Nebraska Entertainment Legal Questions

I would need more details about what you are talking about. Is your business a music venue and are you being forced by PROs, or performing rights organizations, to buy performance licenses? The main PROs are ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, and to play their repertoire, live or recorded, in most venues, they require the venue to purchase their licenses. The licenses supposedly go to pay the songwriters and their publishers, with the overhead of running the PRO. If this is what you are asking about, yes, they can do this, since the songwriters have joined the PROs. One way to avoid such licensing and still have music is to contract with a company that licenses royalty-free music. Those companies provide packaged music that is fully cleared for use with no further payments. The companies often offer to select music suited for your business. Many chain restaurants, stores, airlines, and health clubs have such music. With such services, you are not getting the latest hit songs and you don't get to hear whatever you want. But you do get solid, good music for your business at one price, with no threats or hassles. I hope this answers your question. ... Read More

It would be trademark infringement to use the names and logos of other companies in advertising. Depending on how the trademarks are used, it make be able to avoid paying fines if it constitutes fair use under the comparative advertising exception. Kind in mind, this is an affirmative defense which does not allow prevail and will not prevent the trademark holder bringing suit.... Read More

You should hire a lawyer to find out what licenses and insurance are required by the Bahamas. Most likely the Bahamas requires such businesses to be licensed and to be paying taxes of various sorts to the Bahamas. Also keep in mind that the Bahamas may not allow you to work there, or may not allow you to run a tourist business there. I suppose you would need a work visa from the Bahamas. Have you inquired into getting one? In most nations, even a short time of working requires a work visa. So that should be your first point of contact. Then there may also be licensing required in the U.S., since you will be getting your customers in the U.S. Depending on the state, there may be very strict requirements for a travel or tourism business. Some states require such businesses to put up a special bond, since there have been so many problems with fly-by-night tourism companies. You will really be operating a two-nation company, even for the first few trial runs. You will also need insurance. You need to check the laws of the Bahamas as well as of the U.S. states where you will be operating. Then you need to check with several really excellent insurance companies, tell them your plans, and buy insurance. You will probably want a lawyer to write up a waiver for you, but whether it will hold in the Bahamas as well as in the U.S. is so questionable. It is very difficult to make such waivers hold, especially when someone has died, been injured, gotten sick, or been left stranded. If you want to try out such work, one way to do this may be to check with existing companies in the Bahamas and see if you can get a job. Or check with one of those tour organizer companies and see if you can connect on up with them. The U.S. citizens that I have known who have run such tourism businesses have done so in U.S. states, such as Hawaii or Alaska, or in U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, which are St. Thomas, St.Croix, and St. John. It may be significantly easier for a U.S. citizen to get proper licensing and insurance in the Virgin Islands than in the Bahamas. ... Read More

Curfew is usually a local law. For example, if you are in Los Angeles, there is a curfew law that is part of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, or LAMC. Under the LAMC, there is a daytime curfew for people under age 18, and a nighttime curfew as well. The daytime curfew says that during school hours, those under 18 cannot be out in public, such as at streets, parks, eating places, public buildings, unless you are with parent, it is an emergency, you are going directly to your job, or going to the doctor. The law has more details than this, but I am giving the overview. The Los Angeles nighttime curfew for those under age 18 is 10 PM until sunrise the following day. If you live in a different city, you should check your local municipal code and ask about the curfew. Or you can call the police non-emergency number and ask about the curfew. Keep in mind that the curfew that applies is the one of the place where you are located. For example, if you live in a town where the curfew is later and you go into Los Angeles, you are subject to the 10 PM curfew while you are there. ... Read More

It sounds like you are dealing with Twitter? Or is it Facebook? Or a different site? Facebook has hundreds of racist, antiSemitic, sexist, violent, vulgar and sickening pages. Twitter has many abusive users who regularly use Twitter to post attacks at other users. Twitter and Facebook might take the lead from Youtube, which finally got smart about not allowing abuse and says they want all users to feel comfortable, that the site is not meant for harassing others, and not meant to shock. I'd suggest people keep publicizing that Twitter and Facebook have ineffective rules and protections and are allowing what I assume are a tiny percentage of users who are deranged to intimidate the more socially normal users. Many of the abuses on Facebook and Twitter are actually illegal, but it takes someone to report the abuses to police. In the past year alone, there have been at least a hundred arrests in the U.S., that I know of, of people for their Facebook or Twitter posts. I suggest you report what seems very wrong, and let the authorities figure out how they will respond. What you are asking is how to bring legal pressure upon these sites to stop allowing these abuses. That is done by filing police and FBI reports about the extreme or repeat abuses. It may also help to file a class action lawsuit. Discuss this with a lawyer or with an organization that protects social rights. There was a recent lawsuit in France to remove anti-Semitic tweets and to reveal the identity of the tweeters. I think such a group lawsuit would be possible in the U.S. on the basis that certain racial or religious groups are not being allowed equal and fair access to Twitter, because Twitter has been allowing abusive users to stalk and intimidate them. From what I have seen, the abusive users on Twitter reach out and keep posting at people who have them blocked. Twitter utterly fails to protect the normal users from the predators. The predators create many sock puppet accounts, so it seems there are many of them with the same deranged thinking patterns. In reality, I think they are but a handful of very active sociopaths. Twitter does not remove death threats, violent attacks, repeat harassment, posting of personal information, racism, sexism, repeat personal stalking and harassment, or other abuses. Sure, Twitter has Abuse Report forms for all that, but Twitter does not respond by removing the abuse. Twitter may eventually suspend such an abusive account, but the same user will simply start a new account. Twitter has Safety and Legal Departments that are asleep at the wheel. There is even a particular user who runs a criminal site where he deals in users' personal information so that others may attack them. Just the other day, he tweeted a brag that he was making available the address of the parents of Trayvon Martin. Twitter refuses to take action to permanently remove this and other continuously abusive users. Social and financial pressure against Twitter and Facebook and other Social Media may also work. I have seen numerous petitions asking Facebook to remove pages that are violent, vulgar, and disrespectful. A few months ago, there was a particularly vile page celebrating and encouraging the murder of small children. The people who created the page kept posting their detailed plans to kill children with bombs and guns. Literally hundreds of people complained about the page to Facebook, which responded, over and over again, that the page did not violate its Community Standards. What on earth are the Facebook Community Standards if plans to mass murder little children are acceptable? What Community is that? Facebook was started as a site for Harvard students and then allowed students from various elite schools. Then it moved to allowing the general public. Now it has become a place for pages encouraging violence and hate against women, children, people of different races, and animal abuse. What happene... Read More

First, your version as a cover is called a derivative work. There are two major kinds of copyright. There's a composition copyright in the performance copyright. While you may have the ability to copyright your individual performance of a cover song you would still need to obtain the appropriate licensing from the copyright holder of the original composition. However, because your cover is based on the original work of someone else, you would not be able to copyright your composition.... Read More

It sounds like you may be making a derivative work. That is a work that is closely based on the original, but changes it. The right to make a derivative work lies with the copyright holder. For songs, in most cases, that is the songwriter or publisher. To make a derivative work, you need to get permission from the copyright holder. A song becomes a derivative work if you change the lyrics of significantly change the music. You might be able to copyright your version of the song with yourself named as the arranger. Also, once you record the song, you can of course register copyright on your sound recording.... Read More

No, you cannot hold the copyright in a cover song because it is a derivative work of the original song writer's copyright. You can however seek to license the song if you wish to release your own version for profit, but it will require the copyright holder's consent and likely a fee paid.... Read More

First of all, you are referring to a trademark, not a copyright. Second, you cannot obtain a trademark on a name if someone else is already using that name in such a way that your use would cause confusion in the marketplace. Certainly, if someone else already has a registered trademark and your use does not pre-date theirs, the answer to your question is no. If your use does pre-date theirs, the answer may be yes.... Read More

Do you have the purchase receipts for the tickets? Does your receipt match the place and time of purchase on the winning tickets? Also, look through your other tickets to see if you still have yours. If you do find receipts that match up with the winning ticket, speak with a lawyer in the State that runs the lottery. Other factors that might be evidence that the winning ticket was yours is if it was purchased where and when you always buy your tickets and if it used the numbers you usually picked. Also, most stores have surveillance cameras. Lotteries are so precise now that they can pinpoint the date and time the tickets were purchased. Surveillance video may show who bought the ticket. If all these things show that you bought the ticket, there will still be the question of whether you were purchasing it for your business partner, or if you knowingly transferred the ticket to him as a gift or payment.... Read More

You may be confused with regard to trademark and copyright law. This is an extremely common mistake. I believe that you are speaking about trademarks. A trademark is a name, logo or slogan. The "quotes" you reference could be a slogan. Certainly you will want to hire a qualified IP attorney to determine whether you can use these without substantial liability. Use of a trademark dictates ownership of that mark. Registration is certainly helpful and could access triple damage and attorney provisions, but someone's use of the trademark could mean that you could get sued for infringement should you start using it.... Read More

Any work that qualifies for copyright protection gains that protection the minute it is fixed in some sort of permanent medium. So both your work and the revisions are already copyrighted (assuming they are your original work). If you choose to, you can register your work with the U.S. Copyright Office in the Library of Congress. Submit the whole revised work to the Copyright Office, even if you already submitted an earlier version, so there is no question about what what is protected.... Read More