Music Copyright and Intimidation
By Larry Smith
In Digest 961206 Matthew Caulfield wrote:
> the first fact to remember is that any tune written before January 1,
> 1921, is currently and unequivocally in the public domain.
This is legally correct, but I'd like to note here that the Digital Tradition Folk Song [a web site which offered music and lyrics] recently closed its virtual doors because of lawsuits threatened against their Internet Service Provider (ISP) for "copyright violations" of folk tunes hundreds of years old.
It is not at all unusual for a company with a legal staff to claim copyright on something and use such tactics to suppress legitimate public domain works, and it's a very effective tactic, especially with timid ISP's who have no stake in the matter one way or another.
They are trying to find another ISP with more of a spine, but their new system wasn't up when I tried it. The old url is still there, although it no longer serves any lyrics.
The old url was http://web2.xerox.com/digitrad
The new url will be http://www.deltablues.com/dbsearch.html
Beware of people using such scurrilous tactics. Under U.S. law, you are responsible for _proving_ that a work _is_ in the public domain. If you are sued for such, then _you_ will be responsible for legal and lawyer fees for the defense, and will not be reimbursed even if you win.
If you do win and want your thousands of dollars back, you need to sue your sue-er, again putting your money up front, and prove in court that they acted in bad faith and _knew_ the work was public domain to begin with, a nearly impossible task. This is one of the ways in which our legal system is very severely broken.
Larry Smith
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(Message sent Mon 9 Dec 1996, 17:29:45 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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