Cover song better than the original?
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Re: Cover song better than the original?
In either case, the songwriter would still be due royalties and so would still be capitalizing. Maybe. If you can figure out the actual rules.
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Re: Cover song better than the original?
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Why stop at cover songs?
In my opinion the derivative works clause is probably the most problematic part of the copyright package. A derivative work is a separate product from the original work. I don't see any economic justification for blocking them.
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Re: Why stop at cover songs?
TERRORISM
THE ARTIST
THE WORLD
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
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Re: Why stop at cover songs?
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Re: Re: Why stop at cover songs?
Derivative works are a very important thing. People build on each other's ideas. It's how human culture has always worked for thousands of years.
Now pretty much the entire twentieth century is presumed illegal to tap into for that purpose. All thanks to intellectual property.
People who think they can release their works to the outside world and still keep absolute control are overestimating themselves. Those who think they're entitled to crush the evolution of culture are wrong.
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1. Upload content (This can be any content, from original creation to birds chirping in nature)
2. Make payment to the MPAA/RIAA.
If you failed to do both, you are infringing.
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Re:
If you do step 1 but fail to do step 2, you are infringing =P
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Re:
2. request riaa/mpaa to send u a bill
3. take out loans to pay bill
4. ask them what drm u need to add
5. watch as drm loses u all ur money u need to pay off debt
6. ???????
7. profit
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Re: Re:
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Proposal: A SIMPLE test of infringement
If not, then it is infringing.
(Is that a simple enough test of infringement for you? Even a congresscritter could understand that.)
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Re: Proposal: A SIMPLE test of infringement
If it's money that's not easy for them to see how they're being enriched because they've never been enriched in that way they probably won't even correctly recognize when they are being enriched.
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Money
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Money
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The AA's think of every person as a certain amount of money no matter the medium. They are moving away from that, but too slow to bring legal alternatives to the interwebs. They still haven't understood that they need the legal businesses on the net to thrive to be able to fight piracy on the net efficiently.
"Having a monopoly in Florida and extorting and/or bribing local politicians there will not have much effect on laws in California."
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Re:
Wha?? They are?
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Re:
The problem is the decision to treat a cover version as a plagarized work. It's a derivative work, and a creator of a derivative work has some rights too.
To me, two changes would be ideal: government-set royalties for works that profit less than a set amount, and the creator of the secondary work (when flagged) given the choice to pay the fee or take it down, with the work left online in the balance.
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Re: Re:
Also, while misattribution hurts author's/artist's ability to earn income and fans knowledge of their favorite works, the value of the works themselves remains the same.
This is not to defend plagirists as I detest liers.
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As soon as i read this,
http://www.youtube.com/user/meytalll
kickass stuff :D
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One error
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Re:
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Put money directly beneath their nose
They should put their money where their mouth is, if anything "amateur" is so far beneath them, then there is obviously no harm in allowing it.
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Sadly it's true. Actually, all non-commercial activity should be exempt from copyright. As far as I can see, copyright should prevent commercial exploitation of a work (the execution of an idea) and nothing more.
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Copywrite BS
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Copywrite BS
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...
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Re: ...
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