Space Oddity redux: Hadfield's cover back for two years It's back: Commander Chris Hadfield's famed ISS-recorded cover of the Bowie classic Space Oddity is getting another two years on YouTube after months of tortuous licence negotiations. As it was the first time around, the Hadfield cover is going to have a limited life. The first time around, he was allowed to leave it up for …
No. But broadcasting back to Earth and/or playing back the performance on Earth from earth-based hosting servers does enter into various earth-bound legal copyright jurisdictions.
Where it could get interesting would be if the video was hosted on the ISS.
I was going to post something along the lines of "How is Hadfield's situation different to that of other artists who record other peoples' songs, for example Richard Cheese or Weird Al Yankovic?". But, contrary to the spirit of the internet, I decided to look it up for myself, so here's a snippet from the great Mr Cheese's FAQ which sheds a bit of light on the situation ( http://www.richardcheese.com/rcfaq.html )
5.3.2) Do you have to get their permission to include their songs on your CDs?
Nope. Doing a remake of a song is legally allowed, as long as you give proper credit to the songwriters/publishers, as long as you don't change the lyrics, as long as you don't make a video, and as long as you pay the statutory royalty rate of 9.1cents per song per CD sold.
5.3.3) So this isn't like Weird Al having to get permission from the original artists?
No, you idiot. Weird Al Yankovic, who is a very talented and hilarious entertainer and close personal friend of mine, does SONG PARODIES, in which he changes the lyrics of the songs. My Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine band does COVERS, which are simply new performances of the original songs. Our arrangements remain faithful to the original song's lyrics and musical composition. Please don't call what we do "parody." We might satirize, bastardize, and swankify, but we are not parodying.
So there you go, because Cmdr Hadfield made a music video, and changed the lyrics, he has to get permission from Bowie's 'people'.
That confuses me a bit though - I thought that changing the lyrics made it a parody that was allowable under fair-use laws. Weird Al doesn't *have* to get permission, but he does out of good will and under the guise of keeping good relationships with artists.
http://www.weirdal.com/faq.htm
Parody is a sub-set of derivative works which gets a specific exception to normal copyright laws, but to fall into that category you generally have to either be making a joke of and/or criticizing something, possibly the original work.
While Hadfield's song was a derivative work of the original, the lack of any humour or criticism in the new work means it doesn't fall into the parody sub-set, so doesn't get the exemption
And there's the issue, he did change the lyrics, and he did make a video. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend, it is, as Bowie himself put it, "the most poignant version".
So glad to see its back up for people to enjoy.
(Yeah, I'm a Canadian in the UK, and I used to be a space cadet).
Well I guess R Cheese Esq is wrong on that count then! Thinking about it, I seem to remember Weird Al being denied permission to parody 'Gangster Paradise', and doing so anyway. What Yankovic does is definitely 'parody' though, and Hadfield's song very probably isn't.
edit - having just read Weird Al's FAQ as linked above, my recollection is not entirely accurate. Not a big surprise.
I suspect the problem is not as much in the "simple" legal matter of getting permission from mr. Bowie, but in the number of people involved in getting that permission (NASA and several space agencies were mentioned, I suspect theres a couple more dozen organizations that have a say in the matter)
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