New Bogus Copyright Threat: Guitar Lessons by George Ziemann -- July 8, 2007 From NPR -- "Thousands of guitar students lost a valuable resource last week. The most popular guitar teacher on YouTube saw his more than 100 videos yanked from the site. The reason: a music company accused him of copyright infringement for an instructional video on how to play a Rolling Stones song." Personally, I think this is ludicrous and legally unjustifiable. But since I'm NOT a lawyer, lets hear the opinion of the one NPR found: "John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, says most of the songs [being taught] are under copyright. He thinks it's only a matter of time before a licensing company orders YouTube to take them down. "'There's a very strong argument that the re-use of well-known chords in the sequence the instructor played them would be a violation of the copyright,' Palfrey says." This guy is from Harvard? Geez, Louise. They changed that law 100 years ago. First, let's remember that there are basically two types of copyright for recorded music. At left is the "Sound Recording" copyright symbol, which uses the letter "P" to remind you it has something to do with something called "phono" from before you were born. This copyright belongs to the record label (or individual) who made the recording and the performers. In the case of the guitar teachers, they (or an assistant) made their own recording of their own performances, so they own it. The record label had no part in creating the recording, so it has no authority to say much of anything. This would equally apply to anyone doing a "cover" of any song already recorded. This leaves us with the more familiar © symbol which, in the case of songs, is owned by the music publisher and the author of the words and music. If anyone has any legal say over this issue, it would be them. It is also worth noting that the record label is usually also a music publisher. We're talking about the Rolling Stones, which sounds like EMI. Or maybe the Stones themselves. For the sake of humor, let's say it's Keith Richards, who had nothing special to do one afternoon, saw this guy named Justin on YouTube giving a lesson on how to play both chords in "Can't Always Get What You Want" and decided this activity had to be stopped at all costs. Keith turned to Mick Jagger and said, "Mmmumphlgt." "'There's a very strong argument that the re-use of well-known chords in the sequence the instructor played them would be a violation of the copyright,' Palfrey says." Well, yeah, if Justin was claiming that he wrote the song. But he's not. He's just playing it. Before 1907, you couldn't play someone else's music. Like I said, that was 100 years ago. The rules now say that once a tune is published, anyone can make a recording of it. If you produce copies of a copyrighted work (as in your performance of their song), you've gotta send the publisher 9 cents for every copy produced. Without squabbling over any details, like the fact that the freebie lessons aren't the entire song, it's time to add up the real damage. Let's see, 100 songs... one copy of each uploaded to YouTube... $10 ought to cover it, if that's what this is about. But it's not. If that were the real issue, everyone that ever uploads a video of themselves playing a song that they didn't actually write needs to pay their 9 cents per video. This includes The Zimmers doing "My Generation" and Paul Anka singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Beyond that, there may be a reasonable argument that a royalty be paid to publishers and songwriters for each "broadcast" or performance. But there is no established royalty for this situation. "...it's only a matter of time before a licensing company orders YouTube to take them down." If a single musician needs a license agreement to play a song, then all of them do. Every single song on YouTube that is not performed by the songwriter has to come down. Or is it about letting other people know how the song is played? That seems stupid, because the more people who play your song, the better chances of collecting royalties from the sources that actually do exist. I saw a video of David Gilmour's site and the camera tracked his left hand while he played the solo from "Comfortably Numb." Does that count? If I play a song on piano, do I have to make sure my fingers aren't visible? Or how about just give us a list of songwriters who never want anyone to play their songs again? We asked the record labels to do this when they started suing people and we never heard back, except for smart-ass replies. So we stopped listening to ALL their music. They already hassled all the guitar tab sites out of business. If the songwriters and publishers want to play this game at the same time ASCAP is reporting record royalty collections, they deserve what they get.