Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

The music industry makes its living through its copyrights, and those copyrights provide some members of that industry with a very nice living. Those folks have a vested interest in protecting the bundle of rights that are exclusive to them under the copyright laws of the USA and other countries. Two of those exclusive rights are (1) the right to make and sell copies of the works of authorship covered by the copyright (the songs) and (2) the right to make and sell derivative works based on the works of authorship covered by the copyright (the playlists of songs you would put on a CD).

The mess you can get into by infringing the copyrights of others, especially those who protect their copyrights the way the music industry does is astounding. You can potentially be held liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars in statutory damages (whether or not you make a cent by selling the copies is actually immaterial to the damages you can be held liable for), for all court costs associated with the civil prosecution of your case, and for the music copyright holder's reasonable attorney's fees. If your case is particularly egregious, you run the risk of being criminally prosecuted and spending some serious time in federal prison.

The only way to avoid that liability while burning and selling your CDs is to license the rights to make and sell the songs on your CDs from the copyright holder of each song you propose to put on the disk and to license the rights to put the songs together in the particular playlist mix you propose. Most music copyrights and licensing are administered by BMI ( www.bmi.com ), ASCAP ( www.ascap.com ) or the Harry Fox Agency ( www.harryfox.com ). Licensing is fairly easy, WAY less pricey than defending all those copyright infringement suits that would come your way without licensing the music, and a deal can generally get put together pretty fast.

Feel free to contact my office at 518-371-4599; I can help you put together a licensing deal that is advantageous to you.

THIS POST CONTAINS GENERAL INFORMATION AND IS INTENDED FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. IT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE, NOR DOES IT CREATE ANY ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP. FOR LEGAL ADVICE ON YOUR PARTICULAR MATTER, CONSULT YOUR ATTORNEY.