Interesting thought....

[J Wong]

If you think about it, U.S. Copyright law could theoretically destroy the music portion of the circuit.

I've been thinking a lot about how the MPAA and RIAA are going to far and, naturally, bhangra came up as it is always on my kind haha

 

[GSingh]

Someone will come along and copyright boliyan -_-

 

[J Wong]

Well in the case I boliyan, they can copyright a rendition they make (as in own recording) but cannot copyright the boli itself. Same principal applies to classical music

 

[GSingh]

what if they compose it in a written work, like a book, and copyright that?

 

[jfried]

It'd still be Fair Use. As mixes would be, hopefully, although with all of the ongoing insanity about sampling as a practice, it's unclear how that really works in reality.

I'm also worried that the Fair Use provisions of US copyright law might be hanging on by a thread as record labels desperately try to get their feet back under themselves. I mean, hell, it's not like mixers have a lobby, right?

 

[hardeep_singh]

i think performances constitute fair use, but the trouble would be if you recorded performances and tried to sell videos or broadcast the recordings, in which case you would have to pay royalty for music used to avoid legal problems. uk/canadian record companies are trying to fight piracy but they don't have the power and money to prosecute people who commit piracy, they're working with companies who monitor pirated music released online and submit complaints to get the links deactivated. moviebox records is notorious for filing complaints against youtube videos so no one else can upload music videos and take away from views of their videos, even if the songs have been remixed. indian people will always pirate music and it helps make the artists more popular but punjabi music and bhangra are a relatively small genre and punjabi record companies will never be able to cooperate to form an entity like the RIAA, to much greed/competitiveness and history. so i think for now everyones safe and no one needs to worry about punjabi music companies coming after them for their 300 gb bootleg music collection.

so i was in india in february and i was walking around the pind with my nana and this other siana comes over and starts talking to my nana about the olden days. which is when i found out that my nana used to be part of a dhadi jatha and apparently had a really good reputation for singing and playin dhad. the siana happened to ask for any songs that my nana had written down but my nana told him that they used to sing from memory and he wouldn't mind sharing those songs with him. i believe that in punjab, traditionally there's an open attitude towards sharing boliyan and geets. it all comes from the tradition of performing songs openly for a crowd, jathas made money by performing, not by selling songs or recordings. these performances were all about celebrating something, or telling stories of historical events like battles in sikh history, so i don't see how you can copyright a boli or a geet that's meant to be shared and spread and passed down. the boliyan that are common in bhangra all came from some one writing or coming up with them in their mind and then singing it for a group of people and having that group of people spread it even more, that's the nature of boliyan and lok geet.