On Mon, 21 Mar 1994, Michael King wrote:
quoted 5 lines I thought the US Supreme court determined that lists of factual information> I thought the US Supreme court determined that lists of factual information
> were specfically not copyrightable. This was regarding people who sold
> phone books, and the result is the phone books on CD, etc. Ma Bell couldn't
> sue on the grounds of copyright violation as the information was of a
> factual nature, and as such, contained no "creative effort". If this guy is
This is very true, and one of the reasons this thread has
perplexed me so damn much! There is nothing at all illegal about
compiling discographies, and there should be even less controversy as we
don't charge or profit from discographies we keep on the net. I missed
the first part of this thread, but lately I've been boggled. Who was
this that felt so threatened? Sounds like they misunderstood somthing,
if you ask me.
quoted 11 lines and listen to various CDs before you buy. Does Tower purchase these CDs?> and listen to various CDs before you buy. Does Tower purchase these CDs?
> Does that constitute "public performance" and violate the license agreement
> printed on the CD? Did Tower obtain a special license for these CD players
> accessible to the public? It obviously is "promotional" in nature, but for
> example, could I set up a "CD Listening Room" and sell beverages with no
> cover or would that be called operating a "bar" and I'd have to pay
> ASCAP fees or something? Does Tower have an ASCAP license for the machines?
> How does an arrangement like that (i.e. the WWW site holds an ASCAP license)
> fit onto the WWW site? Do y'all need an ASCAP license, or does the site, or
> does the receiver's site? If you have an ASCAP license, does it matter? Is
> there a difference between a DJ and a WWW-cyber-DJ?
Now THIS is the potentially dangerous part, and I could
understand if this bothered some label-exec-types. The sound archives at
the techno/SFRaves site are technically illegal, specifically the samples
of entire songs. I have to say that it's a good thing that there's not a
"Entire Sampled Albums" directory . . . .
Anyway, in regards to the "public performance" question, that
clause is used in cases of record stores playing music for PROMOTIONAL
reasons, i.e. in order to sell said records (which, unless memory fails
me, copyright laws assume that any music being played in a record store
is being used to drum up sales - hence music being played for profit).
On the other hand, the archives DO NOT store these samples for
reasons of gaining profit . . . The laws being broken are those that
prohibit unauthorised duplication. In this case, it IS illegal, however
. . . I think that there are definately ways to get around this, such as
obtaining permission. As most (if not all) of the artists sampled on the
archive are relatively obscure (same for the labels), I would say that it
shouldn't be too hard to obtain permission from most of the labels to
store excerpts from these songs on the archive site to make them freely
available. I don't think that any (non-major) label in their right mind
would sue because there were EXCERPTS from their products being made
freely available. In fact, I would say that many labels would officially
sanction the archive if they knew about it.
Anyway, sorry for droning on for so long, but my flirtations with
the "industry" over the past 5 or so years have (at least) taught me just
enough to make me dangerous to myself and others. :) If Brian (et al)
could get in touch with me with the story so far, I would really
appreciate it, as I'm feeling a bit under-informed at the moment.
o23
orpheus@knuth.mtsu.edu