Some of you know this already but I am a DJ and also used to make and promote parties and I was working with a huge UK party organisation/record label.

So I would hire venues and Djs/bands and make the website and flyers and book hotels/flights equipment and then also on the night DJ before the main acts.

The guys I worked with are some of the biggest in the business and release thier own DJ mix Cds on the record label.
I worked with artists such as Deep Dish, Dave Seaman, Sasha, Hybrid etc etc and thier Dj sets sell a lot of copies and make a lot of money.
When they make they they have an absolute nightmare getting permission from different artists/ and or record companies.

Imagine a DJ has been playing around in a club and making some really amazing mixes in a sequence and it they really lead one track into the other...They go into the studio to record the mix and then they are told that XXX records will not give us permission to use that track I am sorry..
So basically he has to start playing around again trying to fit the tunes around the missing one..or then choose a new track that again has to be cleared by the artist and or record company.

Sowhat happens if I jack my laptop into the "final" mixer and leave it recording a wav file of the DJ thats playing ? how does that work out? (this would be the same as a recording a band live in the eyes of the law)

Ok the DJ that your recording should have a PPL Licence..(Phonographic Performance Ltd this is for the UK and for EU but there are links to many different countries in the world) as a performer..it could be a multi site licence or one venue only licence.
Then the Venue itself would have to have a licence to cover them for "Live Performance" this includes bands and DJs..

In that licence it will state that NO recording devices are allowed on the premises during a performance..and it will list ALL types of recording devices.. have you ever read the back of a ticket from a big venue? it will state this as well as not bringing in own drink and food etc..
In any venue you can actually ask at the desk (or should be able to) to see thier site licence.

Any venue that doesnt have one faces closure and a fine.

So any live recording is breaking the law.

Also if you think about a band performing live a brand new track thats not been recorded yet..or imagine a live jazz free form concert..thats not covered by a copyright? cos nothing like this exists as a recording...
The fact is NO! this is covered by the Venue licence so you are breaking the law...

So if you redistribute this recording..your breaking the law even more heavly unless you have written prior concent from the band..
If your selling it..your invringing the laws to a greater degree again.

So in respect to the Radiohead site...yes this is illeagle unless a copy of the letter from the band is available to the PPL and us as users of the site can see and they have given prior consent.



These guys are probably unknown to the band or record company involved as well as the PPL, it would probably take one person to complain to the PPL about copyright material on the site and it would be given a cease and desist order to remove the content or face court action.
And would you belive on the the PPL site theres actually a banner button to report people.

So how do you get caught?

I have actually been in a club on a few occasions when..

1. The people from the UK or Netherlands council that cover the venue have turned up with Decibel meters to measure the sound output.You can get fined for breaking the limits;)I know cos one time I got a warning in writing that I was too loud!! Im kinda proud of it

2. The PPL hitsquad arrived and looked at everyones licence that was performing that night or took names down and addresses..

Both times the police were with these guys!!!they arrange hitsquads to go ouy to popular areas of cities with bars and clubs and hit them all on one night with police protection to get them into and around the club or bar.

I actually know a DJ who when going through customs in the Netherlands had every single record bag and CD case taken apart and he had some burned discs with him..he could actually prove that he owned the 12inch back home but not at this moment..he had them all confiscated and he had to sign papers which would lead to a fine if he didnt prove in 30 days the proof of purchase..


These days I use a "Digital set of Decks" to play on, this involves a laptop and a midi mixer and mp3/wavs stored on my HD..I sometimes use DVDS with lots of mp3s on also if i am short on HD space.


This has lead to a whole new ballgame in copyright issues...

The PPL have made a totally new section to the law now to govern mps and Digital DJs..
You wont belive the implications of this!!!

So I have to buy a licence for 200 pound a year..I am NOT allowed to record ANYTHING only play..so for me this is a killer cos I like to record really tight mixes of two tunes together and play them live..I break the law each time i do this now..I break the law to a higher degree by making an hour set that I give out on CDs I burned myself as a demo, same if I allow people to copy it.

I have bought mp3s years ago legally and 12 inches or Cds I own and ripped?and these are NOT covered by this Licence!!! only mp3s 12 inches or Cds bought since by licence was granted..!!!!! FFS can you imagine that????
I am not allowed to backup tracks to DVD and play them live back again!!! I am allowed to make ONE back up of each track and hold that on HD only!!!

So according to this anyone that has ever played recorded music to the public has to have a licence and throw away thier whole music collection and start legally buying it all again even though you legally own it anyway...but heres the kicker!! you dont own it!! you own a licence to play it for your PERSONAL use..This is why any bar, factory,shop, hairdresser, office etc has to have a licence to play music to the public because they make a distinction between public and private use for everything covered by copyright.
Imagine a house party or BBQ..if theres more than 20 people present guess what? U NEED A LICENCE!!

So how are they enforcing this?? DRM is thier answer!!!
As a Digital DJ I have to use thier DRM and let them have access to my computer at anytime.

Also if I am on tour and purchase tracks legally these are NOT licenced untill PPL check out my database of tracks and then approve them in the country I live in.

I also have to provide at any time a list of venues I have played and the tracklists that I played at that venue!! so they can check the venue has a licence and the artists played are licenced also.
So I get sued because the venue is not uptodate with thier licence or I play a tune from someone that doesnt have a record deal..and hasnt got a licence for thier work yet.
So playing a tune I made myself or a remix I have made..this is against the law if I havnt got a licence.

Internet Radio.
Now here again is a whole new ballgame..If I am on a net radio station even for two hours I have to apply for a special licence..the site itself will have to have a pretty extensive licence also.

Let me explain the licence for net radio further..

You have to pay a royalty fee for each individual stream of each individual Sound Recording.



Also somehow you have to work out BEFORE you apply for the licence the amount of traffic your expecting and PAY for it in advance!! how MAD is that?

So a start up netradio has to pay a lot of money upfront cos if they dont they have to pay more and a fine if they get thier prediction of listeners wrong!!
Also would you belive this!! you are NOT covered if a user can skip forward or START and PAUSE the stream!! WTF!!! so that rules 99% of net radios for a start.
You are NOT covered if you have interactive ranking or voting that determines the playlist.
So your users cant vote thing to the top of the playlist.
If you copy the tracks onto a central database of tracks..you will pay an extra 15% ontop of the fee per hour of user listening time.
Not all countries in the world are covered by this law..so guess what? its up to YOU to deny them access to the stream!!
So in effect you will have to build some kinda IP filter for the countries that do not subscribe to this.

So with ALL of these restrictions in place, as a DJ you have to ask yourself this question..is it worth ever buying a licence? isnt it going to be easier to wait for the PPL to catch me?

Hope this sheds some light on mp3s and broadcasting or redistributing them..I did a bit of research for this post and was a bit shocked at all the implications of it!!

Marky;)

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?

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;)

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).

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

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.