I just updated this site, fixing links, etc. There is a lot to dig into here if you want to fully understand copyright issues related to dance.

Prof. John Toenjes was invited to speak with students in Prof. Rick Sholwin’s the theater audio class today. A wide range of topics about music copyright was discussed, mainly in relation to music use in contemporary dance concerts. Many questions were raised, which lead to the latest update to this blog. We also raised awareness of the University Library’s new copyright services, led by Sara Benson.

On October 6, 2014, we had an engaging session with our seniors in preparation for their senior concert. We looked at this site, but also fielded lots of questions, many of which were answered on this site. However, a couple of questions came up that I was not prepared to deal with, and which need further exploration.

One question was: If grand rights permission is granted for a stage performance, does this give us the right to post a video of the performance on YouTube, or do we need to get further permission from the copyright holder for this?

An interesting answer to this question is an agreement that Warner Classics has an agreement with YouTube that allows license holders to post YouTube videos of their performances of said music. This only applies to YouTube, though, not to Vimeo or other websites.

Another question arose about excerpts: If a video is excerpted, the music is also cut in ways not approved by the copyright holder. Does this mean that excerpting a video is breaking the copyright laws?

I’ll be searching for these answers in the coming weeks…