Copywrite- How different does it have to be?

  • Thread starter Thread starter coloradojay
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As Velvet Elvis notes, there are two distinct copyrighted works: the song, and the recording of the song.

For example, say Barry Manilow records "I Write the Songs," or the McDonalds jingle ("You Deserve a Break Today"). If you do your own cover version, you (possibly, at least if you don't pay a royalty) infringe the copyrights of the guys who originally wrote the songs: Bruce Johnston and Ron Dante, respectively. If you burn CD copies of the Barry Manilow recordings and sell them on the street corner, you infringe Barry Manilow's copyright, as well as Bruce Johnston's and Ron Dante's.

Another thing to note (going back to the original question) is that the question isn't really whether the work you're, um, "being inspired by," is copyrighted. It is. (Unless the copyright has expired, which is unlikely). The question is whether what you're doing constitutes infringement. That really depends on the "facts and circumstances," and is a pretty tough judgment to make in the abstract.
 
Thanks everyone for your informative replies so far, especially sjjohnston and Velvet Elvis.

I should have thought of this to begin with... I put the clip the client gave us at nowhere radio. Please let me know if anyone recognizes it as being an original. I am not very well versed in Folk, so I really wouldn't know if it was a big hit, or written yesterday.

As another fun part of this excercise, I'll post the finished product up there once it's done, and we can see what people think about the similarity of the finished product (maybe I'll post with and without percussion to see how much difference that makes too).
 
Jay,

I listened to the tune and I don't recognize it... of course that doesn't mean anything at all... but it seems to be a fairly straight forward guitar progression.

We'll have to see what others say... I'm not very versed in folk either.

Ahhh... the wonderful world of copyrights... between copyrights and performance rights/royalty issues, I've had my fill lately of the business side of music :)

Velvet Elvis
 
Finished product?

Alright, so I told you guys I'd post the "after" since you took the time to discuss the likeness of the "before" to other copyrighted music.

This project got kind of messed up because the guitar player flaked on the tracking date. It turns out that the original is him playing (he did about 8 other tight acoustic dittys of all styles as options for the client too), but we still don't know the origin of the tune.

So lacking a guitar player (and my guitar player not feeling comfortable playing this tune on short notice)... We recorded the original mini-disc guitar part into the D16, and then tracked the percussion parts with a 57 ON TOP. (The first low conga part had a 57 on top and a 58 under for the bass hit). The best I could think of since the drums weren't recorded first, and there was no click track, was to track a "snap track" of me snapping in what amounts to "average" time over the guitar, and then I used that to cue beat 1, and keep some kind of time consistancy on top of the guitar track (which is also wierd considering that their are subtle tempo changes that are sort of stylized into the piece).

Problems I can hear:

-Guitar player takes a big breath (nose flute) at about 1:02

-Time isn't perfect. It was pretty damn hard to find an average time off of the guitar track with no click, so I did what I could.

-Cymbal part was the first take. I was kind of annoyed with the whole piece by the time we did the last track. If we get the guitarist to retrack, I will redo it so that the hits on 1 are a little more consistant.

-Once we sat down for mixdown, we all concurred that a Bass guitar would fit nicely in the mix, so we may add it this week. If the guitar player resurfaces we will probably do the guitar/bass, and any other retracking all at once using the Conga as the foundation.


This tune would probably get torn a new ass in the clinic. This very well may end up being the finished product, minus some compression, and voice-over. I would be fine with never hearing this tune again in my life <(c;

Actually I think it came out pretty decent, all things considered.
 
Ok

Ya know...Velvet Elvis may be right...or maybe not.
If you should us a C, a D and then and E....or whatever...and some other fool out there uses the same chords (in time) is that a copyright infringement? If that were the case, there wouldn't be much music playing right now.
Now, if you play a Joe Satriani ditty from start to finish and call it belong to Velvet Elvis, you are probably in trouble!!! But what real artist would do that in the first place? You can't copyright a chord...that's all I'm saying.
Now, if I am misunderstanding Elvis...please let me know.
 
Kid,

I gaurantee that I am right on the fact that there are two forms... one copyrighting the physical recording and one copyrighting the progression/lyrics... just got done running through the whole gambit of copyright registration for an album I am releasing nationally in July.

However... you are correct... if there are one or two chords in a progression that are similar... most likely it won't be an issue... BUT if an artist feels that you copied the chords, timing, melody etc of one of their songs, and they have that copyrighted, it can cause quite a hassle.

It takes more than using the same chords to infringe on a copyright, but if you are using similar rhythms, similar voicings, similar progressions etc... you are treading on thin ice.

Velvet Elvis
 
bdbdbucksKID,

Check out the links I posted above on the Harrison case. Tell me if you think they are the same or not. Apparently they were close enough that it became a huge court battle, and there was ultimately a settlement. Also consider the Vannilla Ice case where he sampled a chunk of Queen's "Under Pressure" - that one was settled out of court for an "undisclosed sum". I guess it's a fine line. I also think that if you don't make a bunch of money from it, then it's probably not worth it to the copyright holder to bother sueing you.

Anyone have any comments on the crappy final jingle? Do you think the percussion changes the feel any/makes it more original sounding?
 
Jay,

Since you know who the original guitarist is... have you asked them if they 'borrowed' the idea from someone? The percussion helps it sound a little better, but in a copyright case it wouldn't be enough to save it from an infringment battle (if the guitar part was borrowed from someone else).

Velvet Elvis
 
VE- No, I guess the guitar player vanished into thin air or something (you know how damn musicians are :cool: ). If we get a chance to retrack it, I'll definitly ask him. Just based on his chops, he's got an open invite to my monthly jam too, so hopefully I'll get to meet him/ ask about the tune / jam with him, someday.

I really wanted to get a sense of what the legal deal is on this type of work though, since the origin of the tune is still unknown on this one, and I can imagine this issue coming up again on other pieces. For all I know, the guitarist inadvertantly stole it from the 30-something TV show and slightly changed it (even though I think they sound substantially different). BTW- That was the closest guess I've had anyone offer, and I A/B'd them to see. You can listen to the first 15 sec, or so, of the 30-something theme at Amazon.com

Ya know even if the guitarist says "I just made it up last night", it's still subject to other copyrighted works, that he may not even have ever heard, or may not remember hearing. Tricky topic, huh?

My thinking on it right now, is that, I'm pretty far out of the recourse loop since all I did was track it and add the percussion (in fact it would be hard to prove that I even did that stuff). The guy who is having the commercial made and airing it, or the guy who is getting paid to produce it are probably the ones that really need to make sure that they are covered (I think). I raised the issue with the video/animation production guy, and he's going to look into it more now too.
 
Jay,

Good point... yeah I really don't know where the recourse lies with 'who gets in trouble for what'... my guess would be whoever owns the IPR (intellectual property rights) of the commercial would be the one at stake.

Velvet Elvis
 
What if?

There could be some artist that you haven't even heard his material yet and he could just jump on you for copyright infringement?
If something sounds good to me and I know the lyrics are my own...and just out of sheer artistry I don't want it to sound like anyone else, what's to prevent me from (within my abilities, provided I feel that it's original) recording that song? Really, it's a coincidence...no big deal. How can we with a limited set of chords and limited order in which to play (and have it sound audible) as artists be concerned if a certain amount of the progression sounds similar to that of another artists work? That's a constant paranoia that I would rather do without.
 
Kid,

That's a valid issue... and truthfully the answer rests mainly on how mainstream YOUR song would get versus how litigious (sp?) the owner of the other song gets.

It is a very conceivable scenario, but I don't think that the copyrights are based on whether or not you meant to copy the other's song... they are more based on whether or not a song of similar sound etc is infringing upon the same markets whether intentional or not.

Now we all know why we have all those high paid suit wearing music and intellectual property lawyers :)

Velvet Elvis
 
I think that this is one of those offenses like speeding, or making an error on your taxes, where it doesn't matter if you knew you were doing it or not, you are still liable. Honestly I have heard so many tunes that "remind me a lot of..." in my life, that I don't think it's a huge big deal. I do, however, plan to get some of *my own* originals copyrighted so that they can't be directly/blatantly stolen. I don't think it's paranoia, just good business practice.

The time I would be worried, personally, is if my CD or commercial were about to go into mass sindication, and make me a bunch of money, that's were it seems like someone could comeback and cry infringement. As George Harrison, or Milli-Vanilla Ice can surely tell you.
 
Inevitably any intellectual property suit boils down to what will sell with a jury. For example if you write a song with the words "I'll love you forever" and then somebody sues you be cause their entirely different song just happens to have the words "I'll love you forever" in them you wuold get laughed out of court.

Same thing goes with parody. While it is free use to parody a song exactly what constitutes parody to a particular jury is very vague. That is one reason why Weird Al makes a practice of allways asking for permission anyway.
 
Re: What if?

bdbdbucksKID said:
There could be some artist that you haven't even heard his material yet and he could just jump on you for copyright infringement?...
Click to expand...

If you didn't copy it, but just came up with it independently, no infringement. Or -- perhaps more accurately -- if the jury or judge determines that you didn't copy it, no infringement.

This can be a big issue in some copyright cases.
 
this brings up a question iv always wondered. Theres this song I love and theres like a 15 sec (at the most) part in the middle that I wanted to sample and add to one of my songs. I was going to give them credit for the part and everything, but since I cant get ahold of this famous person to ask them, i was going to just do it anyways and give them the credit,

so would there be any legal things this could get me in trouble for?
 
Videodrone,

I think there is a time limitation of samples used in new works... but I don't really know the logistics behind it.

Velvet Elvis
 
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