RE: music and licenses

[Brandon Butler <brandon@xxxxxxx>]

One more bit of general advice: don't always believe people who sell you
blanket licenses when they tell you what their license covers. These guys
almost always over-promise. Instances of copyfraud - people claiming to have
or to sell rights they don't actually have - are widespread. In a recent
proceeding at the Copyright Office regarding pre-1972 sound recordings, which
are not covered by federal copyright law, a respected licensing agency
admitted that it accepts royalty payments for songs it does not administer. It
is not unlikely that you are "covered" for all of those uses with respect to
the songwriters, but that leaves the rights of the owners of the performance
still up in the air. I'm not very familiar with the intricacies of this arcane
part of the copyright statute, but I'd suggest taking the advice of folks on
this list into account as well as the promises of the licensors you deal
with!

And I'm glad to hear spirited defenses of fair use on this list. I'm not as
convinced as John Mitchell that libraries can't contract away their fair use
rights, but at least where licenses are silent, fair use remains a very live
option. ARL is releasing its Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic
and Research Libraries tomorrow, and that should have some helpful info for
you about what librarians think of the scope of fair use in this kind of
situation. I'll send out a more detailed alert to this list when we go live.

Best,
B
Brandon Butler | Director of Public Policy Initiatives | Association of
Research Libraries | brandon@xxxxxxx | http://policynotes.arl.org | @ARLpolicy
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