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Artist Not Allowed To Stream His Own Music
the_arrow writes "Scottish artist Edwyn Collins wanted to stream one of his own songs on MySpace, but it seems that copyright misunderstandings make him unable to do so. According to the article, 'Management for the former Orange Juice frontman have been unable to convince the website that they own the rights to A Girl Like You, despite the fact that they, er, do.' Collins said, 'I found a nice lawyer guy at Warners, very apologetic, promised to get it sorted, but all these months later it isn't.' His wife added, 'MySpace are not equipped to deal with the notion that anyone other than a major [label] can claim a copyright.'"
In the US this would be a non-issue; here one can register a copyright with the Library of Congress for a very small fee, and your certificate is proof you hold copyright.
Is there anything like that in Britain? TFA doesn't say if the song's copyright is registered, or even if it can be in Britain.
Free Martian Whores!
For better or worse (mostly worse); It's rare to find a recording artist or band without a myspace page.
You must not have RTFA;
Once again this shows the REAL reason the majors don't want P2P, even though it has been shown to increase sales -- it also increases indies' sales. Opposition to P2P is part of the majors' war against the indies.
Does Britain have a law that would allow him to sue Warner? I would think they must.
Free Martian Whores!
MySpace didn't just assume that someone else owned the copyright. In this case, it seems Warner Music Group was trying to claim they owned it, when they didn't. Perhaps at some point, Warner sold his CDs, while he retained copyright, or something.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So true, so true.
That, and the competence of the developers there has to be some of the worst on the web. Why should the competence of any of their other divisions be any better?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Many years ago I had a myspace profile entirely removed for uploading one song that I created using 'cat [textfile] > /dev/audio'. Yea. Apparently the title I decided to give it was too close to a song that they had listed in their database as being copyrighted or something so they killed my entire profile immediately. I sent a couple emails to the address they had given to contact in such cases and I never got a response. I'm amazed he even managed to get in contact with anybody...
When I want to check out a band, I search Purevolume before resorting to Myspace.
The Blog post said:
A Girl Like You is available FOR SALE all over the internet. Not by Edwyn, by all sorts of respectable major labels whose licence to sell it ran out years ago and who do not account to him.
So the music label is basically stealing Edwins work and not paying him.
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
No, the flaw here is you didn't reading the article before posting.
Erm, while it is usually the case that the artist(s) will sell the rights to the label to get a record deal, if you had read the summary even, you would have seen that Mr. Collins does in fact own the rights, and the label does not. Warner Music is illegitimately claiming copyright, and MySpace is taking their word over the actual owner's.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
"MySpace are not equipped to deal with the notion that anyone other than a major [label] can claim a copyright"
Do you think that's by accident? The major labels have gone out of their way in the past 10 years to convince the governments and public that they are the sole gatekeeper for music. It's to their benefit to create that thought so that passing laws to codify their position and become the sole gatekeeper for music actually seem reasonable.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
It is most definitely about MySpace. It doesn't matter what Warner claims (even if it was illegal and they could be sued for theft), MySpace has the duty to investigate the claim of copyright. It's not even that hard! Go to the U. S. Copyright Office Search Page and type in "Collins Edwyn" and the sixth link to return is "Girl Like You". If I can find it in 2 minutes, how long should it take MySpace?
I swear, under penalty of perjury consistent with United States Code Title 17, Section 512, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
(taken from a boilerplate DMCA takedown notice)
Considering that MySpace purports to be a musician's site (or used to), and it seems to be the leader in it's niche, perhaps he thinks that it would benefit others if they could be convinced to remove their head from their ass.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
That happens all the time. The band Streetlight Manifesto spend their own money making their first official video, there label forced them to remove the video saying it was a copyright infringement. The band had no rights to use their own music for any purpose.
That implies that "the little guy" is capable of winning against "the big guy". Which as we all well know is false. Warner would keep it in the courts until either an out-of-court settlement, or until "the little guy" is bankrupt.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
No, MySpace originally started out as a way for bands to get their stuff out there, and maintain contacts lists easily. It is why I signed up for it about 4 years ago. Facebook started out as a way for high school and college friends to find each other easily. I remember way back I think you even needed a school email to sign up for Facebook.
"But this one goes to 11!"
The Majors are required by law to care only about shareholder profits. Any publicly traded corporation can be sued if they put anything else but the bottom line first. They have a fiduciary responsibility to make money for their shareholders. If they use shareholder money to promote art, make music, and support artists without making money for said shareholders, they are breaching that fiduciary responsibility.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Wow. You can't even read the quote? Warners has admitted that they incorrectly asserted copyright on the song and in fact don't own the copyright. This guy has never worked with a major label, does in fact own all his copyrights, and has only licensed the song for time-limited, non exclusive publishing in the past.
Seems to me that if you don't like MySpace, you can always just dump it, and tell everybody why.
MySpace is huge. It's not like if he just set up his own webserver it'd be a seamless transition for him.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Do you realize that this link you provided is actually showing that Island Music Limited registered a copyright for a recording of this song in 1995? The only Island Music Limited that I can find in a quick search of the net is part of Universal Music Group. So If MySpace tried this search it would have come to the same conclusion that it already did.
The Blog post was written by his Manager (and Wife) so it's safe to say she knew what she was talking about.
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Facebook started out as a way for high school and college friends to find each other easily. I remember way back I think you even needed a school email to sign up for Facebook.
I believe Facebook was originally only for college students. It was a bit of a big deal when they started adding high schools as well (that was before it opened to the general public, of course). Originally, yes, you did need a .edu email address from a college that Facebook had added to their system. I even still have my email/password saved in Firefox from when you still accessed http://schoolname.facebook.com/
Like if I showed up at your house, said I owned the place, and everyone simply agreed with me and kicked you out of your home. What?!? That could never really happen! Oh wait... it could.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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God is imaginary
>The real question is why WB doesn't owe him several billion dollars for piracy.
They haven't distributed his work.
Yes they have. Allow me to quote because you're obviously too busy to RTFA (but not too busy to render an opinion, obviously):
While Collins has worked to make A Girl Like You freely available to his fans, [his wife/manager] alleges that the same track is sold illegally "all over the internet". "Not by Edwyn, [but] by all sorts of respectable major labels whose licence to sell it ran out years ago and who do not account to him."
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I don't know why I'm bothering to reply, particularly so late in the discussion, but here goes...
Of course he still actually retains the rights, and of course the rights are being infringed.
However, what it boils down to is what fucking good is having the rights to your own works if a big corporation is blocking your ability to distribute said works? At that point, it's like you don't have the rights to your works at all (hence why I said He effectively has no rights).
~jaraxle