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Using Music on your Web Site While there are many ways you can incorporate music into your Web site, there are aspects of law you need to be aware of, says David Dorn. Being the bloke responsible for bringing you most of the JavaScript snippets for your Web site, I get to look at all sorts of neat things you can do with your Web site without annoying other folks. One area that I have studiously avoided is the inclusion of music on your site. There’s a very good reason for that – it can become a minefield for you as a Webmaster. So, before we do actually feature and JavaScripts to play music, here are some of the finer points of the law that will be used to judge whether you’re an actionable person should you decide to feature some music on your site. Recordings The very first thing to be aware of is that absolutely all recordings, whether they’re CD, tape, mp3, whatever, carry copyright – that is, their authors and makers have the right to decide who can duplicate them (or copy them) and where and how they can be used. What that means, effectively, is that you can’t just digitise Britney Spears’ latest track and bung it up onto your site as background music. Neither can you take the same track that someone else has digitised and us that in the same way. Britney’s lawyers will be after you, and could take you to court (would take you to court) and attempt to get monetary redress from you equal to the amount of money they reckon they’ve lost as a result of your actions. Trust me, it’s not a pretty sight. MIDI You may think “Oh, well, that’s fine, I’ll sit down a plonk away at the tune on my piano, save it all as a MIDI file and let folks hear it that way.” Think again! Somebody had to write that tune, and they own the copyright on it. You can sit and plonk away (or strum or hum or warble) to your heart’s content – at your piano, in the bath, out in the car, walking the dog – no problem. But the minute you commit that tune to a medium of some sort – that is record it, even as a ring-tone – and make it available to the public, they want their cut. They’re entitled to it legally, as well. So, guess what – you run the risk of another set of lawyers serving their writs on you (or it might be the same set, if Britney also wrote the tune). Copyright-Free So what about all this copyright-free music, then? Well, actually, such a beast is something of a fable. Under UK law, the minute I write a song or record it, the copyright on it is mine. However, as the copyright owner, I can say to the world in general “Here – use it any way you want, anywhere you want, any time you want. Just tell folks who wrote it, eh?”. It’s hard to be any more open about it – this is exactly the kind of music you can use on your site without anyone batting an eyelid. It’s safe ground, and so-called “copyright-free” music is readily available. My mp3s The big no-no, of course, is storing your many copies of mp3s on your Web space so that you can access them from anywhere in the world, and then making them available to anyone else who happens to log into your site. This is very definitely not a good idea, not in any way. In fact, you’d very likely have the combined powers of the record company, its lawyers, the artists, and their lawyers, the songwriters and their lawyers, and maybe a few others all ganging up to make sure that the mp3s are taken down immediately, if not sooner, and then marching you off to the nearest magistrate’s court for an injunction… It doesn’t matter whether you’re really only storing them there and didn’t know how to stop other folks from getting at them, or you’re a freedom fighter fighting the cause of free music worldwide in the face of the capitalist oppression of the Music business (yeah, right!) – they’ll have you. What to do None of this, of course, means that you cannot have the latest chart toppers featured on your Web site. You can – you just have to pay certain fees to certain societies and bodies for the license so to do. They vary, of course, and there are kinks and tips that will keep the fees to an absolute minimum (like only making clips of records available, and keeping them to 29.9 seconds or less in length). If you’re decided that you really absolutely have to have music on your Web site, check out here where all the information resources you need are gathered together in one spot.
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