United States

If someone post a song on here is it "free game"?

If someone post a song on here is it "free game"?

That depends on if you think people should have respect. I always ask first before I download someone elses song.

If someone post a song on here is it "free game"?

You Can post songs and disable the download feature on them. (People can play and listen, but can't download a copy of it)

BandMix is arguably a Public Domain site , but then again, its down to TOS and agreements. If you really want to protect your work, get it copy-righted.

If somebody steals your song, and makes millions (The odds are astronomically high against that happening) then you can find the nation's best attorneys. who will gladly fight for you , for a huge fee.

Thanks....

Thanks Chris. There's SO MUCH illegal downloading WORLDWIDE. Entire countries (like China) are immune from lawsuits apparently for stealing intellectual property rights. I imagine the number of lawsuits compared to the number of illegal downloading episodes is probably infinitesimal. At this point original artists (except a tiny fraction of them) have an extremely hard time making any decent money selling their music. For the vast majority it is essentially a labor of love, producing a CD and offering it for sale to the public. With that being said who has any funds available to even hire an attorney to sue somebody, unless the attorney is willing to work on a contingency.

Copyright law is fairly simple and clear. The moment you write a song or musical composition of any kind, you OWN it. Period. You do not have to register any work with the copyright office for it to be protected by law, but if you plan to exercise your rights as owner of the work if somebody else rips it off, you'd be better off registering it before you put it out there, since it's much easier to prove you own it if you do. In fact, no publisher will touch your work if you don't.

No argument about ownership of a work,,, The real question is..Can you prove its yours? In law it doesn't matter who owns it, all that matters is who is able to prove who it belongs to. : )

That is why I strongly recommend going the way of Library of Congress, and getting the work registered BEFORE you post it anywhere.

As For creative Commons rights. I have my reservations about that. At the end of the day, Creative Commons seems to be a way to lose your mechanical rights, which pretty much suggests your song could wind up on a Nike commercial (no explicit permission required) and you'll never see a dime of it. The way I feel about it, one should Obtain and maintain full control of a work. Do the extra labor to mange the rights, but in the end you wont be sorry.

Paragraph 3. "By posting Content to any public area of BandMix.com, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to BandMix.com an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."

That paragraph essentially means you are giving Bandmix the right to post and allow others to play your music, through your profile. It's basically nothing more than BM covering their own arse if you ever decide to say you didn't understand that your music would be available to the public to play.

P.3 is arguable and risks loss in a court. It also smacks of Creative Commons elements
First, It stipulates that you have to prove

A) You are who you say you are (Who am I? and can you prove it)
B) You own the work (Fully paid, World Wide licence)
c) You can grant (i.e. Distributive rights)

The statement about Derivative works would never fly in a suit since Federal law protects copy-righted works from frivolous derivative works (even the copyright owner of the original work has to register a derivative of his/her own work) . Essentially, Band mix would have to register what it extracts as a derivative, and to do so, it needs "exclusive" rights" You'll note, that the paragraph alludes to "NON-Exclusive" rights.

Sub Licenses... Under Contract Law, Sub-'anything' has to have a "principal" cause/ or agent and must be consistent with the nature and purpose of the "prime contract" (Or original contract). Since Band Mix is not a "publisher" nor is it in the business of Publishing, sub licensing doesn't carry a lot of weight here. I'm suspecting that Paragraph 3 was a cut & and paste job... The bottom line... Copyright registration helps us prove who authored the work. It doesn't protect us from greedy people who find loop holes to exploit the work.

So like RGMix said, The safety of your work on bandmix...? It depends.

This is EXACTLY why one doesn't post complete original works here.

Too many fing thieves and non-creative jackasses that want to steal YOUR hard work.

If you steal, you will be sued or worse.

You never know who will show up at front door with a gun or worse, btw.

I'd think twice before you think it's ok to steal from anyone round here or you might get the rare chance to observe what your intestines look like in full sunlight before you are "put down" like a rabid dog.

Just a simple inquiry before I posted some material, no need for death threats. lol

Thanks for the "informative" post.