Podcasting Music: The legal implications - 0 views
-
Musical works. Performance rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI and SESAC) handle copyright licenses for the performance of musical works, including their performance in a podcast. Separate licenses are necessary from each performance rights organization because each company represents different publishers of composers' musical works. Sound recordings. Copyright licenses for the playing (or "performance") of sound recordings historically have been handled directly with the owners of the works, usually record companies. (Over-the-air broadcasters are not required to obtain copyright licenses for playing sound recordings. They must, however, hold licenses for playing the underlying musical works.)
-
Reproduction. By contrast to webcasting, a podcast may include a reproduction of a sound recording. Podcasting is an interactive activity. It results in the transmission of a sound recording which is fixed and is accessible on demand by the user. The reproduction requires clearances or licenses - for the sound recording, and for the musical work. Although the performance rights societies offer licenses to cover the musical works in a podcast, no uniform or industry-wide licensing scheme has developed yet to cover the sound recording.
-
This leaves the podcaster with three choices: to attempt to obtain licenses from the record companies; to limit podcasts to sound recordings not subject to copyright protection (generally, U.S. recordings pressed before February 15, 1972 [careful: a CD reissue of a pre-1972 recording is a new, protected, sound recording]); or to eliminate sound recordings altogether from podcasts.
-
Copyright law protects musical and spoken compositions, or "works"; the performance of a work preserved in a sound recording; and the sound recording itself. Podcasting implicates these in three ways: the performance of a work; the playing of a sound recording of a performance; and the reproduction of a sound recording by incorporating it into a podcast. The law is well-settled only as to the first of these.