So how does LMA operate. is there a chance that someday Bob Dylan is gonna come and file a suit against all musicians covering his song tangled up in blue, are tapers or folks torrenting or uploading to lma responsible for making it public?
I'm sure there is something out there, something that makes lma so adamant about it being all non profit to keep it all legit. certainly has me curious, anyone?
I honestly don't know. Every so often we get a band asking us the same question, and the answer is always that we've never had problems with it. There's nothing anywhere on the site specifically dealing with royalties or licenses, just the general language regarding what steps to take if you believe your copyright has been violated. I did a good amount of searching after this question was posted and all I could find was the licensing language regarding copies of a given recording. Not selling the recording, just how many copies are made. I would tend to think that this is a real gray area - yes, the Internet Archive is a non-profit 501(c)(3), so that may have a lot to do with it as well. If you're curious, you could write to info@archive.org and see what their response is. That's the general queries mailbox and maybe you'll get an answer there...I doubt you'll get a full legalese run-down though.
I've wondered about this too, but I don't think the site is high traffic enough to warrant scrutiny.
I've had issues w/ covers and Youtube though.
I have a video of someone covering "Brown Eyed Girl", and I got contacted, and said that the song was copyright and if I wanted to keep the video up there, I had to put a message that said who held the copyright and that they gave me permission to put the video up. At least it was nice of them not to try and yank it.
Then I have another video of someone covering I think Living on a Prayer, and it was yanked from Youtube as a copyright voilation. But I also have other videos covering this song and those weren't taken down, so I think it may be random checks or something.
But Youtube obviously gets tons of traffic and is a target for copyright violations.
I'm hoping people just don't care enough about the LMA.