Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Napster Business Model

Author:Jeremy Bowers
Posted:6/27/2000; 6:14:02 AM
Topic:Napster Business Model
Msg #:18145 (In response to 18140)
Prev/Next:18144 / 18146

I believe that copyright applies to the LP - the collection, not the song.

There is indeed a copyright on each performance included in the album, that's the one that RIAA owns lock, stock & barrel and is the one they nailed MP3.com on, for illegal distribution of performances.

The album itself also has a collection copyright, but nobody really cares. Collection copyrights are generally for collections of otherwise public data... this would be your Yellow pages. You can't just copy the Yellow pages with a photocopier and sell it, but you can extract all the data, repackage it, and sell it. The phone company doesn't own the data, just the presentation. In this case, the record company does own the data and doesn't gain anything from the collection copyright.

Not as well known is that the song itself may be copyrighted. For example, two women own the copyright to Happy Birthday. Should you wish to include Happy Birthday in any fashion on your new album, you will need to negotiate rights from these women, no matter what manipulation you do to it. So, each performer that has performed Happy Birthday (and thus gained a performance copyright on that performance) has licensed the rights to perform it at all from those women.

To answer your question: "can I deduct $.99 from the price of Patsy Cline Sings Song of Love because I already have the recording of 'Crazy' from Rolling Stone's Women in Rock?"

Pasty Cline (or her label) own an independent copyright on that performance, so you are getting something new. Both performers have licensed the rights to perform Crazy (unless one of them was the author). The record labels own both performances and can get you for anything except fair use of those performances (limited snippets for editorial comments and that's about it).

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