Music copyright clarification...
 

Hi guys,

As some of you may know, I work in a school.

I have recently been approached by our music teacher regarding a project he has in mind. He wants to supply music to his students so that they may digitally modify/mix this music and reproduce something for a project.

I have explained to him as much as I know about copyright infringement with music and he assures me an external source has informed him he will not have any problems doing this.

As far as i'm aware, the legal standpoint is such:

1. The music must either be licensed via purchase from a validated source or it must be royalty free.

2. Purchased music is only licensed to the payee and cannot be "serial duplicated", i.e. EVERY student would need to own a license to work with a piece of copyrighted music.

3. The reproduction may not be distributed publicly (something which would be quite hard to supress).

4. A "mechanical?" license must be owned to actually modify the copyrighted music.

Any copyright buffs out there that can help me with this situation? obviously I do not want to be implicated in any copyright infringement and I would be directly involved if I tell this guy he is ok to do what he wants...

Help?

Thanks! [help] [thumbup]

I don't know. http://discussworldissues.com/forums...ilies/sad1.gif I wonder if the kind of relaxed usage that applies to published/printed works when used in a education context would apply in this case.

I don't know if you have this in the UK but in the US we have a fair use act that allows this kind of thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review.

In regards to educational things, at least here in the US, as long as its being done as a non-profit academic thing, its not illegal, granted they get rid of all the music and whatnot when they're finished, donno about teh ukz0r

First thing to do is find out who his "external source" is. If it's not the copyright holder (or directly related to them) then its a big no. Or an expert in copyright law of course http://discussworldissues.com/forums...s/biggrin1.gif

Hes actually the head of IT at another school in the LA.

Although I can't imagine hes an expert in copyright either, I can see how some people would just shrug it off as something not so important.

I did read about fair use and how it may apply to my organisation, I believe it doesn't cover our intentions... http://discussworldissues.com/forums.../confused1.gif