I am a retired person who loves music and after purchasing a 9000Pro years ago and then the T2 and now the T4 am having a ball with playing those wonderful machines. I am self taught and except for a few times playing at senior citizen centers played only at home. Friends and family that were not near asked how to get some of my music to listen to. A great choice was to upload to a shared web site.
Now comes the "rest of the story". Over the past 3 years I must have uploaded around 60 of songs that I played and converted to MP3. These were all on the 4shared.com web site. Watching the number of downloads indicated how "popular" the songs were. Some were 40-50, some were 200-300 and some were in the 2000 downloads. However, one song, "You raise me up" went crazy - 10,000, 30,000, 50,000 whoa, whats going on? They really must like my music. Then a couple of weeks ago at 70,000 the goons at DMCA contacted 4shared.com and issued an immediate disabling of that song. 4shared.com then issued a "infringing of material" and removed the song "You raise me up". Further I was issued a warning that I was liable for damages etc. etc. Neither 4shared or the DMCA people would tell me what the violation was only that I was "infringing on the copyright of the holder".
So, since 4shared.com had already deleted the song I deleted the rest of my songs from their web site and will no longer use the facility. I suspect the 70,000 downloads of the song was just too much and they figured the music industry was losing sales of original recorded songs. I had to fill out paper work indicating I removed the song, not do it again and give they necessary information if I had to appear in court. So I guess one should be careful in not using a shared web site to store their songs. And above all, don't record any songs that people really like and put them on a shared web site!

Dick

That wouldn't happen if you had a private account there where you need a password to access it.

dtrue... don't mean to be high and mighty, but according to the law, I think you are infringing on copyright. Not many people are "caught." Put a feather in your cap, you appealed to the masses! But I think you would need a license to do that legally.

Bear in mind, that millions of people get away with this.

... I thought you had to be 'profiting' from tghe work of another to be guilty of copyright infringement?

Not sure that is right, Tony.

no Tony. If you perform or play other peoples songs publically without expressed permission you are infringing on copyright. Just about every musician in the world will have done this at some point and pretty much every pro musician here is likely to have done it and probably still doing it. Most of the time the risk is negligible in terms of being warned or threatened but when peole are downloading the stuff you have played i the numbers that the above poster cliams was happening with his music then you can expect some heat.

its an intersting story.....

Thanks for the comments. Well, I guess that was a lesson learned even though I did not know "up-front" that it was a violation of the copyright holder of the song. Scott, I was not aware that I could have had a separate password just for those relatives - friends who could access this file and leave the general public out of it. Thanks for the info.
Question - what about all those youtube videos that are being played, even some Tyros playing "you raise me up". Are they in violation too?

Dick

yes they are all in breach but it is so widespread the legal people will pick and choose who they will pounce on depending on how much that person has infringed, how much money they are losing as people download your music for free as opposed to buying the copyright holder music and how much you are worth suing .

Best advice i can give is stay poor like me. Then no one gives a hoot !! :-)

Regarding 4shared, you can set what files you want to private and only those that you send the link too will know about it.

In your case my guess is that you left it public, and thus it came up on search engines’, hence the masses of download.

4shared also has plenty of other security settings available, so have a look at the FAQ

Hope this helps

Bill

I've known that if one is performing in a 'public' venue, SOMEONE has to be paying royalties and it is usually the venue that pays to either BMI or ASCAP ... I know of at least one case where a musician was playing in a coffee house for tips and either BMI or ASCAP told the owner that a fee had to be paid or performers could only perform 'original' music ...

I've just never thought of the need to pay royalties if I post something on line for others to hear ...

I am a member of APRA in Australia. And even when an artist/band plays original music that doesn't save the venue from paying fees. I played in an all original band The Name for a few years and we got paid each year from fees collected by APRA even though our material hadn't been released by a record label. We would report the original songs we had played in venues over the year and the money came out of the fees they had paid. If they hadn't paid any fees then that would become a problem for them.

Nigel ... If I understand correctly, you played your original material during a gig and got 'royalties' for doing it?
nice ...

Ah Tony you remember my experience at Java Madness! Eventually a new owner worked something out with ASCAP. I'm not sure what it was, I only played there once after the ASCAP incident. By the way Erika Van Pelt a recent American Idol contestant who made it to the top 10 got her start at Java Madness.

Wiki Erika Van Pelt

Yes Steve, but I refrained from naming names to protect the GUILTY !!!