The comments over there explain this pretty thoroughly. Short answer is No, he holds no copyright to the original melody.
Interesting final question though - no, you don't lose the copyright to the instrumental, but I'm not sure of the proper way to describe the new arrangement of the song.
Are you sure?
I'm an IP lawyer, and even i'm not sure of the answer.
1. There is a very weird set of rights around music/sound/synchronization built into copyright law
2. I would never trust random commenters on the internet, even those experience in music, to know the answer.
Why?
Because of how this stuff actually works in practice.
People assume that "Fox surely did this right before they did this", except, you know, they often don't.
When they want to use a track, they just use it, and then throw it on the uncleared list and get around to figuring it out later.
This is because they've made a licensing/etc scheme that is so convoluted, that often nobody knows who to contact to get all the rights necessary (ASCAP/NMPA et al are sometimes helpful, sometimes not)
In some types of cases, there are compulsory licenses, in some, there aren't.
Yeah, obviously I'm not "in the know" regarding what steps Fox might have skipped. I just know that:
a) If a song is published (and BGB was) then anyone has the right to cover it (a compulsory license always exists)
b) If someone covers it, the covering artist gets no copyright of the musical material - all that is retained by the song copyright owner(s). (This makes intuitive sense, as it otherwise would restrict the ability of other artists to create more covers of the song. You'd have to make sure that your arrangement choices didn't conflict with ANY other arrangements out there.)
c) The covering artist does have copyright over the sound recording of the arrangement.
Now, if techie people wanted to get involved in a way they could actually affect things, rather than just theorizing about what someone's actions/motivations might have been, there's opportunity here:
Coulton released a karaoke track of his version of BGB. It's released by-nc-sa. It's considered likely that Fox used this karaoke track as the backing track for their version. If so, they have infringed on all three portions of the license (no attribution, they're selling it, they didn't release it share-alike).
So - I don't know how to do this, but it seems like someone could do a statistical analysis of the karaoke track, and Fox's version, and prove within some statistical likeliness that Fox used the karaoke track and did not simply re-record their own instruments. (Note that it WOULD be legal for Fox to re-record Coulton's arrangement note-for-note since it would no longer be using Coulton's sound recording.)
> but I'm not sure of the proper way to describe the new arrangement of the song.
To me it doesn't seem like a new arrangement of the song because it sounds absolutely nothing like the original, he basically copied the lyrics only, even the cadence was different. If I write a melody to someone's spoken word poem, is that a new arrangement?
I guess it depends on if they were able to previously publish that spoken word poem as a song, and if you are in turn licensing it through the Harry Fox Agency.
If it's instead just lyrics that you write a melody to and it is unpublished so far, then you could be co-writers before the song is published.
I can't find where that is explained thoroughly. This was claimed but not explained very well in the comments on the article. If I write some music and then later put out a cover version of another song set to that tune, how do I lose my copyright on the music I wrote?
Well, all kinds of weird cases can happen and I guess that's why lawsuits can happen, to tease out those kinds of distinctions. My guess is that you'd retain the copyright for your music but other people could still cover that song in the same way you did without paying you or getting permission.
I think the more disturbing question is, what if someone takes Coulton's original tracks to the song (they're available), re-records them (I could easily do it with my keyboard and some software samples), and does everything exactly the same except for singing "blah blah blah"? Sounds like that person could claim the entire resultant copyright and not owe Coulton, BGB, or Fox/Glee a damn thing.
Comments
The comments over there explain this pretty thoroughly. Short answer is No, he holds no copyright to the original melody.
Interesting final question though - no, you don't lose the copyright to the instrumental, but I'm not sure of the proper way to describe the new arrangement of the song.
Are you sure? I'm an IP lawyer, and even i'm not sure of the answer.
1. There is a very weird set of rights around music/sound/synchronization built into copyright law 2. I would never trust random commenters on the internet, even those experience in music, to know the answer.
Why? Because of how this stuff actually works in practice.
People assume that "Fox surely did this right before they did this", except, you know, they often don't.
When they want to use a track, they just use it, and then throw it on the uncleared list and get around to figuring it out later.
This is because they've made a licensing/etc scheme that is so convoluted, that often nobody knows who to contact to get all the rights necessary (ASCAP/NMPA et al are sometimes helpful, sometimes not)
In some types of cases, there are compulsory licenses, in some, there aren't.
Yeah, obviously I'm not "in the know" regarding what steps Fox might have skipped. I just know that:
a) If a song is published (and BGB was) then anyone has the right to cover it (a compulsory license always exists)
b) If someone covers it, the covering artist gets no copyright of the musical material - all that is retained by the song copyright owner(s). (This makes intuitive sense, as it otherwise would restrict the ability of other artists to create more covers of the song. You'd have to make sure that your arrangement choices didn't conflict with ANY other arrangements out there.)
c) The covering artist does have copyright over the sound recording of the arrangement.
Now, if techie people wanted to get involved in a way they could actually affect things, rather than just theorizing about what someone's actions/motivations might have been, there's opportunity here:
Coulton released a karaoke track of his version of BGB. It's released by-nc-sa. It's considered likely that Fox used this karaoke track as the backing track for their version. If so, they have infringed on all three portions of the license (no attribution, they're selling it, they didn't release it share-alike).
So - I don't know how to do this, but it seems like someone could do a statistical analysis of the karaoke track, and Fox's version, and prove within some statistical likeliness that Fox used the karaoke track and did not simply re-record their own instruments. (Note that it WOULD be legal for Fox to re-record Coulton's arrangement note-for-note since it would no longer be using Coulton's sound recording.)
> but I'm not sure of the proper way to describe the new arrangement of the song.
To me it doesn't seem like a new arrangement of the song because it sounds absolutely nothing like the original, he basically copied the lyrics only, even the cadence was different. If I write a melody to someone's spoken word poem, is that a new arrangement?
I guess it depends on if they were able to previously publish that spoken word poem as a song, and if you are in turn licensing it through the Harry Fox Agency.
If it's instead just lyrics that you write a melody to and it is unpublished so far, then you could be co-writers before the song is published.
I can't find where that is explained thoroughly. This was claimed but not explained very well in the comments on the article. If I write some music and then later put out a cover version of another song set to that tune, how do I lose my copyright on the music I wrote?
Well, all kinds of weird cases can happen and I guess that's why lawsuits can happen, to tease out those kinds of distinctions. My guess is that you'd retain the copyright for your music but other people could still cover that song in the same way you did without paying you or getting permission.
I think the more disturbing question is, what if someone takes Coulton's original tracks to the song (they're available), re-records them (I could easily do it with my keyboard and some software samples), and does everything exactly the same except for singing "blah blah blah"? Sounds like that person could claim the entire resultant copyright and not owe Coulton, BGB, or Fox/Glee a damn thing.