[cc-community] Remixes, covers?
Elizabeth Stark
estark at law.harvard.edu
Thu Oct 18 16:33:36 EDT 2007
So I had this conversation with GOB a while back, when I had a friend who
had done a cover of a song and wanted to license it CC. We both agree that
while in theory you could say that the recording portion was "CC," it
wouldn't really help, because you cannot isolate a recording of a song from
its underlying composition.
So, if you were to post the song online, you'd be infringing the underlying
composition copyright. (Law school hypothetical: you might be able to pay
the statutory rate for selling covers for each download, but that still
wouldn't make the underlying composition CC, that would only possibly shield
you legally.)
On 10/18/07, Marcus Estes <marcus at wfmu.org> wrote:
>
> > If you wanted to CC license a cover of a non-CC
> > licensed song, it wouldn't really work. Even though your contribution
> (the
> > recording of the song) would be CC, there's no way to actually separate
> the
> > two out.
>
> I'm not sure I agree. The CC license specifies:
>
> "'Work' means the copyrightable work of authorship offered under the
> terms of this License.
>
> Because both the sound recording and composition are copyrightable
> then it seems one could isolate them and license them under CC.
>
> This has huge ramifications for our project. Is it your understanding
> that if the owner of Sub-Pop records walked into my office today and
> wanted to CC-license their whole catalog that they couldn't because
> they don't own the compositions? That would be no good.
>
> Marcus
>
> > On 10/18/07, Marcus Estes <marcus at wfmu.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello all,
> > >
> > > I need help clarifying an ambiguity when licensing music under CC.
> > > Wouldn't permitting derivations be implying a different use, depending
> > > on what type of ownership the licensor represented?
> > >
> > > For instance, it seems that an owner of the master recording could
> > > permit remixes with a by-nc-sa, while it would take a composer
> > > licensing a composition under by-nc-sa to allow cover versions.
> > >
> > > Is this right?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Marcus
> > > WFMU
> > > http://freemusicarchive.org
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > cc-community mailing list
> > > cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
> > >
> >
> >
>
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