Applying for music copyright

The copyright law originated in the UK, the current copyright law/ act  is the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

The law gives the creators of music and original music video the rights to control the ways in which their material is used. Said rights cover broadcast and public performance, copying or adapting, renting, issuing and lending other copies to the public. In many cases the original author shall also have rights to be credited for this new work. Copyright may be used for any form of creative work not just within the music industry.  It is put in place so to protect ones creative work.

Although the laws have been put in place that doesn't mean that copyright laws have never been broken. Artist Vanilla ice came onto the scene with his hit number one single 'Ice Ice Baby' . Ice had altered the rhythm to the baseline of Queen and Bowies hit single 'under pressure' which didn't go unnoticed although the artist supposedly applied this in an attempt to avoid question of royalties, credits, license or permission. Although the case never went to court as it was ruled evident that Ice had stolen the sample without Queen and Bowie's permission, Ice settled outside of the courts with the artists for an undisclosed but believed to be very high amount. Ice's single has since released many different versions of the song following all of the legal producers.

Here is my email to mediauk@umusic.com:

As a group we had to apply for permission to Univerisal music group (the owners to the rights and permission to Winehouse's work). We had to do this due to the company having copyrighted Winehouse's work. Obtaining copyright permission (i.e mission from the person who owns the works) is known as licensing. Once you have gained permission you have a license to use said work as you wish within the legal terms.

We made sure to apply for copyright permission as without doing so you may face consequences such as being sued by the owner which can often be for large sums as was the case with Justin Bieber and Usher.

People have been known to operate with works either illegally or through ignorance meaning that they use or apply other peoples work without having applied for consent. The problem in doing so is that ignoring the ethical issues would be that the more successful a project becomes the more likely the owner of the works is likely to hear of it and therefore seek action of meaning that you shall be sued large sums which is not only harmful for your bank account but can also form much publicity therefore damaging your reputation and credibility as a creator, questioning ones creative abilities.

It has been known that people avoid the permission process as they don't understand it, believe that it's too complicated or even too expensive however this is not the case. The fee is commonly under £200 when considering how much can be made of these works is really just a cost of production etc however in many other cases it is also free for instance in the case of me and my group creating our own music video. However the lawsuit for dealing with an unauthorised usage are known for costing a lot more and lead to a lot more time and effort in comparison.

Unfortunately we haven't received a reply  however this does mean that we are able to continue proceeding our music video regardless as we tried as much as we possibly could to inform the company they may have read our email and simply choose not to reply. Hence by rights we are able to carry on as the company had a chance to prevent our filming from taking place but didn't, plus we have done everything we could to receive permission the company clearly aren't that interested therefore in the eyes of the law we aren't committing an offence by carrying on.