Important! BOC Lyric Copyrights and the WWW, FTP

[John A Swartz]

I have a few more comments on this copyright stuff.  Of course, it is
all IMHO, and should not be construed as gospel, law, or even fact.
Standard disclaimer applies, and your mileage may vary.

Alun had some good points to make, so I want to comment on them:

>Lyrics archives will almost always be in breach of copyright unless
the copyright owner's permission has been obtained. But it's not
a hanging offence. The worst that is likely to happen to you is that
you will have to take the lyrics off. If the copyright owner asked you
to do so you would be a bit silly not to.


O.K., so as far as I know, no copyright owners have asked that BOC lyrics
and/or tabs be removed from any internet sites.  Meaning no disrespect to
Bolle (who I would consider a friend of mine, even though I've never met
him face to face), he does not represent the copyright owners of any of
BOC's material.  Unless there is some chance that Bolle and the fanclub
could somehow be held liable for the independent actions of others, I
don't think that people should start trying to delete archived files.
But of course that is not my call.  As for any files that I may have on
my personal computer (which are not accessible to the net), they are
staying put, and I will do with them as I (within my own moral code) see
fit.


>I don't think that the fact that you had transcribed the lyrics yourself,
possibly inaccurately, would be a defence.

Well, where does one draw the line?  If I write down one line of a lyric,
is this an offense, or only if I write the lyrics to the whole song down?
If I tell someone what the lyric is (either in whole or in part), have
I committed an offense?  If this person I told then goes and writes down
what I told them (the end result now being the same as if I had written
it down and copied it for them) now be an offense?  Again, this is all
IMHO, but it starts to seem very silly indeed to me.


>- you might like to consider what the copyright owner might think if he/she/
  it knew what you were doing,


Well, now this brings up an interesting point.  One of my arguments for
keeping BOC lyrics, tabs, and whatever available on the net is that this
is being done, at least in part, to *promote* the band.  I know from doing
the FAQ that there are many people who are "rediscovering" BOC based on
alot of the net activity associated with the band (I'm not trying to take
all the credit BTW, there are many web sites, on-line chats, the archives,
this list, etc. that are being discovered by old BOC fans), which in turn
in some sense might encourage those people to go out and buy more BOC
material -- those of you on this list:  how many of you have had a
re-kindled interest in BOC since joining BOC-L?  Have you bought a BOC
tape or CD since then, and would you have bought it had you not been on
BOC-L?  See, I think all of this "information sharing" is a two-way
street.  Hey, maybe BOC-L should claim "advertising fees" for sales of
*Workshop of the Telescopes*! ;-)

Now, the only thing, of course, is that I don't believe the *band* actually
owns the rights to their songs (a sad dilemma for many artists that are
forced to relinquish control of their artistic output to people who don't
have their best interests in mind).  So my guess is that Buck or Bloom
would never say "Hey, you've got to remove those lyric files, or pay us
for having them there."

One more thought - does any of this matter if the holder of the copyright
does not offer an alternative way to obtain such lyrics (by putting out
a lyric or songbook of their own)?  I would suppose not, but if the
copyright holder isn't looking to make a profit on this stuff, why do
they want the copyright in the first place?  Just to squeeze some money
out of guys like Bolle when the fanclub wants to put out the lyric book,
and they have to go begging with dollars in hand to get said permission?


Sometimes common sense and the law seem mutually exclusive . . .

John

PS:  What would our world have been like if so many things we take for
granted today were somehow "copyrighted"?  What if the ability to make
fire had been copyrighted?  How about something stupid, like the first
person who stuck his hand in his armpit and made a fart sound?  Bart
Simpson should be paying him royalties!