Marching Band Sued
Given my stint in my high school’s marching band and my current interests with intellectual property laws, I found this article interesting. Basically a local high school’s marching band is being sued for copyright violations. When they bought the printed sheet music to a song they used in their halftime shows, they failed to purchase the license to use the song. Now, they are clearly in the wrong here, but this just shows you the state of IP laws in this country.
A quote from the article really sums it up: “Band Director Brian Stevens, who is in his seventeenth year at the helm of the Reynoldsburg marching band, said he has never dealt with anything like this.”
Here you have a guy who has been doing this for years. Funny how he hasn’t dealt with this before and in stench of the recent lawsuits brought on by the RIAA and MPAA does this become an issue for the publisher. Now the article mentions the the attorney is also representing the composer, Philip Sparke as well as the publisher, but lets be real. I guarantee that as soon as Mr. Sparke signed the contract with Anglo Music he also signed away his right to pursue any legal action concerning his compositions. So this isn’t about him being cheated out of money.
And don’t get me wrong; I am all for protected the inventors and creators for their works. But we have to be realistic about this. This is a school. I bet you any amount of money that the people that paid to watch the game did it to watch the game, not the band. I could see suing a college for copyright infringements. They are pulling in a lot of money compared to this small fish.
Now I know, you are saying to your self, “Quit your bitching. You can’t have it both ways. You’re logic is flawed.” But come on people. When is enough, enough? There is no way most schools, given Ohio’s school funding problems, are going to fork out money so that the band can acquire the proper rights to play some songs. So what are they to do? Play songs in the public domain? Hope you like “She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain” cus there is not to much in the public domain…
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