The Glade 4.0

So I am uploading, to YouTube, some performances by a choir I'm in. I am getting the following message...

Your video may include the following copyrighted content:
"Rheinberger: Cantus Missae (Mass in E-Flat) Op. 109", musical composition administered by:
One or more music publishing rights collecting societies

It doesn't say a particular performance of it, or give any additional details. That is the piece we are performing, by 19th century composer Josef Rheinberger.

What are the rules regarding public performances of copyrighted works? And can a piece by a 19th century composer really still be copyrighted? Are performances considered fair use anyway?

Because it's your performance, you should have rights to post it. If a recording company any files a complaint, your rights no longer matter to YouTube.

Material from the 19th century surely can be copyrighted. If someone records it and puts it on an album, the album itself becomes copyrighted work. (This is Disney's entire business model). Because the material exists in the public domain, you would probably win any resulting lawsuits, but only if you went to court.

Copyright holders have been crusading against fair use since before any of us were born. Panic and fear over the Internet gave them the support they needed at the turn of the century, and they were able to deal a rather crippling blow to fair use within the legal code. It still exists, but the default ground state is to assume infringement is happening and respond accordingly.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Hmm. To play devil's advocate: performances themselves hold copyright beyond the material being performed. If I play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on piano for a crowd, I hold the copyright on *that performance*. Nobody can hold the copyright on Moonlight Sonata itself, but my performance of it most certainly can. Someone else can perform it, and they hold the copyright on that performance. The song itself is centuries-lapsed, but individual renditions of it are still copyrighted.

Similarly, with Disney, the story of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is no longer in copyright. However, Disney's art and music in connection with the movie most certainly is copyrighted.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

That's rather what I was saying in paragraph 2.

Someone else performed this piece, and recorded it on an album. Because of that, they can lodge a DMCA complaint about Aegnor posting copyrighted material. Aegnor would win in court, but that would require that he have himself defended in court. The default assumption is that Aegnor is infringing upon copyrighted material, so if a copyright complaint is lodged, the video will be taken down.

Is someone going to file a copyright complaint? Probably not. That would require that the holder of the copyrighted performance find out about Aegnor's performance and decide to file a DMCA complaint. For classical music, the chances of that happening are very slim.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

No one is going to file complaints, let alone lawsuits because there is no applicable copyright claim here.

I don't know exactly when Rheinberger first published this piece, but since he died in 1901, it's safe to say that it was prior to 1923. Even if the work ever was properly copyrighted in the first place (it might not have been), the copyright would have expired 75 years after its initial publication. In the case of anything that Rheinberger ever produced, this is no later than 1976.

In other words, Rheinberger's compositions are unambiguously public domain and you do not need anyone's permissions to perform it, whether in public or private. Performances by others of the same piece are irrelevant. The only applicable copyright is for your performance. Assuming you didn't all explicitly assign copyright of the performance to someone else, you collective own the copyright for your performance. Since you (as an individual) aren't the sole copyright holder, you need the permission of the rest of the choir to publish it on YouTube. That's it. You don't need anyone else's permission.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Youtube doesn't enforce anything unless there's actually a complaint. What you saw was an automated message just because it recognized the audio from your file.

If you are working from copies of the original sheet music then you would be in the clear. If you are working from a later published arrangement, you could be violating the copyright, depending on the date of publication.

Yeah, it is all original sheet music. I'm getting the message on the Rheinberger and a couple Mendelssohn pieces. I definitely get that there would be a copyright issue if I were trying to upload someone else's performance, but this is our own (and yes, I have the authority to upload our choir performances).

Like I said, Youtube is literally just scanning the audio output of your file and recognizing what it is. It has no idea whether this is your performance or the original. Nothing should happen to it unless someone actually reports it and claims the copyright.

The problem is, youtube doesn't care about your rights. They only care about not getting sued by large record companies and other rights holders.

They have shut down entire youtube channels belonging people who had nothing but 'personal performances' (covers) of copyrighted songs.

And this was not just their scanning software finding a similar structure. This was the record companies and lawyers filing complaints on behalf of the artists.

A guy named Kent Carlevi had some amazing guitar solo covers of some zz-top, van halen, and even a couple of dire straits songs. It was just him playing over a backing track with a small camera on the headstock pointing down the strings so you could see both hands. It was great stuff..

Here is the link to his channel, complete with the 'This guy is a criminal,don't be like him!' message
http://www.youtube.com/user/kentcarlevi

Here is his 'Ain't talkin' 'bout Love' cover (reposted by a fan)


His channel got shut down (presumably) because ZZ-Top and Van Halen's current representation sent him a nasty letter threatening to sue. I don't know if he deleted his channel intentionally, or if youtube took it down, but it's long gone... The irony is, most of his videos have been re-posted by others, and so far, none have received take-down notices.

Same thing happened to a guy who went by 'fretkillr' on youtube. He had a really popular guitar oriented channel. He had a couple hundred videos of acoustic guitar renditions of a lot of popular songs (mostly classics and folk songs). No one really knows the full story, but he complained in his last few postings that he'd been getting notices from youtube. He never said which songs though. Eventually he stopped posting, and then his channel disappeared altogether.

Here is his channel, with the same 'you're a criminal' message...
http://www.youtube.com/user/fretkillr

In his case, not only did quite a few poeple re-post his videos, but someone made a channel called "Fretkillr Lives" and put quite a few of his videos on it. They are still there more than a year later.

Here is one of my favorite videos of his (reposted by someone)


I should note that neither one of these people were in the youtube partner program, or profiting from their channels in any way. In Fretkillr's case, he went way out of his way to stay anonymous. The theory on Fretkillr's channel is that it was John Denver's rights holders, who are known to aggressively 'defend' his property who had him shut down. Several other channels have had to remove John Denver covers because of this...

Don Henley is also known to actively pursue having his music taken down from youtube.

Every time I've ever considered recording myself playing and posting it online somewhere, I think about these situations, and then, just don't bother...

Bingo.

You are guilty until proven innocent in a court of law. Your rights do not matter unless you have legal representation.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

It's freaking annoying. I uploaded 14 songs, and had to dispute 8 copyright violation indications.

I'm guessing those were just from the automated system.

Assuming the rights holders were also notified, you may be in for a bigger fight down the road, depending on how aggressively they 'defend'.

Yeah, it's all automated stuff. The only two I'm concerned about is a Whitacre piece that is about 10 years old, and one that is about a 50 year old Casals piece. The others are all well over 100 years old. I don't think Victoria's O Vos Omnes has been under copyright for the last 450 years.

I just happened to stumble on this article on ARS today..

It's a long read, so I won't quote the text (wouldn't want a takedown notice served on the Glade or anything)...

What a freaking disaster. I feel dirty for having read that entire article. The real crime there is the fact that the case wasn't dismissed with extreme prejudice on day one. Five years? c'mon man...



After five years, "dancing baby" YouTube takedown lawsuit nears a climax

This reminds me of why I respect Motley Crue. They aren't my favorite band (by a long shot), but back when the Metallica/Napster thing was going on (which I was one of the folks who got a cease and desist email), they came out (NSFW, language) and pretty much said how lame it was and that fans were more than allowed to download and share their stuff.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

And also a ruthlessly capitalistic to plug what was, at the time, a new album.

I actually bought that album, too. I haven't bought any Metallica albums or gone to see any of their shows since the Napster debacle.

Don't sue your fans is a working business model!

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.