mapproach wrote:
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Yes, I'm aware that this might cause problems when I'm playing in a contracted band and the other party demands that I only use songs that are not published anywhere else, but this is not the case).
Hey,
glad to answer that :) As you have already understood, the only "lost option" is that you may no longer market the exclusive rights (and, besides playing live and releasing CDs outside of any label contract, exclusive rights are mandatory quite often, so that is an important thing to understand!)
So, the short answer is: You understood the crucial points correctly, and may play your own composition in your band without risking any sort of trouble.
It is always good to think ahead and wonder where trouble might arise, so let me go over that really quick for anyone who might stumble on this thread and not feel all certain.
Let's stick to your example, you uploaded a guitar adition to some drum track on wikiloops.
That track becomes really popular on wikiloops and gets 50 remixes.
At the same time, you and your band perform a song in which you play the exact same guitar parts.
Who would care? No one so far, no trouble in sight.
Now let's assume your band gets a lot of attention, and your track is chosen to become the new soundtrack of let's say a hollywood blockbuster (most film producers will require you to grant exclusive rights, so that is not likely, but let's assume it happened).
Some wikiloops users notice the song and claim: Look, they "stole" a wikiloops track for that movie!
wikiloops doesn't have a copyright infringement execution staff, so most likely nothing would happen in this event.
There is always the chance that the participating users of any track have agreed on some kind of license outside of wikiloops, so -from wikiloops perspective- we simply do not know if that has happened, so we give the movie folks the benefit of doubt.
Still no trouble, as long as no one steps foreward and says: "These are my drums, and I didn't give any consent to have them in that movie!"
Since your guitar track is the only thing that has moved from wikiloops to the movie use, and you are not going to complain about that, everything is safe.
Now, if you have wrongly told the film production team nobody but you had any rights on that song, and they move into a phase where they would like to release the soundtrack on CD (or put it on spotify these days),
they of course have an interest not to have their precious audio material available for free anywhere.
They might spot the track on wikiloops and feel like "Yeah, we need to sue that online project for hosting OUR music!" - now, here comes trouble.
This example story should hopefully demonstrate why you need to stay aware of a´having granted free use rights to wikiloops,
and why you need to take care when telling people about the legal status of your creation.
wikiloops could claim we have your consent to host your track, and probably gained that right a little before the movie was released, so you would end up being to blame for not having informed the film producers about that, and wikiloops would have to fight quite hard to get that recognized, leading to a huge mess and a lot of work.
As long as you avoid that kind of owership / use rights confusion and inform your partners about you having granted non-exclusive rights to wikiloops, then you are completely safe to go.
