2007/5/9, Chris B <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
On 09/05/07, mud crow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It's the publisher who owns the rights to the songs, the publisher may be > the record label, or the artist or a totally separate company. > > Northern Songs is the publishing company that owns the rights to most > Beatles songs, ATV music then bought Northern Songs, Micheal Jackson bought > ATV music, then Sony bought ATV music from Jackson (creating Sony/ATV > Music). > So now the publishing rights are owned by someone who isn't the artist or > the record label, but they have total control over releases and licensing. > > This is why I dislike the terminology used for bootlegs on MB. A bootleg is > an unlicensed release. > A release not being sanctioned by the artist or label has little to do with > it's legality as long as it's licensed from the publisher. exactly right :) also i think this should be applied universally, regardless of the originating companies copyright laws. eg, a lot of russian labels release unlicensed 'greatest hits' type compilations of western artists, but these are legal in russian soil because (as far as i know) the copyright laws their only involve paying a government body a fee in exchange for a copyright free-for-all. however these are still all bootlegs by all accounts, regardless of whether or not the government allows it. for me, bootleg = illegal. "unofficial" is a fine term but as long as we use it from the publishers point of view, not the artists. eg, i don't think you'll ever hear lee maver's endorsing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_La's s/t album, but he should have thought about that before he signed on the dotted line :) the same goes for all these profiteering artist compilations. they ain't pretty, but they are as 'official' as anything else the artist has put out, provided they are legal.
Although I don't agree with the Russian method, you must realize that illegal is a very relativistic concept. If it isn't illegal in Russia, then it must be legal there. As long as there will be at least one country which doesn't agree, there won't be a universal definition of what is legal and what is not. So speaking of "legal" or "illegal" without saying where is meaningless. -- Frederic Da Vitoria
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