Do Candidates Have The Right To Conscript Songs For Political Purposes?
[Note: This piece was previously posted on NewMusicBox, a site for composers and fans of contemporary classical and other experimental music, on September 24, 2015.] It’s another presidential election cycle and—in addition to PAC moneymen, countless commercials, polls, trolls, sound bites, and sniping—there’s the new tradition of one candidate or another pissing off some well-known […]
Are Transformative Fair Use Principles Foul To Musicians?
[Note: This is part two of a two-part article that was previously posted on NewMusicBox, a site for composers and fans of contemporary classical and other experimental music, on September 17, 2015.] In my previous post, I sped through the history of fair use from Justice Story to the current statute and strolled through a […]
Do You Have The Chutzpah To Take A Gamble On Fair Use?
[Note: This is part one of a two-part article that was previously posted on NewMusicBox, a site for composers and fans of contemporary classical and other experimental music, on September 10, 2015.] When I was a kid, my siblings and I played a board game called Chutzpah, which is a lot like Monopoly only the […]
Copyright Conundrums for Collaborators
[Note: This article was previously posted on NewMusicBox, a site for creators and fans of contemporary classical and other experimental music, on September 3, 2015.] Here’s a situation that’s commonly misunderstood among creative collaborators: Jack and Jill agree to write a song together. They call it “Tumblin’ Down the Hill.” Jack writes the music and […]
Google Books’ Dubious Distinction Between Transformative Use and Derivative Works
Given its prior ruling in last year’s substantially similar HathiTrust case, the Second Circuit’s October 16 decision in The Author’s Guild v. Google, Inc. was as inevitable as the Cubs failing to win the World Series. Still those in the content creating community feel it’s fundamentally unfair that Google gets to scan millions of copyrighted […]