music considered work for hire (Was: WAAAY off original subject)
On Sun, May 21, 2000 at 01:51:16AM -0500, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
> > I think the recording industry is trying to purchase (or has recently
> > purchased) a law that satisfies this insistence. The gist I got was that the
> > law would make all work they publish will be considered a work for hire.
> > This it would be impossible to publish your own recordings through a record
> > company without effectively assigning the copyright to that record company.
>
> There are several levels of 'ownership' here. What are called 'mechanical'
> rights - the rights to the actual recorded sound are different from the
> rights to the arrangement, lyrics and music. I can see where record
> companies might assume, or want to assume ownership of the mechanical rights
> (especially if they finance the recording sessions), but I expect they'd be
> digging their own graves if they insisted on ownership of the copyrights to
> works for which they publish recordings. There are a lot of pretty powerful
> publishing companies in the music business which would take serious
> exception to such a 'law'. Then, too, every deal is different in the music
> business. The more money making potential you have as an artist, the better
> terms you can get on a contract for a project with a record company.
No, Brian was right. They onw the tune, they own the lyrics, they own the
recordings. Essentially, they grant you the band a license to perform the
music nowadays. So it is in the US, thanks to the RIAA.
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> GnuPG key 1024D/DCF9DAB3
Debian GNU/Linux (http://www.debian.org/) 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC
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<jgoerzen> stu: ahh that machine. Don't you think that something named
stallman deserves to be an Alpha? :-)
<stu> jgoerzen: no, actually, I'd prolly be more inclined to name a 386
with 4 megs of ram and a 40 meg hard drive stallman.
<stu> with a big fat case that makes tons of noise and rattles the floor
* Knghtbrd falls to the floor holding his sides laughing
<stu> and..
<stu> double-height hard drive
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