Hello, Can anyone tell me whether MP3 sites are illegal and if they are , what can you say about mp3's that have been published 5 years back ?? Can we publish them ?? or what about religious music ? can we distribute them?? Help me ..IF you want to know exactly what i am talking about kindly have a look at www.livebhajans.com thanks
MP3 sites in and of themselves are not illegal, it depends on the MP3s that are in them. Also, it depends on where you are. Since you do not state, I'm going to write this reply as if you are in the US. I would say that what you are trying to do would be illegal in mos cases (without first obtaining permission). The lifespan of copyright for anything published after 1978 is 70 years after the death of the original copyright holder. That means, generally speaking, MP3s that were published 5 years ago have a long time to go before you can offer them for download without permission. Anything before that will depend on whether extionsions have been sought. Anything published before 1923 is in the public domain. Anything published from 1924 - 1977 has a minimum of 28 years protection from the publish date and possibly another 67 years after that. Religious music is definately copyrighted, but often in a different way. By that, I mean that many of the songs are now in the public domain (because they were written hundreds of years ago) but the recorded performances themselves are copyrighted. They are still copyrighted, and while you could offer the lyrics for "Amazing Grace" let's say, you wouldn't be able to offer a download for a recent recording without first obtaining permission. Your best bet would be to ask the copyright holder. One would think that with religious music you would be more likely to get yes answers (as they would be happy to have the chance to spread their message), but that may not be the case. First, the artists may not hold the copyright (often the recording company does). Second, they may see that as lost revenue and say no. An example of an MP3 site that is not illegal would be a site where you give bands the opportunity to upload their own songs to be downloaded by others.
Very Nice..SO in that case should i transfer my server from USA ? coz i want to continue with this website.as i like it so much..after that will there be any problem ?? In NL,honkong ??
The issue is first where you are. Having the servers hosted in some other country might mean they choose to ignore requests to take down content, but if you live in one of the countries that is part of the international copyright treaties would mean that you personally have no protection from lawsuits. In fact, having your servers in a part of the world that ignores copyright could be seen by a judge as intent to circumvent the law.