Copyright permission

[Francisco]

I wanted to add a couple of songs to the Xyliacs jukebox but noticed that you needed copyright permission. I was thinking of adding All About Loving You by Bon Jovi and These Dreams by Heart. Well, I sought out the bands' websites to see if there was a contact us button. But there was nothing there and, for Heart, you have to pay to get in touch with anybody.

It felt a lot easier to get hold of someone in book publishing. Then again, I combined the Internet with traditional ways. For those who are interested:

When my mother bought us a slow-cooker as an anniversary present, I bought a couple of books. Julie is blind so I phoned the publishers of one book (the other book had a very informative website (that was the smaller publisher)) to find out who I needed to contact. For both of them, I e-mailed the contacts and got permission from both.

[Canterrain]

It's a hard thing.

Basically our CDs and music we buy are bought with permission for personal usage. Listening to ourselves, and maybe with family. It's a whole different set of permissions you have to buy in order to play a CD to a large (and therefore public... even if in a quote unqoute private setting') audience. The sorts of permissions radios have to buy, and movies have to obtain to play a piece in the movie and so on.

The internets is exactly that too, a large public audience. So every time you see a youtubes video, or myspace page, that has music ripped straight from a personal CD, in all truth that is being done without permission.

Some artists see it as a good thing. Free advertisement in a way. So you'll find places like myspace where they provide the song (and permission) for you to use on your page. Some don't. And technically it's their right to make that decision with their music, right?

But as for obtaining permission to legally upload music here. There's a fair chance you won't be able to, and even if you did, you'd have to pay an amount of money that seems absorbent. Because the cost is usually built with things like radios and movies in mind.

But whether or not it's legally a problem often seems in question. The main issue seems to be downloads. If you don't let someone download but allow them to get a 'preview' then that seems to be a morale highground that becomes an arguable point. But keep in mind I'm not a lawyer, and it never hurts to err on the side of caution.

[Francisco]

It does give a copyright permission warning when you activate the add music button.

[Barb Jacobs]

Copyright permission on a blog? Really? Wow, I don't think anyone does that. Most musicians see it as a form of advertising, I think but I could be wrong.

Not too up to date on those matters.

~B