[NTLK] Newton song

[Steven Frank]

My recommendation is to assume all existing music and lyrics are protected by copyright unless you can prove otherwise, or have explicit permission from the copyright holder.

Without getting into specifics, I was once involved with a video where a character (badly) sung seven (7) words from an older, but well-known song.  No music, just sung.  7 words.  We were confident this was considered fair use.  It wasn't.  The company that owned the rights came after us to pay a penalty fine for the unlicensed use, and with the option to pay thousands of dollars in licensing fees if we wanted to continue to use it.  We cut that part of the video instead.

Steven

> On Jul 1, 2020, at 2:29 PM, Sylvain Pilet <sylvain at pilet.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> On the subject of copyright, on music, song…
> I was wondering if there was an online service that could tell us if a passage or a whole melody is already the property of a third party?