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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.'"
Wasn't it the major labels that implored us to think of the artists?
Yeah.
So this isn't a story about MySpace. They have been notified of a copyright conflict, so they don't allow distribution of the song. The real story is that labels claim copyrights they don't have, for commercial gain, and are not paying $150000 per song.
There are people who still use MySpace?
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Stop. Using. MySpace.
Find someone who understands what you're about, and use their service instead. If your business depends entirely on you having a presence on MySpace, you're doing something wrong. Especially now that this may (has?) cost you attorney's fees to sort it out.
This is yet another example of Corporations having more freedoms and rights, than people do. People can vote, but corporations can lobby. People go to jail when they break the law, corporations maybe pay a fine at most -- some in fact, seem to get money from the government for breaking the law.
I urge everyone in the United Corp.. uh States of America, to incorporate themselves so that they finally have rights.
Remember that faxed letterhead carries more weight than actual legal precidence....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
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!
If people had been able to stream this over the internet, he could easily have lined up dozens of concerts paying tens of thousands of dollars each, all because Warner Brothers fradulently claimed copyright to his work.
Throw in some pointless punitive damages, and that ought to net him a good 6 million dollars, right? I mean if it works for the RIAA...
This comment is written by gnick and is therefore copyrighted. Since it was written at work and it took me approximately 1.5 hours to write/edit/Preview/Submit and I make approximately 1 bazillion dollars an hour, this comment is worth $1.5 bazillion (US).
At my incredibly modest royalty fees, replicating this comment (e.g. downloading, printing, etc) costs only $5. If you've read this comment, please contact me for PayPal information to submit your payment.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
This sounds like Warner needs to be sued. Big money lawsuit!
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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...
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"
Which, unlike illegal copying and sharing, actually is copyright theft.
Also, in the US you do not have to register it to own the copyright. Placing a copyright notice on the work is sufficient.
You don't even need the notice; every bloody thing you write is copyrighted unless explicitly released into the public domain. That's one of the many screwed-up things about US copyright law; you can have copyrighted material which gives you no indication as to who owns the copyright, let alone how to contact them. If you want to sue for damages, though, then registration will get you a better payoff; and registration serves as proof of ownership, in case there is a dispute over who actually wrote a particular song.
Corporate apologists consider justice to be something like groceries, i.e. something you send someone out to purchase when you need it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You can't break the law to make money, yet. But if you, say, ship your manufacturing off to a country that where there are no environmental regulations, then you are doing right by your shareholders. If many companies start doing this, and seeing a profit, then shareholders can successfully sue companies that don't, or replace the boards.
Many people who would never think to throw trash in their neighbor's yard will, essentially, hire someone to throw trash in their neighbor's yard, and they will sleep like babies at night, believing they are good people.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton