Raymond Horton wrote:
This sounds to me, already, like a dumb question, but here goes anyway:
Is there any guideline established as to how much I can quote of a
copyrighted piece of music without getting into trouble?
I know that there are guidelines for broadcast, but are there any for
compositional plagiarism? I'm guessing there are not, but hoping there
are.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, I have never even played a lawyer on TV,
so what follows is not intended in any way to be legal advice and I
would encourage you, when in doubt, to consult a copyright attorney in
your area who is versed in music and entertainment copyright specifically:
There is nothing codified, not even for broadcast. Copyrighted material
is copyrighted and without getting permission and/or paying a fee,
nothing can be done with it.
With that said, there seems to be a threshold below which actions
usually aren't taken. A few bars of a quotation probably won't get a
lawsuit, yet the same amount of an original recording, sampled, can
result in a lengthy court case and payment of a fine.
Essentially, what has seemed in the past to be the test used to be what
sort of an economic impact on the the original copyrighted material did
the copying make. So a small quotation would never undermine the sales
potential of the original or be mistaken for the original, and so didn't
used to be likely to be prosecuted to a successful end for the original
copyright owner. More recently it has become more a world of "mine,
mine, mine, get your stinking hands off MY STUFF!!!!" So that things
which would have no economic impact at all nor would reduce the
marketability of the original are being successfully prosecuted.
The one area which is much more open is the area of satire/parody. I
was interested to learn (wish I could remember the learned copyright
site I read this on) that this is much more narrowly defined and
interpreted than I had thought. I was originally under the impression
that using a copyrighted melody with new lyrics in a satirical manner
was protected, but the interpretation of this clause (where free speech
and personal property principles clash) has been that it is alright to
use the melody and put new words if the new creation parodies the
original creation. So using a well-known melody which was about love
can't be used to put words which parody a TV commercial (for instance.)
But using the "Barney Song" and changing the words to be satirical
about Barney is protected by that aspect of the law, apparently.
So if your use of the copyrighted material is satirical towards the
original (sappy romantic music turned into carnival-type two-step, for
instance) you might be alright with a larger quotation than if you
simply want to evoke an image by a short quotation of a well-known melody.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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