lalalala
okay... intellectual property can be confuseing!
since there is no money involved it seems like it should be legal, but just like with napster the issue isnt revenue made from the files downloaded but from the supposed revenue lost by people downloading them for free instead of paying for them. so lost revenue could be assumed from midi files even though nobody would pay for most any of them...
i would say nobody would pay for any of them but i guess anton maiden made at least enough to have him record more...
copywrite laws differ by country. there is no such thing as international copywrite. SOME countries honor other nations copywrites either through
bilateral agreement or by treaty. if there is no agreement there is no copywrite protection in that country... i didnt notice the midi files in question so since im american im mostly talking about how it works here-the problem is while copywrites work the same in countrys with agreements, the places they differ is in the fees they charge and how they legally deal with copywrite violations...
this a copy of us copywrite circular 38a it has a list of the different copy write agreements between the us and other countries and whether it is an agreement or treaty and what not, it is a pdf so you have to have acrobat to look at it
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ38a.pdf
music, books scripts and such are published by a publisher (imagine that!
) they are the ones who own the copywrites-thats how some groups end up getting all these greatest hits albums out and how they get on cut out compilation albums-theyve basicly given ownership of their material to someone else to have it published. thats why anybody who is semi intelligent and has the money incorporates themself and publishes their own music-because if you have a publisher do it, even if you retain the rights yourself youve still given them the rights to publish your work...
(business men are evil! they know every trick to get money from your work and if you give them the chance they will rob ya blind!) sooo....
after your work is published the publisher charges everyone a fee to use the work there after... it doesnt come under intellectual copywrite, but public performance works the same way-revenue is implied so except for a couple exceptions like commentary on the copywritten material any time someone gives a public performance they have to pay the publisher for use...
sooo... in the us a work DOES NOT have to be registered to have copywrite protection! unpublished work is also automaticly protected by copywrite! registering just gives some additional automatic protections that you dont get if it isnt registered. there is NO LAWS that say you have to go to the copywrite office EVER! (but by us law a work must be registered before a civil suit can be filed) a published work is required to file 2 copys with the library of congress for historical and cultural purposes kinda stuff. the only fees the copywrite office charge are for registering the work. the library of congress is involved with makeing copywrite law-they DO NOT look for or prosecute copywrite right infringement!
the only time the government gets involved is in customs when a pirated work is being illegally shipped to another country or... after YOU have done whatever work and learned your copywrite was violated you sue for damages. thats how copywrite infringement is dealt with-civil court and someone has to make claims for damages-there are no copywrite police.
here you have the copywrite offices main page where you can find more than you ever wanted to know about copywrites.
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/
this one will tell you how theres no such thing as international copywrite
and how you dont have to have something registered to have copywrite protection and the benifits of registering
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html
this one tells ya a little bit more about international copywrite and registration and how long they last
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#icp
this one tells a bit about how to get permission to use someone elses copywrite and how if someone has used your work you take them to civil court and some of the legal exceptions you can use copywritten work for, and if you look they dont even keep track of what copywrites are still valid. if you want to know if something is in the public domain or to check anything you either have to do it yourself or pay them $75 an hour to look for you! they dont even own copywrites to the stuff on their website!
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html
if youve tortured yourself through all that, you could have saved yourself some trouble with some simple logic and not even had to think about the legality...
even if the country in question (which as i said i dont know what country it is) charges some kind of per use fee or tax for duplication of that nations works and the government investigates copywrite infringement it should be obvious that with all the collected works of a nation, even if some government was searching for their countries works they realisticly wouldnt find any midi file here-EVER! unless of course somebody found it and reported it...
the thing is maiden holds their copywrites in great britian under the european nations whatever agreement (enough of you are europeans, look it up yourself if ya want to know the right name!
) it works pretty much the same as it does here in the u.s. and there isnt any agency that does anything unless someone claims damages...
when you look at the bigger picture it seems a bit obvious to me...
im a penniless druggie that owns nothing but a crappy truck and this crappier pc so i dont have to worry about what i say, somebody sued me all they would get from me would be hearing me laugh my ass off!
different story with mark and ya notice he aint nameing names-cuz he aint dum enough to take the risk! but as im sure he knows and anyone who was around the official site or maiden central or had their own maiden website in about early 2000 knows there was a big stink comeing from sanctuary about makeing sure anything about iron maiden wasnt violateing any copywrite laws and alot of websites were threatened with legal action if somethings werent removed...
then some of you folks might remember from the official bb at one of the shows a couple weeks ago bruces rant topic was how he thought it was fine to download music online...
i of course could be wrong, but it seems somebody, somebody probably named rod smallwood, was afraid somebody besides him might be able to squeeze a penny out of the band and was talking about going after people downloading music and bruce thought he was being an ass, but rod saw a penny and decided to go after it anyway and marks buddy skunk posted a link to maiden central for him on the main site and somebody in sanctuary saw it and decided to look into legal action...
most of us older folks know we taped music decades before their was mp3's and just like listening to the radio it didnt make bands lose money, it gave them free advertiseing, and us older folks that had good reel to reels or higher end metal cassete recorders know that the digital is only superior in the studio or with the surround sound and until it got to be so much more versitile in the studio alot of folks didnt want to use it because it isnt faithful reproduction and lacks warmth... (but is supposedly getting there...)
complaining abou midis sounds like a joke because we've heard them! but these people on the business side of music dont really care about what we are downloading now as much as they would like us to think. theyre trying to make sure that in the future when most everybody has the ability to put music on everything from their phone to the doorbell to the alarm for when the microwave goes off, to the warning on your car when your backing up or you door is open and a zillion different other things, nobodys thought of yet that they get their penny for it. just like now we will be the ones paying for every thing, and the bands will be doing all the work, and some business man who hasnt done shit is gonna be sitting there counting the money.
anyone who was actually whacko enough and had the perserverience to read all the crap i just wrote, your a perfect candidate to be whacko and patient enough to speak out against this crap. cuz while on the surface it may seem like it's only fair the band gets paid, the band wont get paid for it, and it's leading to a point where the business men will try to charge you for singing along! ya think that sounds a bit far fetched? record yourself singing and put it up on the site and see how long it takes um to threaten you with legal action if you dont take it down!
