Sharing Music Online - To what extent is it legal?

Mark420

Dec 11 2006, 06:47 PM

Well now youve fallen down the rabbit hole but just how far does it go down?

This is the biggest grey area on the net atm..

Its soo hard to say about links to content posted by others, by doing this you are hiding behind the statement "i didnt upload it and I didnt rip it"

Your ISP or hoster will hide behind the statement "we provide the access to the net..not what the customer does with it." and the hoster will say " by providing links the user has not broken our TOS because thier is no copywrite material on our servers"

Let me explain a recent case in the UK..
A guy has a soccer blog, really great site with loads or orginal content all about the UK Premiership football.
He has a section on site for funny videos and great goals scored this week as well as an archive of these.
These are links to Google Video, YouTube etc and its content he has searched for and NOT uploaded himself.

In the UK ALL showing of the Premiership is owned by SKY who in turn is owned by FOX who in turn is owned by My Burns himself!! Rupert Murdoch (boo hiss!!) and you have to have a SKY package to view any football.
BBC and other chans do show football but its not live and also its a deal made with SKY to broadcast this.

So Google, Youtube, whatever is breaking the deal that SKY have with the Premiership.So its THEM that are breaking copyright law NOT the owner or HOSTER of the site and ofc not the ISP.

A couple of weeks ago the guy writing the site got a really heavy letter from SKY and FOX's lawyers giving him a STOP now order-this means they give you 24 hours to take down ANY content they are not happy with from the website.They also threatened I think it was 25K UK pounds fine if he didnt comply.
The same letter went to his ISP and to Google and Youtube.

The guy fought back and put them straight that HYPERLINKS are not content!
Youtube buckled and tore down SOOO many posts to do with the Premiership (think it was about 5000 posts) and targetted the links from this guys site especially.

I guess this tells the story about music also, in a way you are NOT breaking the rules by linking to pages within someone elses site, but say if you embedd the videos or link to mp3 in a player on YOUR site then you are breaking the rules directly, because the content is coming from somewhere else but is accessed on YOUR site.

I would say to you Pyost..make sure the stuff is NOT here but elsewhere Linking to stuff is NOT against the Asta and Trap TOS.
Say if Opaque got an email from a music company complaining about you then this section of the TOS could come into force against you..

This is from the Asta TOS..

QUOTE

We may remove any material that, in our sole discretion, may be illegal or may subject us to liability

Its a good TOS cos it leaves Asta and Trap to decide what they deem illeagle and if they got a letter from a company complaining or forcing liability then they could I guess suspend you untill you removed the mentioned articles.


I hope this helps clear this up and GOOD LUCK with your site mate

Marky!

 

 

 

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pyost

Dec 11 2006, 07:05 PM

Phew.. Complicated stuff, so many "security holes"

QUOTE

make sure the stuff is NOT here but elsewhere

That was never an option, since I would not risk that much no matter what.

By the way, I never said the site is on Astahost
But it is.. I really don't want to do anything stupid, at least not while I'm hosting it here. When/If I move..

By the way, here's an extract from the biggest Radiohead site concerning various multimedia:

QUOTE

Can you get caught and be sued for downloading anything? Does Radiohead care if people download bootlegs?

This is not legal advice!

Basically, someone recording a concert of a band somehow records, and therefore doublicates without allowance, copyrighted material. Say, if the location where the concert was held explicitly forbade an audio recording, the recorder can be made liable if caught.

Or if you try to sell downloaded bootlegs, not only would it be a risky business but also unfair.

But as someone who will privately consume said bootleg and doesn't necessarily share it with others, I've heard that not downloading but actually sharing is a key issue, that should be ok - currently.

Radiohead probably love the fact that you download live recordings of their music. However, their record company and the people who own the copyright may well feel differently.

Frankly, I didn't quite understand what they are saying, but nobody's causing them trouble, and they've being doing this for years!

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Vue

Apr 8 2007, 06:40 AM

Online laws are so blunt aren't they? We hardly know them.

I'm not sure, but I would think it would be okay to stream music using a flash player. I mean, it would be way harder to extract the audio compared to ripping the music of say, the radio. And the radio is legal. I would need clarification on streaming music, though.

Providing download links? I wouldn't recommend it.

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mastercomputers

Dec 14 2006, 06:54 AM

I'm going to probably be off topic a bit, but I was not allowed to take someone's music and add my music into it. Basically I took old rock songs and added my own guitar sound to it, because back then, guitaring sounded like a backup more than a main focus and I wanted to show my guitar playing and also to show that old music then can be modernised.

Now I know because all I was doing was adding my guitaring to it, it's not really original but my main focus was not to rip off an artist, nor was I profitting by this, I was just showing my passion in playing guitar and that was all. I use to be in a band, we had original music but when you have classic rock that you think could be improved why can't you do this and share it?

I just want people to be inspired by my playing and to learn from what I can show them. Another thing being hit is guitar tabs, your own version of how you think a song is played also can be infringement so now you can't even imitate bands, what's the world coming to, we learn from the past and improve on that, but we can't even do this. I know I would not care if musicians were inspired by my sound and tried copying it, I'd be proud if someone actually looked up to me and wanted to follow my style of playing.

Cheers,

MC

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beatgammit

Dec 13 2006, 09:23 PM

In my area, there are only restrictions on copyrighted content. If you perform live under a contract, you should read this contract to see whether they have rights to the performance. Music that you produce is legal to distribute, but if you produce it under a record lable, you must have permission (because the music is no longer yours). I believe you can let people listen to music, but not download music, with very little in the way of copyright infringement, but I would make sure with the owners of the music to be sure.

All in all, if you don't own it, you can't share it (legally).

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Mark420

Dec 12 2006, 10:51 PM

Hehe it was the longest post I ever did here and I got 10 credits for i think!! Alomost a tuturial on Music law there

Yesterday I forgot to add a section also which is very approriate to what your trying to do...



In the Netherlands in the summer a site called zoekmp3.nl (lookformp3) was hit hard in court by BREIN which is kind of the copyright police for The Netherlands.They were forced to close down and faced 10K Euros each day they were back online.

What was thier crime? doing what you want to do..to "deeplink" to content not on your server and ofc in this sites case it was whole cds live sets etc of copyright material.

The judges did not buy the "Im only providing links to content elsewhere" line that every torrent/warez site hides behind.

BREIN had taken them to court in 2004 and zoekmp3.nl won and the judges allowed thier defence.

This was the appeal by BREIN and they won allowing similar rulings in the rest of the EU cos lawyers seem to hop rulings across borders very fast these days in Euroland!! so expect to see more of these cases in more countries.



A bit off topic but a site i REALLY want shut down is www.allofmp3.com these guys are Russian mafia guys trying to fool people that they are legally downloading mp3s.

What they are expoliting is the fact that Russia has no copyright law as such..So they say in their defence that Ok well the servers are all located in Russia, its legal here and its a legal business model in Russia.



So as a user according to thier shaky defence your actling legally by downloading it to another country cos the payment and the mp3s themselves are in Russia.



In Russia PPL means nothing! so they dont pay ONE CENT to any band/artist etc..

So in effect they go on Amazon buy up ONE copy of each new Cd..Rip it and then store it on thier servers and them sell off to thousands of people.



Imagine thier business overheads!! I would imagine about 2-3 servers and a test server..half a rented rack in a datacenter in Moscow..a nice big fat connection...about $300 Amazon bill to pay..and 2-3 people to maintain the site and 1-2 to rip cds..

These guys have made millions from this alas ;(((



Ok then Back to the Question...



Cover Versions..Ok well again it comes down to licence and control of copyright..

Ive heard tales of places with a PPL licence or similar for Live Performance being busted cos a band played a cover version and it wasnt covered in the Venues Performing Licence..even tho the band were covered cos they paid more to be able to perform covers..



So if you get paid in anyway for performing and you include a cover..legally you should get a licence to play that tune.



If you are going to record covers then you dig further into the rabbit hole..



Ok its like this..if you do not gain any profit at all "technically" you are allowed to do it..Ive seen small bands sell T shirts for 10 pounds and give a FREE CD with the T shirt..so NO money is changing hands for the CD..Clever )



So what if I want to make profit from it ? or put the cover track on a cd with tracks I have written and performed myself?

Ok you will need a "Mechanical Licence" and this is basically permission by the copyright holder..most of the times these days the record company..to record it..it gets odd if its a shared ownership copyright..Ie the band wrote it together and now dont exist as a band any more.

As I belive the law its this..you would have to chase down each person written down with a writing or producing credit listed and get each of them to give thier permission for you to earn money off thier creation.



In the UK I have seen an ABBA tribute band who played covers but not...they didnt pay for a licence for ALL of the tunes only some..so they changed the tune and the words slightly to some really well known tunes from ABBA..all the crowd were singing along to the real tune and screwing up thier faces..they didnt understand why.



So like last nights posts about linking and Djing ..playing covers is full of pitfalls and traps you can fall down ;(



Hope this helps!!



Marky;)

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pyost

Dec 12 2006, 01:04 PM

Wow That's really a long answer (I wonder how much credits you got ). I imagine all of this is a big problem not just for you, but all DJs. But I guess you earn more than you spend, right?

So, to sum up, there is no way something like this would be legal And what about covers, when you play some band's song by yourself, or with your band? Does copyright disallow that, too?

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