Mr. Marc Dresser asked what his rights are, after a teacher in Austria used music from one of his CD's as a background to a video on Bosnia. The teacher informed him after the fact that the video was only used in the classroom and thus did not infringe Mr. Dressers rights (the teacher hoped).
I am not a lawyer in Austria, I'm a German lawyer, but I am very sure that German and Austrian copyright law does not differ in the important details. I will thus give a response using the German Copyright Law. According to Art. 52 (the Art. number would be different in the Austrian law) *performances* in schools for a defined audiance i.e. a class and not a school play for the public, are not subject to the authors permission and the author receives no payment.This is as long as the school does not change admission to this performance (i.e. a private school also has this priveledge). BUT this case doesn't just involve a performance. That would be the case, if simply the CD had been played. Instead the music was used for a video and thus it was edited! According to Art. 39 the owner of a license (Art.52 grants a performance license to schools) is NOT allowed to change the work (i.e.music) in anyway without the express permission of the copyright owner (clearly Mr.Dresser). Editing music is not possible without changing the composition of the musical work.The teacher was thus not covered by German/Austrian law (Urheberrechtsgesetz).I suggest that Mr. Dresser send this note with his letter to the teacher.
Abraham de Wolf
abraham.de.wolf[_at_]sap-ag.de
Received on Wed Apr 02 1997 - 06:31:57 GMT
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