janeray1940
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2009
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Aloha UU - I realize that even if you *are* a lawyer, you are not *my* lawyer, and any responses made should not be taken as legal advice
Now that we've got that settled... I'm trying to understand something about copyright. Several fairly well-known ukulele teachers (and UU members) have websites in which they sell arrangements of songs that are not in public domain - let's take, for example, Beatles songs, the rights to which are clearly owned by a publisher.
Sometimes the sellers say "contact me for the arrangement" and then respond to the inquiry with the fee, but they do not publicize this on their site.
Sometimes the sellers have a Paypal "Donate" button.
Sometimes the sellers state a flat fee is stated for x-many songs.
My question is - how does one go about doing this legally? Those offering the arrangements are theoretically profiting (however small the profits may be) from selling their own arrangements of copyrighted work, aren't they?
I'm familiar with the Fair Use doctrine (hey, library school wasn't COMPLETELY useless!) and based on this, my guess is that by offering these as "tutorials" one is able to get around the tricky business of actually contacting the copyright holder... but I'm just guessing.
Can anybody clue me in? And I should state that, should this practice not be entirely legal, I am NOT trying to out anybody here (hence the not pointing to specific websites or naming names). Just doing some fact-finding for the project that I mentioned some months ago here.
Thanks, as always.
Now that we've got that settled... I'm trying to understand something about copyright. Several fairly well-known ukulele teachers (and UU members) have websites in which they sell arrangements of songs that are not in public domain - let's take, for example, Beatles songs, the rights to which are clearly owned by a publisher.
Sometimes the sellers say "contact me for the arrangement" and then respond to the inquiry with the fee, but they do not publicize this on their site.
Sometimes the sellers have a Paypal "Donate" button.
Sometimes the sellers state a flat fee is stated for x-many songs.
My question is - how does one go about doing this legally? Those offering the arrangements are theoretically profiting (however small the profits may be) from selling their own arrangements of copyrighted work, aren't they?
I'm familiar with the Fair Use doctrine (hey, library school wasn't COMPLETELY useless!) and based on this, my guess is that by offering these as "tutorials" one is able to get around the tricky business of actually contacting the copyright holder... but I'm just guessing.
Can anybody clue me in? And I should state that, should this practice not be entirely legal, I am NOT trying to out anybody here (hence the not pointing to specific websites or naming names). Just doing some fact-finding for the project that I mentioned some months ago here.
Thanks, as always.