Copyright Issue

Last night I was having a short chat with Golden in Skype. He asked me about how to get music to be played in a blog. This eventually led to the topic of copyright because I didn't encourage him to do it.

Waking up this morning, I realise that we have MP3s and video clips on our blog too. Even my personal blog also have plenty of them. Are they legal? Honestly I am confused.

In the real world, some bands/artistes/record labels do not mind people playing their music or video clips online because it's a method of promotion. Some of them even uploaded the mp3s and video clips themselves for promotion purpose. Some artistes do not even rely on sales of their CDs for survival anymore as they prefer to rely on live concerts. So, how do we identify whether those mp3s and video clips are legal or not especially after they have been exchanging hands online? Perhaps, it's illegal for them to exchange hands too? Is creating a link to the MP3s and video clips illegal too?

There are some on-going lawsuit between online hosts and record labels. Unfortunately, the case is unclear. So many things can be debated.

I believe MP3s and video clips we record ourselves are legal to be posted online if we are the singers and actors. If it's not the case but if we obtain the permission of the record labels/artistes, it will be legal too. If someone else uploaded the MP3s and video clips, then we re-use them through a link or even using the embedded codes. Is this legal? I am pretty sure it's illegal if we upload the MP3s and video clips that we don't own the copyrights ourselves to be placed on the websites. Even using a music we don't own the copyright in a video clip is illegal. Boy! the whole world will be full of lawsuits if all bloggers are being targeted by lawyers.

This topic is no fun. I honestly hate this law or copyright related issue as I am a hardcore supporter of freedom of speech. I think it's a way for lawyers to make money out of the issue.

I found the following article about this kind of issue here:

Copyright wars - Veoh Vs. Universal

Here's another one that I don't have time to read. Maybe someone can help reading it and summarise it :):
Music Copyright Information

Please feel free to share if you have time to google for more information, as I am tired of google and search for stuff because my day job require me to do so daily too :(

I believe Tek Chee will know better as he's involved in the commercial music industry. I was in the independent music industry that we don't follow some regulations - we were in fact fighting against some laws, but we had lawyers among us.