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[Todd Jonz]

Joe writes:

> History is replete with examples of musicians who have,
> through coercion, sold their work to big publishers,
> and lose complete control of their work.

This describes so-called "orphaned" works, a case about which Lawrence Lessig is currently arguing before, I believe, a federal appellate court on its way to the Supremes.

Let's say I'm lucky enough to get a publisher to publish an original work of mine or my arrangement of a tune in the public domain.  In the agreement we write the publisher insists that I, as the owner of the copyright, grant him exclusive publication rights.  The work brings in some revenue for a while, but sales eventually slow to a trickle (especially if it's, say, a trombone quartet, for which there's a limited market in the first place.)  When the inventory of the first edition is exhausted, the publisher decides it would not be in his best financial interest to issue a second edition, and my work goes out of print.

My work has now been orphaned.  I'd like to see it in circulation, perhaps there are others who would like to get their hands on a copy, but I cannot legally produce or sell these copies myself.  The works of Tommy Pederson, a prolific composer of wonderful trombone ensemble music, fall into this category and have been discussed at some length in another thread.

I'm with Joe -- the system is broken alright....

[Dennis K.]

It seems that the system is broken primarily with the big publishers.  Hence the rise of self-publishing, like me.
Typical royalty contracts allow you to live slightly below the national poverty level if you have 1000 pieces in the catalog and they are all good sellers.
Anecdotally, that has more to do with the "mystique" of publishing than actual legislation.  Publishers say "we market, promote, and print it for you."  And they do, as long as you are one of the big names.
Then comes the 1000's of little guys who may be great arrangers, but have to sign away 90% of their creation in order for any publisher to even consider them.

[The Guardian]

I wish Copyright worked somewhat like how patents are supposed to work... if you don't use them, you lose them...

Modify it slightly for Copyrights so that if rights are sold and then not used they can revert back to the original owner... Also after the owner's death they are covered for xx years unless they are not used in which case they become public domain.

"Not Used" would have to be an appropriate amount of time whether than be 5 or 10 years or whatever.

[Todd Jonz]

Dennis writes:

> It seems that the system is broken primarily with the big publishers.

I think the system became seriously broken when Congress eliminated the requirement that copyrights be registered sometime back in the '70s.  Without a registry, it's virtually impossible to determine who holds what rights to many works.  That's where a lot of the problems in the system originate.

The Guardian writes:

> I wish Copyright worked somewhat like how patents are
> supposed to work...if you don't use them, you lose them

This has been proposed by the likes of Lessig and the good folks at Creative Commons.  The problem is convincing Congress to act, which they're not in a big hurry to do in light of the sums contributed to their campaign coffers by the entertainment cartel.  And with "Hollywood Howard" Berman as the new chair of the House intellectual property committee, I don't expect to see any radical changes to U.S. copyright law any time in the near future.

[Paul Martin]

I wish Copyright worked somewhat like how patents are supposed to work... if you don't use them, you lose them...

Modify it slightly for Copyrights so that if rights are sold and then not used they can revert back to the original owner... Also after the owner's death they are covered for xx years unless they are not used in which case they become public domain.

"Not Used" would have to be an appropriate amount of time whether than be 5 or 10 years or whatever.

It would seem that a much more limited number of years of use would make sense, I can't see much of a difference in terms of quality between an item that can be patented, versus one that can be copyrighted; the idea of a company sitting on a copyright, but which cannot be bothered to republish a work, is fairly distasteful, and makes one question the motivation, which can only be commercial.  My first "swag" at a reason is that, unlike items which can be patented, which have a certain innate usefulness that will become obsolete when someone builds "a better mousetrap," copyrighted material is much more a matter of culture, taste, and accident: Mahler's works, for instance, fell out of favor for a long, long time, to where, at one point, his works were rarely played; keeping a long-term right to a copyright permits the holders to "cash in" on the creator's renewed popularity year's later (these days, for the 6-month period after a venerated but (over time) less popular musician dies, and people swarm to the musician's recordings).

[BGuttman]

There was a difference between U.S. copyright law and International copyright law; at one time the U.S. copyright was for 28 years renewable for 28 years.  International copyright law was for life of the author plus 50 years.

U.S. copyright law has been changing based on the Walt Disney company's need to keep Mickey Mouse out of Public Domain.  Walt created Mickey in 1928, so the original copyright would have passed into public domain in 1986.  But we have adopted the International copyright so that Mickey, whose creator died in 1966, would remain private property until 2016.  Disney is trying to pull the strings to extend even that.

The result is that works that should become public domain do not.  There are a multitude of abandoned works that might have a small following but are not available because the original copyright owner does not want to be bothered to print them nor allow them to be printed by somebody else.

In Patent Law there is a fee for maintaining patent coverage.  If the fee is not paid, the teachings of the patent revert to Public Domain.  I'd like to see the same thing for copyright.  Let Disney keep paying for Mickey to be theirs.  Let Graceland pay to keep Elvis theirs.  And if nobody wants to pay to keep the arrangement of Clay Smith's "The Satellite" under coverage, it becomes PD and we can all use it.  FWIW, the patent maintenance fee is quite small; I think it's $4.00 per 4 year period.

[Todd Jonz]

Found this C|Net article kinda interesting:  'Electric Slide' on slippery DMCA slope.  Nutshell: a guy creates a dance move in the '70s called the Electric Slide (?) and it passes into pop culture; he registers a copyright on his "choreography" in 2004, feuds with The Ellen DeGeneres Show over an episode in which some celebrities perform the move, and sends a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube for all videos depicting the move.

Paying a royalty to perform, say, Jerome Robbins' original choreagraphy for West Side Story is one thing, but this is just plain silly.  More evidence of a broken copyright system.

[BGuttman]

Found this C|Net article kinda interesting:  'Electric Slide' on slippery DMCA slope.  Nutshell: a guy creates a dance move in the '70s called the Electric Slide (?) and it passes into pop culture; he registers a copyright on his "choreography" in 2004, feuds with The Ellen DeGeneres Show over an episode in which some celebrities perform the move, and sends a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube for all videos depicting the move.

Paying a royalty to perform, say, Jerome Robbins' original choreagraphy for West Side Story is one thing, but this is just plain silly.  More evidence of a broken copyright system.

Wait a minute.  He creates the "move" in the 1970's and applies for copyright in 2004?  I thought if you delay the registration process you lose the copyright!  You can't get a patent if you don't apply within some 5 years from the discovery!

Maybe Disney should think about it.  Make a minor modification to Mickey in 1940, and copyright it now so you have a new 70 years?

[Todd Jonz]

Bruce writes:

> I thought if you delay the registration process you lose the copyright!

Nope -- no registration required since the '70s.  Assuming a dance move can be copyrighted, he's held the copyright since creating the dance.  Registration merely makes his claim a matter of record, and is only really useful if you go to court.  You don't suppose that might have been what he had in mind when he registered, do you? 

[Dennis K.]

I hereby copyright my alternate positions on Bolero.  If you play them, you must pay me royalties.

[Joe Jackson]

I hereby copyright breathing.

Cease and desist, scum.

[Piano man]

Found this C|Net article kinda interesting:  'Electric Slide' on slippery DMCA slope.  Nutshell: a guy creates a dance move in the '70s called the Electric Slide (?) and it passes into pop culture; he registers a copyright on his "choreography" in 2004, feuds with The Ellen DeGeneres Show over an episode in which some celebrities perform the move, and sends a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube for all videos depicting the move.

So my idea to copyright 'bad wedding reception dancing' isn't as stupid is Mrs. PM thinks.

[Dennis K.]

So my idea to copyright 'bad wedding reception dancing' isn't as stupid is Mrs. PM thinks.

Could you copyright the choreography to The Chicken Dance?

[marty nichols]

I briefly entertained the idea of buying iPod Shuffles,
or another quality player, loading selected music from my
library on them and selling on line.

From what I am learning, it's a "no-no"?

 

[BGuttman]

I briefly entertained the idea of buying iPod Shuffles,
or another quality player, loading selected music from my
library on them and selling on line.

From what I am learning, it's a "no-no"?

 

If you wrote the song, or if the song is old enough to be "public domain", you should be OK.

If the songs are copyright protected, you really shouldn't be selling them without permission from the copyright owner.

[Dennis K.]

Got this really nifty flowchart off a tubenet post:

http://www.bromsun.com/practices/copyright-portfolio-development/flowchart.htm

answers a lot of copyright questions.

[RMVerdi]

Hello,

Some very useful info here.

I'm in the process of making a limited run--under 2500 copies--solo CD.

I scanned the Harry Fox site, and found some popular, often performed works, for instance the Casterede and Creston, are there, but many lesser perfomed works, the bulk of my recording, are not.  I'm unclear, and I can't make sense of it from the Harry Fox site, if a work is not in their database, will they seek it out and make it part of their database if I make it known I wish to pay for its mechanical rights?

Or, does this mean I have to contact the publisher, or even the composer to obtain the mecahnical rights to the works?  Several of my choices are LeDuc publications--what are the odds of my hearing back from them if I submit a request? 

This seems like quite a labyrinth to roam through!


Any help would be appreciated...

Roger Verdi

[Todd Jonz]

Roger writes:

> Harry Fox...if a work is not in their database, will they seek
> it out and make it part of their database if I make it known I
> wish to pay for its mechanical rights?

Probably not.  As best I can tell, the Harry Fox Agency is merely a paper pusher and collection agent for the publishers with which it has contracts.  If HFA represents the publisher of a work in which you're interested, I would expect it to be in the Songfile database.

> Several of my choices are LeDuc publications

Can you find any other LeDuc titles in Songfile?  If so, then an inquiry to HFA would probably be in order.  Otherwise you'll probably have to deal with LeDuc directly.

> what are the odds of my hearing back from
> them if I submit a request?

Great question.  Let us know the answer if you get this far. 

> This seems like quite a labyrinth to roam through!

It's nuts, isn't it?  Wouldn't the world be a much simpler place if there were a formal registry like there used to be?

A friend's Dixieland band pressed 5,000 CDs to sell at gigs.  It took them almost six months (which they hadn't planned on) to clear the rights to a lot of musty old standards from the '20s and '30s.  That must have been a lot of fun.


 

[RMVerdi]

Thanks for the reply,

I looked through the HF site again, and they do have several LeDuc works in their database, just not the ones I want to record!  The composers and publishers of my other choices are there too....so, I have an email in the them, HF, regarding my options with them.

Thanks again,

Roger

[Todd Jonz]

> I have an email in [to] them, HF, regarding my options with them.

I hope you'll let us know what you hear back from them, Roger.  I've always wondered about this myself, and I'm sure others have as well.