Beatallica
Greg London
email at greglondon.com
Wed Apr 7 01:51:19 EDT 2004
David Dixon said:
> Hello,
>
> My name is David Dixon, and I'm the webmaster for a band called Beatallica
> (http://www.beatallica.org). Beatallica is just what the name implies:
> Beatles songs, done Metallica style. Both the lyrics and the music are
> almalgams of Metallica and Beatles tunes, with titles such as "Blackened the
> USSR." As such, there's no way we can release and sell the music without
> paying huge publishing costs, so we're releasing everything for free through
> our website, distributing it through BitTorrent, encouraging people to set up
> mirrors and share the tracks on p2p networks. We rely on donations and
> T-shirt purchases to cover our costs. There may also be a tour.
>
> The band's lawyer knows nothing about Creative Commons, and doesn't even seem
> interested in learning about it. The philosophy behind CC fits perfectly with
> the Beatallica idea: share and share alike, as long as it's not financially
> exploitative (ie. don't sell copies of our CD's to the unsuspecting who don't
> know that it's freely available on the internet). But I have a few questions
> before we scrap our (C) and replace it with a (CC):
>
> - Can we legally do this, considering that the material Beatallica uses is
> copyrighted? There are no samples (except for a little one in "Leper
> Madonna"...); the music is performed, but the melodic and lyrical references
> are pretty obvious.
IANAL
Grey Tuesday shows some differences between the sound recording and
the composition/sheet music.
http://www.eff.org/IP/grey_tuesday.php
apparently, copyright to the sheet music for most Beetle's songs
is owned by Michael Jackson and Sony.
You can use a Cumpulsory License to do a "cover" of the song.
http://www.megalaw.com/top/copyright/17usc115.php
Your lawyer should know this bit.
as far as "style", I don't think metallica can copyright
their "style". If you start playing riffs from their songs,
then you'll have a problem.
a compulsory license does not allow you to
relicense your "cover" under CC-SA or something similar.
You would need Michael Jackson/Sony's permission for that.
> - How binding is the license, really? Would it stand up in a court of law,
> if we had to go that route? Has a CC license been "field-tested" as it
> were?
I'm not sure I get what you mean by "binding"?
It's as binding as "All Rights Reserved" is,
with all the advantages and disadvantages that
come with that.
I don't think any CC license has undergone a
major lawsuit that proves it's "field tested"
The GNU-GPL has withstood 20 years of pressures,
but the SCO lawsuit that start only last year has
a lot of people running around like Chicken Little
screaming that the open source world is going to end.
But I think they're overreacting.
>
> Thanks!
>
> D^2
> Webmaster of Puppets
>
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>
--
Draft the Gift Domain:
Put Free/Libre/Open/Public licensing
concepts directly into Copyright Law.
http://www.greglondon.com/dtgd/html/draftingthegiftdomain.html
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