Apple adds iPhone ringtones to iTunes {Engadget}

Sep 24th 2007 1:41PM I hate to interject a lot of legalese here but too many people are missing the nuts and bolts of how the laws protecting intellectual property work in this country. To begin with, let me first say that I am dead set against rigid copy protection schemes for music and the like. I went for about 20 years without buying much in the way of albums and CD's. What has changed for me in the last 10 years or so is the availability of digital music. I have spent more for music in the last 10 years than in the previous 30 years of my adult life (yes, I'm that old). I think the music companies missed the boat on a major opportunity to significantly expand their money-spending audience over rabid fear of a minority who would refuse to pay. That said, musical works are protected by federal copyright statutes. Buying a song, whether on a CD or from a legal download site, is not the same as buying a loaf of bread. With the bread, you can pretty much do antything you want with it, even possibly reverse engineering it to see whatr makes it taste good. The same does not apply to songs. Every time someone plays a song in public (other than for private, personal use) they need to have the permission of the individuals who own the rights to that song. Radio stations regularly pay royalties to ASCAP and other music licensing services based on how many times they play songs covered by that service. A share of these royalties go to the artists owning the song rights. The copyrights in musical works are best thought of as a complex bundle of rights, not all of which may be owned by the same individuals, that extend to many aspects or layers of the creative work. These include the words, the melody, the vocal performance, the instrumental arrangement, etc. It can also include use of a song recording as a ringtone. If someone sells you a "license" to the rights to play a song for your personal enjoyment, that does not mean that you have the right to use that song as background music for a TV commercial or a theme song for a TV show, or as Musak played in your retail store to improve the store's ambience for shoppers. It may not mean that you can electronically manipulate the sound recording for an alternate purpose, at least not without acknowledging in some way ($$) the initial artist. No two musicians play the same siong the same way and each individual performance can crreate additional rights for the performer. Despite those new rights, you still need the permission of the original artist. Anyone who has heard a symphony orchestra play a Beatles tune recognizes that, but the orchestra must still get permission from the Beatles, or Apple Records, or maybe Michael Jackson, for their new, and admittedly creative, performance. In this vein, the ring tone you create may be the source of original rights to you such that no one else could use your clip as a ringtone without acknowledging your creative rights. That said, I feel that Apple's paranoia here could easily lead to significant backlash. Apple should relax and let people have fun with their iPhones. It will just lead to more people wanting to buy iPhones and, inevitably, to more profit for Apple. Ring on!