Forum & Copyright (Guidelines)

Pete Thomas · Jul 2, 2025

Jeanette said:
@Pete Thomas will confirm but I don't think we can use that as reason for sharing.

Jx

No, this site does not count as educational use in copyright law which can apply to educational establishments.

mrblackbat · Jul 2, 2025

Pete Thomas said:
No, this site does not count as educational use in copyright law which can apply to educational establishments.

Tested in law?

There’s no definition of “fair dealing” when it comes to copyrighted material and an infringement of copyright, it’s up to a judge to decide.

It’s also primarily a civil offence when not entering the realm of illegal distribution for resale purposes and so damages would need to be defined and awarded. Say the average lead sheet is £1.99 and the SotM threads have maybe 5 or 10 recordings a month. It’s literally in nobody’s interest to pursue it; a judge will throw it out or award symbolic damages of £1 or whatever and the plaintiff will rack up considerable legal fees.

Pete Thomas · Jul 2, 2025

mrblackbat said:
Tested in law?

We would not have the funds to do that, although the current uk gov guidelines seem fairly clear we would not win such a case

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/375951/Education_and_Teaching.pdf

Exceptions to copyright

Details of the exceptions to copyright that allow limited use of copyright works without the permission of the copyright owner.

www.gov.uk

https://cafesaxophone.com/help/copyright/

mrblackbat · Jul 2, 2025

Pete Thomas said:
We would not have the funds to do that, although the current uk gov guidelines seem fairly clear we would not win such a case

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/375951/Education_and_Teaching.pdf

Exceptions to copyright

Details of the exceptions to copyright that allow limited use of copyright works without the permission of the copyright owner.

www.gov.uk

https://cafesaxophone.com/help/copyright/

It doesn’t have to be tested by this site. The point is it’s not been tested in law; I can’t find a single case of sheet music being shared on a forum for play along purposes and there being a ruling made. That’s when you would see a judge’s decision on whether it stood up to fair usage or not. The closest example is a porn sharing class action from the 2000s where porn videos were being shared via FileZilla; the actual amount of damages awarded was - £13.99, the price of the video. In reality that was more a case of speculative invoicing to try and keep it out of court and not have the world know you watched some dirty movies.

At most I think you risk a cease and desist letter.

The primary poster is responsible for the content, your responsibility as the site owner is to remove material, and links to material, if a complaint is made; so any legal action would need to be a class action against all the hosts of SotM for providing their links to the sheet they host. And then get damages from that for loss of income of those lead sheets being bought; which based on forum membership and the cost of a lead sheet is going to be feck all.

Literally: nobody is going to give a s***.

Pete Thomas · Jul 2, 2025

mrblackbat said:
The point is it’s not been tested in law;

Hence we are not going to take the risk of having to do so.

It’s very easy to speculate when you are not the one responsible for paying legal costs. I have been involved in settling copyright disputes and it’s expensive.

lydian · Jul 2, 2025

mrblackbat said:
It doesn’t have to be tested by this site. The point is it’s not been tested in law; I can’t find a single case of sheet music being shared on a forum for play along purposes and there being a ruling made. That’s when you would see a judge’s decision on whether it stood up to fair usage or not. The closest example is a porn sharing class action from the 2000s where porn videos were being shared via FileZilla; the actual amount of damages awarded was - £13.99, the price of the video. In reality that was more a case of speculative invoicing to try and keep it out of court and not have the world know you watched some dirty movies.

At most I think you risk a cease and desist letter.

The primary poster is responsible for the content, your responsibility as the site owner is to remove material, and links to material, if a complaint is made; so any legal action would need to be a class action against all the hosts of SotM for providing their links to the sheet they host. And then get damages from that for loss of income of those lead sheets being bought; which based on forum membership and the cost of a lead sheet is going to be feck all.

Literally: nobody is going to give a s***.

I follow a tin whistle teacher on YouTube. For years she posted tutorials of pop songs. A few months ago she had to remove all of her videos, several hundred of them, due to copyright strikes. We're talking about tin whistle tutorials, nothing that could ever harm the copyright holders and would easily be deemed fair use for educational purposes in court. Yet this person was forced to cease and desist anyway.

You'd think nobody cares, but they really do and will not hesitate to sue you out of existence. So I don't blame Pete for playing it safe.

Targa · Jul 2, 2025

lydian said:
I follow a tin whistle teacher on YouTube. For years she posted tutorials of pop songs. A few months ago she had to remove all of her videos, several hundred of them, due to copyright strikes. We're talking about tin whistle tutorials, nothing that could ever harm the copyright holders and would easily be deemed fair use for educational purposes in court. Yet this person was forced to cease and desist anyway.

You'd think nobody cares, but they really do and will not hesitate to sue you out of existence. So I don't blame Pete for playing it safe.

It could be that copyright holders or their ambulance chasing lawyers are using AI to find tunes on the web and threatening anyone and everyone.

mrblackbat · Jul 2, 2025

lydian said:
I follow a tin whistle teacher on YouTube. For years she posted tutorials of pop songs. A few months ago she had to remove all of her videos, several hundred of them, due to copyright strikes. We're talking about tin whistle tutorials, nothing that could ever harm the copyright holders and would easily be deemed fair use for educational purposes in court. Yet this person was forced to cease and desist anyway.

You'd think nobody cares, but they really do and will not hesitate to sue you out of existence. So I don't blame Pete for playing it safe.

And yet YouTube deals with copyright issues for you, plus they are actually hosting the content.

The forum here doesn’t host the content.

lydian · Jul 2, 2025

mrblackbat said:
And yet YouTube deals with copyright issues for you, plus they are actually hosting the content.

The forum here doesn’t host the content.

Targa said:
It could be that copyright holders or their ambulance chasing lawyers are using AI to find tunes on the web and threatening anyone and everyone.

Oh yes, I'm sure there's a bot instigating all of that. And if you get a few copyright strikes, you're out. So it's mostly scare tactics. But they're ultimately shooting themselves in the foot by shutting down free advertising.

I don't know the particulars around hosting. But I know torrents sites get shut down all the time even though files are distributed among hundreds or thousands of hosts. If I store copyrighted material on Dropbox and share it, who gets sued, me or Dropbox? I don't know. I'm asking.

mrblackbat · Jul 2, 2025

You, not Dropbox. They just need to delete it.

Likewise, Google don’t get sued for indexing sites that host content. The same applies to having links in a forum, it’s just a pointer.

Digger2054 · Jul 2, 2025

mrblackbat said:
when it comes to copyrighted material and an infringement of copyright, it’s up to a judge to decide.

The judge can also award an uplift for 'flagrant disregard'.

Such as where someone has removed watermarks from images. Or where it's clear there is a copyright over the work.

Ask the gentleman who decided to use one of my images :old:

Pete Thomas · Jul 2, 2025

Digger2054 said:
The judge can also award an uplift for 'flagrant disregard'.

Digger2054 said:
Or where it's clear there is a copyright over the work.

And yet we still get people posting images/music here that have a copyright notice.

It puts us in an awkward position because as soon as we remove it we can be criticised for being "copyright police"

I have always presumed that as we are all musicians here we all appreciate that copyright laws are basically a good thing as they protect the creative artists against unfair exploitation and distribution of their work.

I'm sure many people do small bits of infringement privately considering it fair use or under the radar, however once it gets published/hosted here it puts the Cafe at risk.

Just as (I think) most of us are against the counterfeiting of saxophones and misappropriation of registered trademarks and patents.

Digger2054 · Jul 2, 2025

Pete Thomas said:
I have always presumed that as we are all musicians here we all appreciate that copyright laws are basically a good thing as they protect the creative artists against unfair exploitation and distribution of their work.

One of the reasons the judge uplifted my claim, as the defendant was in the same industry and Copyright is part and parcel of being in a 'creative' industry.

I don't know how it works with forum&, file sharing sites, I know as part of my claim I submitted report to the hosting company to have the image removed, but took the company owner to court.

mrblackbat · Jul 2, 2025

Digger2054 said:
The judge can also award an uplift for 'flagrant disregard'.

They can, but I don’t think a few shares on an infrequently frequented forum with no monetary concerns is going to be classed as such by a judge.

rhysonsax · Jul 2, 2025

At another well known saxophone forum I have frequently seen forum members sharing backing tracks and lead sheets from obviously copyright sources.

Just saying.

Not that it affects what does or doesn't happen on the Cafe forum.

Rhys

cappers · Jul 2, 2025

Pete Thomas said:
And yet we still get people posting images/music here that have a copyright notice.

It puts us in an awkward position because as soon as we remove it we can be criticised for being "copyright police"

A while ago I posted part of a lead sheet on a thread and @Pete Thomas Thomas quickly asked me about copyright. The music was downloaded from my community band's Dropbox and I assumed all was correct, but I was not 100% sure of its provenance.

I asked Pete to delete it if he thought it might breach copyright. I was not critical of his intervention or action and quite understand the delicate position he is in - ultimately and legally the buck stops with him as owner the site.

ghostler · Jul 3, 2025

Pete Thomas said:
It puts us in an awkward position because as soon as we remove it we can be criticised for being "copyright police"

Sometimes doing the right thing is not the popular thing, but is necessary to maintain peace and freedom from lawful intervention and its dire consequences. It is hoped that the "offended" understands this. Unfortunately no matter what you do, some people are nearly impossible to reason with.

In this case then hopefully they can find a forum in which better suits them.

But the fact that you leave the door open for them to return (in most cases, I suppose the most offensive could have crossed the line to the point of no return), if and when they change their minds and want to return, shows you mean no offence.

IMO that is how I view this. But then, I don't deal with this as I have not a website to manage, and might look at things a little differently if I were in your shoes and had your experiences.

skeller047 · Jul 3, 2025

Regarding YouTube, their AI will find copyrighted material, and issue a notice to the video poster that any monetization from that video will be sent to the owner. They did that for me when I put up a video of a Horace Silver tune. Since I did not monetize that video, there was no issue, but any ad money that video generated went to the copyright holder (I think it is Universal Group in this case…)

There are some artists/copyright owners (not necessarily the same people) who don’t allow covers of their songs at all, and those are not allowed by YouTube.

YouTube has been very proactive in setting up agreements with copyright owners. Other places (SoundCloud for example) don’t allow covers at all; or rather, they tell you it’s YOUR responsibility to secure permission to publish a cover performance.

I’m not sure how this affects the Cafe, but it occurs to me that posting a YouTube video of a backing track here, assuming that the tune isn’t blocked by the copyright owner, might be OK. The owner gets any payments from ads shown during playback of the track. Similarly, a YouTube video of a cover performance, i.e. a member playing along with the backing track, would probably not expose the Cafe to any legal issues. I note that many of us do this already 🙂

Side note - a “video” could be just a simple static picture that shows during an audio performance, these are quite simple to produce.

I don’t know whether having the sheet music displayed while the track played would have a different effect, though I not there are thousands of YouTube videos that show printed music.

ghostler · Jul 3, 2025

skeller047 said:
Regarding YouTube, their AI will find copyrighted material, and issue a notice to the video poster that any monetization from that video will be sent to the owner.

I had an incidence of a false AI positive back in 5 April 2020. It was in the first minute of an on-line church service during Covid, using my own MIDI arrangement on my Roland GW-7 keyboard, I played and sang, Trust and Obey (1887) by by John H. Sammis and Daniel B. Towner.

I received the YT message you refer to, @skeller047 . I immediately filed a rebuttal, receiving the following E-mail message:

2025-07-02 YT Trust & Obey Dispute2.webp

My justification said:
This work is mine based on my use of public domain English song, "Trust and Obey" by John H. Sammis and Daniel B. Towner published in 1887. Both Mr. Sammis and Mr. Towner wrote the lyrics and melody. The song is in the U.S. public domain. It has been used in countless Christian Hymnals.

The performance is my own using my own voice to sing the words by Mr. Sammis. The background music is my own Midi arrangement of Mr. Towner's work on my Roland GW-7 keyboard.

An example of this song lyrics and melody may be found at:

Trust and Obey > Lyrics | John H. Sammis

Lyrics: John H. Sammis

library.timelesstruths.org

I never received a reply back, but they removed the copyright claim narrative from my song description.

atwl77 · Jul 3, 2025

skeller047 said:
Regarding YouTube, their AI will find copyrighted material, and issue a notice to the video poster that any monetization from that video will be sent to the owner.

To be more accurate (and as far as I remember), copyright holders get three options on how YouTube should deal with the infringing material:

1) take the monetization for that video, which is typically the default option for the majority of copyright holders; or
2) silence the offending sections of the video, which YouTube will automatically do; or
3) take down the video entirely... not common, but some copyright holders are that harsh