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[jfb]

Prompted by another visit to Scott Andrew's site (hoping to get my ego stroked, and successful), I finally got around to placing my recordings under a Creative Commons License--allowing others to copy and perform my songs for noncommercial use, provided I get credit. I don't expect the lack of a formal license was stopping anyone, but I feel better having made it official. Of course, my cover songs are still, let's say, questionable.

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[jfb.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, there's one copyright that applies to the recording, and another that applies to the song. I could CC my recording of someone else's song--allowing other people to distribute it, make derivative works, etc. But I think I'm already violating their copyright on the song itself by distributing my recording of it without paying the statutory license fee, and I'm sure I can't grant others the right to do anything with the song.

M. Ward didn't seem to mind my distributing a cover version of "Carolina", and I don't think the other people I've posted covers of would mind either. But I won't be putting up an MP3 of my mandolin version of "Dear Prudence", because I don't want to mess with MJ.

Re your compilation copyright, you might want to email the CC folks and ask them. I don't think they can dispense legal advice, but they might be able to offer something.

Is your first anthology still available?