Posted by Seth Jackson on 01/10/06 21:16

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 10:29:51 -0800, "Richard Crowley"
<richard.7.crowley@intel.com> wrote:

>NOTE: I am not a lawyer and I am not even playing one here on
>this Usenet newsgroup. However this is what I have learned from
>similar situations...
>
>1) Arrangements...
>If you arrange a song which is protected by copyright, the copyright
>owner automatically owns your arrangement. You cannot publish
>or perform it or distribute recordings of it without their permission.

This doesn't sound correct to me. You can perform your arrangement of
the song wherever you want, and you don't need permission to do it.
The copyright owner is entitled to royalties from public performances,
and these royalties are paid by venues, not performers. I'm also
skeptical of the assertion that the copyright holder automatically
owns your arrangement.

As for distributing recordings, you need a license to record and
distribute a song, which, at least in the US, is different from
"permission". Once a song has been released to the public for the
first time, the copyright owner is required to grant a compulsory
license to anyone who requests one provided that the requestor agrees
to pay royalties at the statutory rate.

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