Four Copyright Requests at One Winter Concert
Northgate High School's combined winter concert is nine weeks away and involves 78 chorus students and 52 band students. At the booster meeting, four proposals surface. First, a senior wants to perform an a cappella arrangement of a current pop hit that she downloaded from a site that offers free sheet music. Second, the choir owns 45 copies of a $2.25 octavo and wants to print 40 more on the office copier rather than buy them. Third, a parent wants the whole concert recorded and posted publicly on the district's YouTube channel. Fourth, the boosters want to charge $5 admission, with proceeds going to a senior scholarship fund. The district holds blanket public performance licenses for the auditorium through a performing rights organization, and the principal has already announced the concert in the school newsletter. The teacher has two rehearsals a week and no budget line for licensing.
1. Analyze each of the four proposals: what right is involved, and what should the teacher decide?
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This is a decision framework, not legal advice; district counsel and board policy control.
The pop arrangement. Two rights are in play. Making an arrangement is preparing a derivative work, which belongs to the copyright owner, and performing it publicly is a separate right. A site offering free sheet music almost never holds arrangement permission. Decision: do not perform the downloaded chart. Alternatives: buy a licensed published arrangement, use a licensed custom-arrangement service, or - best for the student - pick a public-domain melody such as a traditional carol and let her write her own arrangement, which she may do freely.
The 40 photocopies. This is the reproduction right. Owning 45 copies authorizes 45 singers, not 78. Decision: buy 33 more copies, at $74.25, or choose a piece already held in sufficient quantity. Check whether the publisher sells a digital print license. Do not photocopy.
Recording and posting to YouTube. Recording is reproduction, posting is distribution and public performance, and video adds a synchronization right. The district's performance licenses do not cover recording. Decision: request written permission from each publisher, many of which have a school recording form; otherwise restrict the recording to archival or private family use with administrative approval.
Five-dollar tickets. Nonprofit concert exemptions can apply when proceeds go exclusively to educational or charitable purposes and no performer is paid, but the conditions are narrow and the district's blanket license may already cover the performance. Decision: proceed only with a documented scholarship account, no compensation to anyone, and confirmation from district legal.
2. Build a nine-week plan that gets to a legal program without canceling anything the students care about.
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Week 1: inventory the library for choral and band pieces held in at least 78 copies, or plan doubling that does not require copying. Count what is actually on the shelf before choosing repertoire.
Week 2: contact publishers in writing. Request permission for the pop arrangement and for recording; ask whether a licensed arrangement of that song exists. Give the senior the public-domain option now so she is not waiting on a permission that may not arrive.
Weeks 3–4: lock the program to cleared items only. Set a hard deadline of week 5: any piece without written permission by then is replaced. Publish the substitution rule to students and boosters at the start, so the deadline is not a surprise.
Weeks 5–8: rehearse. During week 6, submit the recording permission forms. If written permission does not come back by week 8, record audio only for family with administrative approval and a private link, or do not record.
Week 9: concert. The booster treasurer deposits ticket revenue into the scholarship account and keeps a simple ledger.
Run this in parallel with the principal: tell her in week 2 that the newsletter should not promise a public YouTube video until permissions are confirmed. The teacher's time cost is roughly two hours of emails and one difficult conversation, which is far cheaper than a takedown notice or a publisher claim against the district.
3. A booster says that every school posts concert videos and photocopies music, so none of this matters. How should the teacher respond, and what can students learn from the episode?
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Do not moralize, and do not argue about whether anyone gets caught. Reframe around risk and role. The booster is describing enforcement practice, not law; the liability sits with the district, not with the individual teacher or the booster, and a single claim or takedown can end the channel the boosters want to build. Then give a path: the goal is to feature the students, and there are legal ways to get there, so the answer is not simply no.
Turn the problem into curriculum. Two class periods on the three rights at issue - reproduction, derivative works, and public performance - using the actual program as the case study, with the choir's own octavo and the senior's chart as the examples. Then have students draft the permission request email to the publisher. That is authentic writing with a real audience and a real deadline, and it puts the students on the professional side of the transaction rather than the rule-breaking side.
Give the senior a named role: she becomes the credited arranger of the public-domain carol, which is a stronger portfolio item than a downloaded chart and is entirely hers. Give the booster a job too - tracking permission responses and documenting the scholarship fund - so the energy goes into the solution.
Finally, write a one-page memo to the principal recording what was decided, when, and on what basis. The teacher should not carry the risk alone, and a dated memo is the difference between a professional judgment and an accusation later.