Berkman Summer Interns 2008

Last week(-ish), several of the interns and I were speaking about music copyright. The conversation started when I innocently asked if the Beatles cover I have up on my MySpace is legal. I know that there are clearly legal processes to complete in order to sell a cover song, but I was not selling it. I simply wanted to share my version of With A Little Help From My Friends with some of my friends. (And probably some lurkers and stalkers.)

We came to several main points of contention:
-Whether it is different for streaming music (like on MySpace, or YouTube, etc.) vs. downloading a hard copy. However, I was informed that it is apparently fairly easy to (illegally) copy music playing out of your speakers onto your computer.
-Whether it is different that I was not charging money.

I’ve been doing more research on whether my interpretation is fair use, or whether it is legal for people to be able to listen on-demand to my music, or whether it is legal for MySpace to have a copy of my song on their server. This post will probably get updated soon after I get to the correct section in the book I just purchased on “The Future of the Music Business: How to Succeed with the New Digital Technologies” by Steve Gordon.

I find these issues so fascinating that I am in the process of formulating it into a Government thesis. Any input is of course welcome.

I was experimenting with the features of this blog, so here is an embedded copy (also hopefully legal):
With A Little Help From My Friends – Ali Sternburg