[Harp-L] Re: Mr Shoji's Jam Tracks

[Steve Baker <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David wrote:

I'd never heard of these before Frank pointed them out out, but
they're all classic harp songs, minus the harp tracks. They've  been
retitled, I think to avoid copyright restrictions, with titles like
Sonny Boy's "Buy Buy Bird", Little Walter's "Joke" and Slim Harpo's
"Got Laugh If You Want It".

They're $1.50 apiece and the sample sounds very good.

Steve comments:

The purpose of what you refer to as "copyright restrictions" is to  
ensure that the composers or their legal heirs get a royalty for the  
use of their intellectual property. Here Mr Shoji (whoever he may be)  
gets your money for ripping it off, by simply changing the name of  
the song, while making it very obvious who the originator was.

I've experienced this with my own playalong tracks, which have  
surfaced on a variety of online platforms with the titles changed for  
this very reason, but those downloads were being offered for free on  
file sharing sites and I was able to block most of them. Here someone  
is stealing the work of great blues artists and reselling it for  
personal gain. Do you really want to support this?

Steve Baker
www.stevebaker.de
www.european-blues-masterclass.com
www.harmonica-masters.de