From: Kanef@Charon.ARC.NASA.gov (Bob Kanefsky)
Subject: Re: No Moggy's Lands & legal stuff
Keywords: parody, copyright
Organization: None
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 23:28:01 GMT

I don't usually subscribe to rec.music.folk (or any newsgroup, for that
matter; I'm just starting to cautiously skim a little of the flood of
information to sift through), but since one of my songs was mentioned I
followed the discussion that Eli's message about copyright started.

I'm actually very pleased to see one of my songs (even that one!)
spreading outside of the filk community and into the folk community.
Eli was right in his guess that I wouldn't mind (and it's not as though
many of you had heard of me and are now going to save the money of
buying a songbook because you got a free copy of the song), but he was
also right about copyright.  Other smalltime songwriters may feel
differently, and I can't speak for them. Some may even be trying to
earn a living from songwriting, and they may feel differently about the
copyright issue than someone like me who enjoys his real job and
doesn't care how much money he makes from songwriting.

Personally, I've always sent copies of my songs to anyone who asks, and
given permission for small-scale noncommercial publication whenever
asked, and I generally don't mind if copies of a song or two get passed
around informally.  I wouldn't go so far as to give blanket permission;
and I might not like it if, say, Eli gave a thousand people a copy of
everything I ever wrote without asking me -- and nowadays there's no
technical barrier to stop him from doing that; they're all in
electronic form.

By the way, if you're posting anyone's song, with or without
permission, it's a good idea to protect the author's rights by
including a copyright notice if you know who wrote it and when.  I say
that because I see in news.announce.newusers, article 1431, that

  Once something is posted onto the network, it is *probably* in the
  public domain unless you own the appropriate rights (most notably,
  if you wrote the thing yourself) and you post it with a valid
  copyright notice; a court would have to decide the specifics and
  there are arguments for both sides of the issue. Now that the US has
  ratified the Berne convention, the issue is even murkier.  For all
  practical purposes, though, assume that you effectively give up the
  copyright if you don't put in a notice.

In other words, it may be legal for someone to take a bunch of songs
that were floating around without copyright notices and print and sell
a songbook without paying a cent of royalties, if there was no
copyright notice.  (As you may know, U.S. copyright law says the
copyright automatically exists when the work is created, and
registering it with the Copyright Office is optional.  But it's
possible to lose the copyright if copies are distributed without a
notice.)

But I don't want to get drawn into a long flame war on copyright.  Let
someone else with less ambiguous feelings on it try to defend the
principle of copyright.  I'll read any folloups to this if I have time,
but I don't think I'll have anything to say in response.

About parodies in particular, I think I know the answer to this:

In article <gxvmgrd.greg@netcom.com>, greg@netcom.com (Greg Bullough) asks:

|> how a parody is handled with respect
|> to publishing it. After all, most of the intellectual credit for the thing
|> belongs to Eric Bogle... ...the melody, and the original idea.
|>  
|> So how does Bogle get compensated? What if he doesn't like the derivation of
|> his work?
 
My understanding is that a parody is legally treated just as though it
were an original set of words to the same tune, owing nothing to the
real original lyrics.  This makes no sense to me either, but that's the
established custom, from what everyone tells me.  (No, I haven't asked
a lawyer, because I don't care to pay every cent I've made from parody
writing for an hour or two of his or her time.)  This means that it's
legal to publish a book of parodies as long as it doesn't include
information that woul d let someone reproduce the tune without having
heard it -- that is, sheet music.  Chords are not copyrightable, I'm
told, and of course you don't have to pay royalties just to mention the
name of the tune it's supposed to be sung to.

If anyone ever records, say, "No Moggy's Land" and wants to sell it,
then they're using the tune as well as the lyrics, so they'd need to
pay royalties to Eric Bogle as well as to me.   I think they're
supposed to get permission from him as well as from me too; there's a
special rule for getting a compulsory license for recording a song that
has already been recorded, but I don't think it applies for reusing a
tune for parodies.  (If anyone knows any different, please tell me.)
As for just singing, I don' t think there's any law against singing
whatever you want, as long as no one's making money on it.  If you're
singing someone else's songs and charging admission, or using it to
draw business to a coffee house or something, the establishment is
supposed to have a blanket license from a performance rights
organization like BMI, which then distributes its income to its member
songwriters as fairly as feasible (currently, in proportion to radio
play which they also collect for).

Boy, with all that complexity, it's no wonder that you folkies prefer
your songwriters long dead and buried.   :-)

					--Bob Kanefsky

"For a fan or a folksinger may strike back,
 And a rock star sometimes sues,
 But a poor dead poet's published works
 Are always safe to use." 	   -- with apologies to Rudyard Kipling