Kong in Concert - Donkey Kong Country Arrangements

Digital Coma writes "Kong in Concert, a project directed by myself and coordinated by familiar artists of the unofficial game music arrangement community, has been released at http://dkcproject.ocremix.org and spotlighted at OverClocked ReMix. Its purpose is to pay respects to the excellent Donkey Kong Country SNES soundtrack and honor its composers with 22 rearrangements (or ReMixes) of every song from the game in high quality MP3 and OGG. We also have a BitTorrent distribution of the album's whole WAV compilation. If you like the idea of free, non-commercial videogame remixes, check us out."

Comments

One Question:

[goldspider]

Did you have to pay any kind of lisencing fees to Nintendo? If so, how much did that cost?

Quite Cool..

[GolgOSatsumA]

Need some clarification, though; does this mean my band can do a cool cover version of the theme without worry?

Free?

[ideatrack]

I know this is probably a very simple question, but if you're taking someone else's work and remixing it, doesn't that mean you have some obligation to the original composer? What's to prevent Nintendo from sending in the lawyers to stop this?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a bad idea or anything, (it's not my thing) but just wanted some clarification...

Re:Free?

[SCHecklerX]

Interesting, I just read of something similar happening in the demoscene yesterday when I decided to rebuild my old mod collection. Apparently there was some guy who was performing purple motion's (future crew) old stuff, and selling it as his own.

More about it here: http://www.modarchive.com/rippers.shtml

Licensing issues

[davidwr]

I hate to be a wet blanket, and a redundant one at that, but unfortunately, this is a derivative work and as such the original owners can demand royalties.

The USA has a concept called "mandatory licensing" when it comes to music. This means for some uses, such as using clips from many pieces in a compilation work or playing a song on the air, the owners cannot STOP you outright. However, they can demand payment.

There was a case in the '40s or '50s or maybe early '60s where an artist took clips from a bunch of other songs and made a compilation work. The rights-holders of the original works sued to block it. The new work's artist claimed free speech and claimed Congress could not create a copyright law that would infringe his right to be creative. The US Supreme Court basically said no, Congress could not create a law to STOP him from being creative, but that the original artists were entitled to compensation.

Source: Some radio program in the last year or two. I think I heard it on a public radio station but don't quote me on that.

The bottom line:
Assuming this is still the law, Nintendo may come after you, but if you've got the money to pay them off you can make them go away and keep distributing your creative work.
Nintendo may be able to prevent you from distributing in or to certain other countries, I don't know the law worldwide.