[cc-community] cc licensing of covers of ARR songs?

Ed Pybus ed at slrecords.net
Tue Jan 13 12:33:33 EST 2009


In the UK anyone is allowed to 'cover' any song, as longs as you don't 
alter the song (I forget the exact legal terms but a straight cover is 
always OK a re-arrangement is sometime OK a re-interpretation needs the 
rights holders permission). In the past this wasn't a problem since 
every piece of physical product had to have a MCPS license before it 
could be manufactured (even if the CD was going to be given away - the 
biggest cost of a 'free' cover mount CD is usually the MCPS license), 
which paid the songwriters royalty, so McCartney Lennon would get the 
same royalty (as songwriter) if they recorded the song or if someone 
else did.

Now I'm not sure where this entitlement to record a cover version comes 
from - if it's tied to the MCPS then I guess they could say if the 
website in questions has a MCPS license then it's fine, if not then it's 
not fine (eg iTunes pays a cut of each sale to the MCPS). If however 
there some kind of statutory right to record a cover version of a song 
then I guess that's different. In either case what's to stop, say, the 
Bootleg Beatles recording the entire Beatles catalogue and releasing it 
via iTunes?

And how does a CC license work with a piece of music- is it the 
recording that's released under the CC license or is it the 'song' - two 
very different things.

Anyway the short answer is I don;t know about Jamendo but'll be 
interested to see what others think!

Cheers
Ed

drew Roberts wrote:
> Can someone comment on what is going on here:
>
> http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/24336
>
> The license shown for the songs on this album is:
>
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
>
> Yet track 4 is a cover of Please Please Me by Lennon and McCartney.
>
> Is this supposedly OK to do? Is this a country by country thing?
>
> I would have thought this could not be legally done...
>
> all the best,
>
> drew
> _______________________________________________
> cc-community mailing list
> cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
>
>
>   

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