I went to a brewery yesterday for Father’s Day. And while I am a father, number one (and only) son couldn’t make it due to work commitments, so I went along as a show of support to number two brother who has a gig playing there on special occasions.

He’s basically a one man band, but the plethora of power points needed around him would put the flight deck of a jumbo to shame such is the amount of electronic wizardry and gadgetry used to make the sound “big” as against a simple soloist and his gee-tar.

It’s impressive what can be achieved no doubt, but what I wonder about is the copyright issues at play here. I do not doubt his talent; he is an accomplished singer / songwriter, has produced a few CDs, about ten novels and writes for a living.

Some years back in Sydney, I was asked to video a combined churches kid’s Christmas Party / concert / Father Claus arriving by helicopter thing that lasted for a mind numbingly 5 hours. The idea was that the edited video could then be sold to the parents of the kiddies and the profits go into various charities.

It turned out we couldn’t. One song in particular was questioned as the copyright owner, the writer and the publisher all wanted their cut. It was a public performance of their music/lyrics and therefore we didn’t technically have the right to use it in the first place. To carry the biblical scenario further, it was certainly a David and Goliath situation, except this time Goliath would have won, so the whole project was shelved. You might say we could just cut out the offending material, but it was the climax of the whole show and without it, the rest would appear a damp squib without it. Think Pink Floyd sans Comfortably Numb, or Led Zep without Stairway ...

But I now wonder as hundreds of musos and wannabe musos make their sparse livings out of “cover songs”. So what is the position? Were we simply mightily conned under the threat of litigation and gave in, or are the record company moguls right? If my brother technically breaking the copyright / IP laws every time he sings a song?

The sooner this whole copyright, intellectual property right nonsense is sorted, the better. My colleagues on a closed journalist discussion list are debating this point as we speak and have discovered many shades of grey.

It needs to be black and white.