From what I understand it's part of the conditions of getting the mechanical license through HFA. It might be conceptually absurd, but that doesn't mean that's not how it works.
Obviously you don't need a license for your own work. JC's license would be for the lyrics and nothing else. Everything else is his.
Image I author a book that contains the lyrics as a component. I would need a compulsory mechanical license, right? But does the rights holder own my book now? Of course not.
The melody in this case is not a derivative work. It has nothing to do with the the original work (i.e., lyrics).
I think "Paul's" comments in the original thread have it right. I am not a lawyer, but I am a songwriter and have researched this a lot in the past. It's complicated enough that it's easy to forget the particulars, but the general upshot is that if you do a cover, no matter how creative your cover is, you basically have no rights except for the sound recording.
Your book example is a different question entirely.
Look at it this way. You can also take a song with a melody, and completely alter the melody into something entirely different, but it doesn't mean that you get a songwriter credit on the new version. If it did, people would be doing this all the time. And the original version of the song isn't "half a song", as in everything but a melody - not legally speaking. If that were true, we'd have thirty years now of people trying to write melodies for already-released rap tunes, in an effort to get their financial cut.
So legally speaking, putting a melody on a rap tune still only yields a derivative work. Coulton has no rights as a songwriter in this case.
Again though, if Fox took the audio to his backing track... that's a different matter entirely.
One big asterisk, though. It might be too late for this, but Coulton arguably could have gathered more leverage had he called his version a parody. But that's a really high bar, because for it to be a parody, it would have to implicitly comment on the previous work, thereby transforming it. As opposed to a simple satire, which "builds on top" of an existing work. A parody is protected by fair use, and it is possible to copyright the original parts of the parody. So if he had been able to argue that his song was a parody, he could have copyrighted the melody. And given that Coulton's artistic choice was limited to putting a nice melody on top of a rap tune, I doubt that would hold up in court, because it would set a hell of a precedent to all the other rap tunes out there.
Thanks for explaining. I think I understand a little better now.
This Wired article also helps,
Coulton said that while his lawyers have been looking
into the copyright issue, it seems unlikely that he
will have any legal recourse. ”It seems that because of
the compulsory license I purchased when I made a cover
of this song, the arrangement itself is not protected
under copyright, although it’s the darkest gray of the
gray areas [of the law]… While there may be some weird
offshoot of the law, it doesn’t seem like something
where a little guy could sue to get any satisfaction.”
Comments
Mechanical license means that your derivative work's copyright is still owned by the original publisher, including any "original melody".
That's absurd. There's no way the melody would fall under the mechanical license for the lyrics. Why would it?
The lyrics and musical arrangement are clearly distinct entities.
From what I understand it's part of the conditions of getting the mechanical license through HFA. It might be conceptually absurd, but that doesn't mean that's not how it works.
Obviously you don't need a license for your own work. JC's license would be for the lyrics and nothing else. Everything else is his.
Image I author a book that contains the lyrics as a component. I would need a compulsory mechanical license, right? But does the rights holder own my book now? Of course not.
The melody in this case is not a derivative work. It has nothing to do with the the original work (i.e., lyrics).
I think "Paul's" comments in the original thread have it right. I am not a lawyer, but I am a songwriter and have researched this a lot in the past. It's complicated enough that it's easy to forget the particulars, but the general upshot is that if you do a cover, no matter how creative your cover is, you basically have no rights except for the sound recording.
Your book example is a different question entirely.
Look at it this way. You can also take a song with a melody, and completely alter the melody into something entirely different, but it doesn't mean that you get a songwriter credit on the new version. If it did, people would be doing this all the time. And the original version of the song isn't "half a song", as in everything but a melody - not legally speaking. If that were true, we'd have thirty years now of people trying to write melodies for already-released rap tunes, in an effort to get their financial cut.
So legally speaking, putting a melody on a rap tune still only yields a derivative work. Coulton has no rights as a songwriter in this case.
Again though, if Fox took the audio to his backing track... that's a different matter entirely.
One big asterisk, though. It might be too late for this, but Coulton arguably could have gathered more leverage had he called his version a parody. But that's a really high bar, because for it to be a parody, it would have to implicitly comment on the previous work, thereby transforming it. As opposed to a simple satire, which "builds on top" of an existing work. A parody is protected by fair use, and it is possible to copyright the original parts of the parody. So if he had been able to argue that his song was a parody, he could have copyrighted the melody. And given that Coulton's artistic choice was limited to putting a nice melody on top of a rap tune, I doubt that would hold up in court, because it would set a hell of a precedent to all the other rap tunes out there.
Thanks for explaining. I think I understand a little better now.
This Wired article also helps,
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/01/jonathan-coulton-glee...