[Trash-talk] deal with the tributes

[Bill Shaw]

Well here;s my 2 cents worth... 

I have been on a Neil Young email list for years, and they have been doing
tribute disks (and cassettes before CD burning was popular) for years. There
have been something like 8 tributes over the last 10 years or so....
copyrights and royalties have never been an issue.  The tributes were not
made available for public download, although some people did put their own
tracks online, individually. 

We know that Neil is well aware of the list (he has said so in interviews
and even on stage), and his people are aware of the various tributes and
other "unauthorized" recordings that are circulated amoung list members.
They have never complained or even contacted us about it. 

Obviously Garbage isn't Neil Young, and they may feel differently about it.
But my take is this: if we produce this thing ourselves, share it freely and
never charge or accept money for copies, I think it's very unlikely that
Garbage or their management would ever seek to stop the project, or make us
pay royalties. 

Of course, if we do get explicit permission from the band, all the better.
But if we don't, I doubt any serious consequence would ever result. 

www.garbagebase.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: the menace [mailto:sms52 at drexel.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 5:46 AM
> To: trash-talk at tcp.com
> Subject: [Trash-talk] deal with the tributes
> 
> 
> ok i've been reading up on copyright law and the way this is 
> supposed to work 
> so here's what i got...
> 
> as of right now the situation with the tribute cd is this: 
> apparently just 
> having the songs up for download is serious copyright 
> infringement in about 
> five different ways, although everybody does it :P  but if we 
> want to do this 
> with the band's permission and not risk them suing the hell out of us 
> (unlikely as they are not metallica, but who knows) we would 
> have to pay them 
> a bunch of fees PER DOWNLOAD and seeing as it would be nearly 
> impossible to 
> pay up when the songs are free the cd-burning and charging 
> like... two bucks 
> to cover fees and shipping seems to be a better option.  what 
> i'm doing is 
> trying to get permission straight from the band (should have 
> it worked out 
> fairly soon) and then we're MOST LIKELY going to have to sell 
> the cds for a 
> small fee to cover licensing, assuming they ask for it 
> (standard rate is $0.08 
> per song per cd... more if the songs are over 5 minutes 
> long)... it really 
> depends on what they think.  but i will of course everyone know.
> 
> the songs received so far are fucking awesome though; this is 
> turning out to 
> be cool.
> 
> word has it on the wire
> that you don't know who you are
> well if you could jack into my brain
> you'd know exactly what you mean here.
>   -poe, 'hello'
>  
>