Stupid Ass Copyright Laws
Sunday, August 07, 2005
This is bugging me. I was reading over CNET's terms and conditions for submitting songs - not that I'm planning to do that yet, but I was curious. And they say you can't use any samples of copyrighted 3rd party sound recordings. I've been wondering about the legality of samples for some time now. Do you really have to get permission for every damn sample that you use? No matter how short? That's so stupid. I mean, if I use a 1 second sound byte from a 3 hour movie, I've gotta go through all the Hollywood red tape to get permission for that? It's not like I'm reproducing the entire movie. To be safe, I think in the future I won't use any samples off television. Thankfully, anything the government records is automatically in the public domain. So I'll probably just use them instead.
I've re-recorded the songs so they don't have the TV samples any more. I know, it sucks. But I don't want some nasty cease and desist letter. Don't fear, though, I'm going to get some new clips right now. Here I come, www.whitehouse.gov!
UPDATE: Okay, I did a little research and determined that my use of samples falls well within the parameters for what is called "Fair Use." So I'm going to go ahead and put the samples back - a little later. There are a number of criteria to determine fair use, and our song meets all of them. Good to know! If you're composing music with samples and want to know more about fair use, see Stanford's Web site. Unfortunately, it looks like CNET doesn't care about fair use, so any songs submitted to them will have to be sample-free, I think.
UPDATE: Okay, I did a little research and determined that my use of samples falls well within the parameters for what is called "Fair Use." So I'm going to go ahead and put the samples back - a little later. There are a number of criteria to determine fair use, and our song meets all of them. Good to know! If you're composing music with samples and want to know more about fair use, see Stanford's Web site. Unfortunately, it looks like CNET doesn't care about fair use, so any songs submitted to them will have to be sample-free, I think.
