Kenneth, There's the rub. If copying isn't illegal, then any ability to be paid for inventing, creating, or composing art, designs, music, or ideas in general will be finished.

In the case of the photographer, it's like watching a picture of Times Square, it is fair use. If the photographer's work is part of a landscape, then he can't complain if it is copied when the landscape is photographed. If it is materially the raison' d'etre of the photograph, then it is arguable. Now, how effective is this kind of enforcement? Well, that's why we are writing in this post.

Your brain is off limits to the court. The copies you make are not retrievable to other folks. It is when you decide to rely on your memory and copy the copyrighted work that an infringement takes place. If, for example, I went and saw a movie, then wrote a book about as much of it as I could remember, I'd be violating the copyright. Now, is it enforced? Not unless I'm stupid enough to show a lot of people. But it is still against the law. Like growing pot. Folks grow pot in the basement. If nobody ever finds out, it's not enforced, but it is still against the law.

On your "bleed through" scenario, you are not copying the commercial, it is present in the soundscape of your recording. Now, if you are using that loophole of the soundscape or landscape in order to circumvent the intent of the law and focus on the copyrighted material, you could get busted, but how in God's name that would happen would take a very convoluted circumstance. Not likely.

It is the intent of the law to provide a right to an author, composer, inventor, or designer to determine the kind and use of any copies made of their work. Ancilliary duplications of portions or even, under reasonable circumstances, of entire amounts of their work is not covered. It is then a by-product of the act of duplication.

I think it is education that needs to be addressed. People need to learn that all music is not free...that it is up to the composer of the music to decide whether or not it is free, and it is their right to decide how and to what use it is copied.

In other words. It is the composer who is free...not their music.

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way. -Johnny Cash

It's only music.
-niteshift

Mike Dunbar Music