The Beckett Connection

Perun said:
Again, I think Maiden are the wrong people to sue here. It's a dispute between Quinn and Barton, and I think that involving Maiden or Steve and Dave in this reeks of a publicity thing. So the Maiden camp is right to take this to court, because, bottom line, they're asked to pay twice if they only have to do it once (and it's not important here whether Quinn is in it for the money or not - his lawyer is doing all this). It's not their fault Barton is cheating out Quinn, and no words of Quinn's lawyer that Steve "should know" make it that. Maybe ultimately, it would be fair if Quinn received a credit on future Maiden re-releases, but the way I understand it, this is not the focal issue here.
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Is Maiden taking it to court or McKay as a result of Maiden not wanting to pay them/give them a songwriting credit? According to all information, the people being sued are Steve, Dave, their publishers and Bob Barton?
 
I don't know who is taking who to court here, but McKay said that if the Maiden camp does not accept his offer, he would take it to court. So at least they knew he would, unless he simply assumed they should, as he simply assumed Steve should know what Quinn wrote.
 
CriedWhenBrucieLeft said:
Are the Iron Maidens going to stop performing this song?
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No, because no one cares. I'm sure many small venues like bars and pubs don't have licenses, and are technically infringing copyrights, but no one cares, because the amount of money at stake for a small-time covers band (no offense to anyone who may be in a covers band) would be so small. For larger venues and more lucrative acts, you can bet they check clearances for any cover songs in the setlist.
 
If he's been subpoenaed, he may not be able to, or he might have been advised against posting publicly by his solicitor.
 
Suffice to say we'll only find out more as this situation plays out in court. Obviously I hope there's a resolution that leaves all parties pleased.
 
All bands are influenced by others, no ones completely original, even The Beatles. With the Becket stuff, I think it was more an influence and nod to em, rather than a rip off, like when they used the Purple riff on that No Prayer track....
 
Edit for clarity. What Deep Purple song do you hear on No Prayer? It's not like they haven't picked on the style (WTRRD on the latest album), I just can't pinpoint the song.
 
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Okay, I know I'm late to this party but this is pretty simple copyright law. If Quinn owns 25% of the song (regardless of if it's actually 50% and thanks to the new registration being 75/25), and Harris settled/paid Barton, then Quinn is owed money because he owns that 25%. Now, does Maiden owe him or does Barton? That's unclear.

Secondly, if Barton gave Maiden permission to play the song live, that's all they need to play it live (this according to US copyright law). Similar case, Sting gave P Diddy permission to remake Every Breath You Take and Andy Summers (if I recall correctly it was him) wanted to sue when he heard the rap version, but he couldn't because they only needed one songwriter's permission, and that was Sting. Another example, Tate splits from Queensryche and forms another band yet both he and Queensryche can play our favourite songs live, because they each own co-write credits. If you recall the dispute was about using the name Queensryche, but not about songs.

As an observation, if this Barton fellow rushed to get the song copy-written before or while pursuing legal action, I'm inclined to believe Quinn is the one being honest and is a 50% owner.

Lastly, it doesn't matter who wrote what (words or music), two songwriters each get a 50/50 split. If I added one sentence to your finished song, we split it 50/50 unless we have an agreement or contract that said differently BEFORE we write it. If I allow a third writer to contribute to that same song (without telling you), it's now split 33% each, because again, you only need one songwriter's permission.

Hope that helps!
 
If they are going by the US law I'm afraid that
Wacken 2016 was probably the last performance of Hallowed ever, because Steve is too stubborn to give 66% of rights away.

But the song is probably registred in UK, so we would need somebody to tell how the copyright law works there, since US laws tend to be quite different to the UK ones, because I believe that in Europe, words and music are registred seperately (at least when I registered songs they were, with 33/67 split).
 
Well we can say that if the Beckett case is taken to the court in the US, Maiden and Barton could possibly be fucked.

But I still think that Quinn should sue Barton first, because he didn't give him the rights to the Beckett song in the first place.
 
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