Posted by Rick Daly
on 2/26/2012, 1:02 pm, in reply to "legal question"
Hi Bob. I'm not a lawyer, nor am I an expert, but I do believe, that as long as you're not re-writing the song to be recorded, performed or otherwise used to profit personally, you'd be okay. Also, someone from ASCAP, BMI or one of those legal watchdogs would have to be aware of what you're doing, and probably, the worst case scenario is, they'd tell you to "Now cut that out!" (Think Jack Benny). I had an situation some years back, where I had an Ian and Sylvia Reunion Concert, taped by someone up in Canada from Canadian TV way back in the Eighties, posted on my website, Folk U.S.A. It was up for some time when one day I get a letter in the mail from Sylvia Tyson's lawyers, asking me to take it down and don't make it available anymore. Supposedly, Sylvia owned the rights and was going to make it a DVD for sale. Never happened, but I took it down and that was that. Never heard anymore. You might want to post this question over on Kingston Crossroads. There are a lot more folks who post there than come here anymore, and more than one of them are lawyers.
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