RE: do Christmas carolers infringe copyright?

Billing is presumably handled by the Grinch who not only stole Christmas but is now billing for it???

Harold Federow

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Timothy Phillips [mailto:hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 5:45 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: do Christmas carolers infringe copyright?
>
>
> Some well-known Christmas music is in the public
> domain, but not all of it. If a church choir sings
> "I wonder as I wander" by John Jacob Niles (1892-1980)
> in church, it is within its rights in the U.S. under
> 17 U.S.C 110(3). (I don't know about the U.K.) But if
> the choir goes caroling, this provision would no longer
> seem to apply. On its face, caroling looks to me to be a
> public performance. If the carolers recieve cookies and
> cocoa, it begins to look like a performance for profit.
>
> Has a church ever been billed for a license when
> its choir sang copyrighted music when caroling ?
> Has a shopping mall ever been billed for a license
> if it allowed strolling carolers to perform unlicensed
> copyrighted Christmas music within its space ?
>
> Tim Phillips
> <hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com>
>
Received on Tue Sep 26 2000 - 22:22:08 GMT