The Collective Blog

A few people have asked about music for the dvd, is it OK to use copyrighted music on it, and what I'm going to use, so I'll try and answer all the questions now:

• It is illegal to distribute other peoples copyrighted material. I'm sure everyone's read the legal blurb on the back of CD's and DVD's and stuff, so technically you shouldn't do it...
• However, as everyone knows it's not that simple, technically you shouldnt tape your CD's or the radio, or download music, or use a sample of a copyrighted track on your record, but plenty of people do it all the time...
• I'm not saying it's OK, or that no-one gets caught and punished for it - look at "the gray album", and Napster and the countless other examples (including Mickey Smith I heard).
• Basically to get punished you'd have to be sued by the copyright holder, which isn't out of the question in this increasingly litigious culture (I blame Ally McBeal), but first they have to 1: notice, and 2: be bothered by what you're doing.
• firstly I doubt any major labels will be checking out a UK bodyboarding DVD, so no worries there, but what if...
  
• What we're doing isn't going to harm their sales, no-one says, "I won't buy that Annie Lennox CD because I've got the best song on that wicked bodyboarding DVD already", if anything it'll improve them; I bet you know at least 2 people who have bought CD's after hearing a song on No Friends, That best of the Cure CD probably doubled in sales after NF1 came out.

So, I reckon we're alright, and anyone else, as long as you don't sell a few million copies, or broadcast it on TV, or show it at a festival or something.

There you go, I could have called it "Why I'm not guilty about ripping off music for the DVD", now my conscience is clear, any questions about the intellectual property issues involved in making a surf DVD, ask away, you can do it easily by adding a comment below this post.