Gee, you could get ito a great moral/ethical/legal debate on this matter of copyrights. I suppose it's something we've discussed here over and over again, but I think it's a question that does not yet have a satisfactory answer. If you stretch all of this to extremes, it almost ciminalizes the act of singing a song.
There are times when this copyright thing has been taken to extremes, like the restrictions people have to follow on the use of the "Happy Birthday Song," or the Mudcat attacks from the Harry Fox Agency, and the hassle the Scouts had about paying rights for songs sung at camps (although that one came to a fairly equitable solution). It certainly hurts the spontaneity that is such a wonderful and important part of music.
In my more radical moments, I wonder whether we would be better off if musicians were not compensated, and if we all could just sing for the love of song. From a practical standpoint, I wouldn't like to see that - most of the songs I love were written for profit, and the world would be a poorer place if those songs did not exist.
Still, our copyright laws need restructuring, so that they can encourage rather than stifle creativity and our enjoyment of the arts. In the meantime, I'm going to temper the law with a little common sense, and I'm not going to let the remote threat of a lawsuit stop me from singing any song I like, any time I like.
-Joe Offer-