Brian
I know this has come up a few times, but I've never seen a problem with it. No one is making money off this. However I am not a lawyer.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I've been down this road from the web end before and it can get very ugly in some cases.

It doesn't really matter if you make money or not. I'm talking physical money. There's also the fact that it can construed as enticement to "visit" a site and then that becomes advertising. Advertising can generate awareness, which can generate money and that's how it looks in legal terms. SG101 does accept donations. That's money.

The fact is that someone else owns the copyright to the music and the site is essentially streaming it without a license or permission to do so. The cover tune artist can't give you permission to stream a copyrighted song, unless they have permission from the copyright holder or are paying a performance license of some type (streaming).

All it takes is for someone to complain to the right lawyer, a copyright holder to take action or just a random chance hit from an artist who sees some lost revenue and you've got the beginnings of a can of worms.

This isn't to say that no one does it. Lots of people do. Some get away with it until they become popular enough to get into the radar of BMI, or ASCAP...and then, regardless of your ultimate goodwill goal, things will get "interesting"...

Just my $.02 from having been there.

Mel

There must be hundreds of thousands of covers on archive.org though.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

An idea perhaps for the future: Over at the Rickenbacker site we do a comp yearly of users playing Ricks. The tunes must be originals..no covers. One person goes the extra yard and burns all the tracks onto a cd and creates artwork for the project. The cd is then sold to those on the forum who want a copy for about $12 shipped.

www.myspace.com/northofmalibu

www.northofmalibu.com

BTW, here are the stats for previous compilations as per archive.org:

2005 - Downloaded 42,912 times
2006 - Downloaded 20,673 times
2007 - Downloaded 7,488 times

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

AND HERE IT IS:

http://www.archive.org/details/SurfGuitar101.com_2008_MP3_Compilation

I don't see all of the songs in the little streaming player thingy yet, but I think that is just a matter of time. It takes archive.org a while to digest and convert all the files.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Jagshark
Ok I think that the reality would be that if anyone was going to take action because of a cover song they would issue a "Cease and Desist" letter, which would basically require you to take the cover down. And that would most likely be the end of it.

I would have thought/hoped so too. Unfortunately a $235,000 bill said that wasn't the case. The lawyers put value in how many times it's downloaded or shared. When you start to add all those up, it can turn into some serious coin.

Fortunately, through a good lawyer it ended up costing only around 10K. Much better than what it started at.

I don't profess to know how YouTube gets away with it, but they might pay a license already so you can put pretty much anything on there and it would be covered. That's one way around it.

That's the only reason I mentioned it. Ignorance is not an excuse, so I was told in no uncertain terms.

Mel

That Coffin Daggers track kills! I really love the SG101 Theme Song and the Deadbeats track too.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Mel

Jagshark
Ok I think that the reality would be that if anyone was going to take action because of a cover song they would issue a "Cease and Desist" letter, which would basically require you to take the cover down. And that would most likely be the end of it.

I would have thought/hoped so too. Unfortunately a $235,000 bill said that wasn't the case. The lawyers put value in how many times it's downloaded or shared. When you start to add all those up, it can turn into some serious coin.

Fortunately, through a good lawyer it ended up costing only around 10K. Much better than what it started at.

I don't profess to know how YouTube gets away with it, but they might pay a license already so you can put pretty much anything on there and it would be covered. That's one way around it.

That's the only reason I mentioned it. Ignorance is not an excuse, so I was told in no uncertain terms.

That is really unfortunate ... and costly! Ouch. Well I can say that Youtube doesn't really get away with it, they've been sued by Viacom and also Prince due to copyright violations. Youtube, owned by Google, basically ignored every copyright law out there in the name of building their name & technology. Viacom realized that their business was threatened by their content being freely available on youtube & sued. Well anyway, I do see both sides of the coin ~~ the lesson is that if you truly want to cover a song & put it out there for the public get a license from the Harry Fox Agency & pay your fee like the big boys do and then you'll never really have to worry about a big lawsuit.

(defunct) Thee Jaguar Sharks

Plus! Other stuff not surf: https://soundcloud.com/jamesmileshq
Enjoy every minute

sorry.

(defunct) Thee Jaguar Sharks

Plus! Other stuff not surf: https://soundcloud.com/jamesmileshq
Enjoy every minute

i think we should schedule two or three listening sessions over the next week or two. are ther any days or times people would be interested?

...maybe a Thursday evening and a Sunday morning?