Quote:
Originally posted by Jerry Glenn Hartwig:
Lo
So you're advising if they played the song during the convention they violated a copyright? Or did they do more than that?
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I'm not "advising" anything - all I did was find an legal article regarding the unauthorized use of copyrighted music which is not in the public domain.
The article seems to suggest that permission should be sought before using a song or music which belongs to someone else. It also seems to suggest that if the original rights holder protests the unauthorized use that they can be entitled to financial remuneration.
Every so often a thread pops up here with someone complaining that they've found a poem which they had written has suddenly appeared on someone's blog or in some e-zine somewhere without their permission or knowledge. Generally they are angry about it - and rightfully so, if you ask me.
The only recourse is to ask the offending site to remove it - or to notify the owners of the site and get them to remove it if the actual website belongs to a bigger holder.
I believe when you take something which is not yours and use it for your own purposes it's called "theft." With material objects, that's illegal - and punishable. With other, less tangible matters it seems to be a grayer area.
So, we've established that most of us would be irritated if we found out one of our poems had been taken without our knowledge or consent but that our recourses are small. Removal is about all we can hope for. There's not much monetary value to a poem - it's not like stealing a bicycle which you can say cost X amount of dollars and therefore you are entitled to X amount of dollars to compensate you for your loss. Songs are probably much the same. But it belonged to you just like that bicycle was yours, and you're just as angry that it was stolen.
Now say that your poem was "borrowed" by an ezine like "The New Formalist" or some other magazine whose political/religious views or whose editor's views are utter anathema to you. You'd be even angrier, I'm sure. A minor irritation would become a major one. Not only has your poem been lifted, it's being used to promote a cause or a belief which is not only not yours but is in direct conflict with yours. Not only have they taken your poem without persmission, they're using it to
sell their product. You have, unwittingly and unwillingly, become a spokesperson for an idea you abhor.
From The Heart Sister's response, I'm pretty comfortably assuming that's pretty much how they feel.
Do they have actual
legal recourse? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. It seems that if you request someone NOT use your product to promote their product and they refuse, then you SHOULD have legal recourse. A "borrower" can claim ignorance the first time but once they've been warned, I imagine that if they do not comply they can be held liable.
I guess we'll have to wait and see if the campaign uses the song again. They've not reused the Mellencamp or the Jackson Browne so I am assuming they are content to do wrong until called out on it and then move on.
It does seem a little strange, if not deliberate, that they would continue to "borrow" songs without asking the authors or musicians, though. Obviously they've been warned before. Which makes it appear just as obvious that they don't care.
To me, it's simple. If they don't mind taking something which belongs to someone else, even when they know full well it's wrong because they've been
told it's wrong, and they continue to do the same thing to other people, then they surely aren't going to care about taking something which belongs to me, either.
My world is pretty basic. If you'll do it to a someone, knowing full well that it's going to be noticed and it's going to be objected to, you'll certainly not hesitate to do it to a no one.
Had they done it once in ignorance I'd be fine with it. It's an "opps" and "opps" are forgivable. To repeat it a third and fourth time on a national stage {with a total of 62 million people watching) is no longer an "opps" it's a "ha ha" and I really don't need a president who's laughing at what he can get away with.
Lo
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