Administrative Law

Grateful Dead lyrics and copyright - a librarian/annotator's experience

By Mary

LibraryLaw's resident Grateful Dead copyright envoy, David Dodd, reports that the author of a young adult book has been stopped from quoting lyrics in the manner intended. Dodd has his own experiences navigating Grateful Dead copyright waters.

Minow: David, first, tell us about your experiences on your annotations website using Grateful Dead lyrics WITHOUT asking permission?

Dodd: Well, I have no such experience, since I've always sought  permission prior to using any lyrics, whether in a book or on the web.  It was a philosophical (and legal) decision I made early on when beginning the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics website, that I would ask for permission to quote the lyrics. At first, my annotations were just lists of words, out of context of the lyrics themselves. Then, I asked for permission, from Ice Nine, the Grateful Dead's publishing company, to use the lyrics to one or two songs. They granted the permission, and gave me the language to use to acknowledge said permission. Gradually, I asked for more and more permissions, and they granted them each time, finally giving me a blanket permission to use all of the lyrics. And never was there any mention of remuneration. Altogether a pleasant
experience.

Minow: When you decided to publish your book, The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, how did you get the permissions you needed?

Dodd: The book was an interesting, and very different experience from my web permissions experience. Ice Nine, which is primarily Robert Hunter, the group's primary lyricist, and administrator Alan Trist, have a very old-school consciousness of what it means to put something into print. They never, in the majority of cases, published lyrics with their studio albums (Blues for Allah and Live Dead are the exceptions). So when I first requested permission to print the annotated lyrics web material as a book, my request was denied. And it was denied for quite a number of years--about ten years, actually. I just made a point of asking them occasionally if it might be time to consider the book, and eventually, to my surprise and delight, they said yes. In this case, there was a monetary factor, and rightly so, since they are the creators of the work I was annotating, and they were entitled to a majority share. I must say, though, that they were very generous in their proposed split of any proceeds.

Minow: What do you think about the Boing Boing post?

Dodd: I think it's very easy to jump to conclusions about the perceived "wealthy" Grateful Dead seemingly coming down on an innocent author, and I wish the post had been more measured in its reporting. It makes me more cautious about how I read posts on other topics when I read posts and commentary like this one. In particular, I thought many of the negative comments were ill-informed and mean-spirited, which is a lethal combination, and which, unfortunately, characterizes a great deal of our public discourse today. I love it that the author of the book in question finally spoke up and clarified things, explaining that it was not a question of being stomped on by a huge corporation, and that it was all handled well from the Ice Nine end of things.

Full post as published by LibraryLaw Blog on August 14, 2008 (boomark / email).