Don't understand copyright?

[Sophie Hackett]

I uploaded a video to Facebook and it's been taken down. They've taken it down because I have uploaded the video with a song in the background (that I've purchased). Can anyone explain this to me, if this is right? Because I thought if you've bought the music you can use it to do stuff like that.
Thanks.

[hissingladybug626]

no that is not how it works. If a company does find you with music that you do not own; then yes they have a right to take it down unless you contact the music producers behind the music and ask if you can use it. Just like filmmakers have to sometimes pay music artists money in order for them to be aloud to require the rights to use music in a movie.

[Spock (rhp)]

no. you can't do that. the license when you buy the song is for your personal use only and Facebook to every one of your friends isn't personal use only.

[largemother875]

So you bought the music and now no one else can use it without YOUR consent?
No. You did no such thing. You bought a license to LISTEN TO IT.

[Mutt]

You purchased a LICENSE to use the song for your personal use. You did not purchase a license that allows you to make copies to distribute. Including it in the video is making copies to distribute.

Radio stations do not buy their licenses the same way you and I do. They purchase special licenses that allow them to broadcast the music. This includes on-line Internet radio stations - They purchase special licenses that allow them to stream it online.

[Sans Deity]

When you bought the song you bought, you did not also purchase a license to use that song in your video. When you buy a song, whether it's off a CD or download it from iTunes, you are not allowed to then copy it and redistribute it over another medium.

Btw, all of this is laid out in the terms of service on iTunes, or on the company's website/CD cover for the CD you bought. You know the long agreement you clicked "I agree" to without actually reading it?

[Max Hoopla]

You paid to listen to it.

[Pamela]

You only bought it to listen to,and you are not allowed to use it for any other reason,copyright on music lasts for 70 years!

[Neptune]

Buy purchasing the song you have a license that allows you to poses a copy of the song for your listening. When you put it online, you now allow others to freely access what you paid for and what the artist is still selling. You are giving away a product that some is still trying to make money from.
Radio stations play the music, but every time they do, they pay the owner. Tv shows do likewise. You paid once, but are allowing others to listen to the song when ever they wish for free. Now if you charged the listeners per use and them paid the owner per use, then you'd be fine.
Imagine if you went to starbucks and got a cup of coffee. They gave you free refills with that cup. Imagine if you left that cup in somewhere where the public could access it. You paid for unlimited coffee, but now anyone can get free coffee. You could be costing starbucks a lot of money in theory. Starbucks could resolve the issue by simply taking your cup away... problem solved. You cup was taken away. If you continue to abuse your cup privileges, you may be banned from ever getting a cup.

[Clive]

When you buy a CD, or a song online, you have bought it for your own personal use only. This is explained in the small print on the CD, or the licence that you may have clicked "I agree" to without reading it. Ownership of the song remains with the person(s) who wrote it - you have only bought a licence to use it personally, which means no copying it and no distributing it - such as putting it on Facebook. Computer software is the same - what you actually buy is a licence to use the software, not the right to copy it. So are books, which is why there are rules about how much of a book you can photocopy or quote.

It's OK for friends to listen to it with you, or to play it at a party that people don't have to pay to come to, but do anything else with it and you come up against breaking the licence.

If you give it away free, you are denying the author or composer the opportunity to earn from their work. So why should they bother to continue writing? Radio and TV stations can do it because they have bought a licence from the Performing Rights Society which gives royalties (a payment for using the song) to the author or composer, or have paid them royalties directly. Any DJ has to do the same thing. Noddy Holder does really well out of this - every time "Merry Xmas Everybody" by Slade is on the radio or played by a DJ at Christmas, he gets more royalties. (LOL I'm old enough to remember when it first came out!)

Copyright lasts for 70 years after death, so when our choral society performs a piece of music that was composed by someone still alive or less than 70 years dead, when I was treasurer I had to pay for our right to do it. The National Federation of Music Societies has a scheme to make this easy - all I had to do was write on the annual subscription form what we had performed, how big the audience was, and pay the appropriate fee. (So I'd have to think about that in the budget for the concert. With my eye on the money, I liked old music because we could do that for free!) I was once in a church performance of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and we had to pay Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group for the privilege. And each buy our own copy of the music - photocopying it would be illegal.

If you wrote a song, you wouldn't want to be able not to make money from it because any old Tom, Dick or Harry can just copy it anywhere, would you? That would be theft. That's why copyright law exists.

So there it is - you have only bought the right to use the song for your personal listening pleasure, not the song itself. If you want to do anything else with it, you have to ask permission from the copyright holder and pay for being allowed to do it.