HW: .com

[M Holmes]

Guido N. Vacano writes:

> This all reminds me of when Mike Holmes was compelled to stop
> publishing his Codex, because of similar legal nonsense.

I'll agree that the first message send to me from Griffin was legalistic
and heavy handed.  I would point out however that Rob did quickly accept
that he was wrong on the Codex issue, and had been misled by my never
having bothered to post a date or copyright claim on it.  (Rob did a
kind of mini-codex in one of the books he released with the Griffin
CD's). On the lyrics issue I agreed to back down and cease email
distribution due to Rob's claim that having the lyrics as part of the
packaging was a big selling point for Griffin's material.  I have always
had every respect for what Rob and Griffin were doing and after a quick
exchange of email I'm certain there were no hard feelings.

Of note though: I did later end up chatting about this to a lawyer
friend. He said that where a fan attempts to transcribe lyrics from a
record they've bought, it's legal to publish that transcript as a
private work. It's illegal only to claim that they are in any way an
official version of the song lyrics. I wouldn't want to be the one to
test this in Court, but it does sound reasonable.

> Guido

FoFP