Deja vu…

And so it goes AGAIN. I have just gotten off the phone with the person at Hal Leonard Corp. who handles the lyric reprint requests for EMI Publishing, which is the company who publishes the Indigo Girls’ albums.

I have been trying to get permission to use a very short excerpt from an Indigo Girls' song in a chapter of a book I'm writing:

And the greatest gift of life is to know love
And I don't know where it all begins.
And I don't know where it all will end,
We're better off for all that we let in...

(This excerpt is from their album, All That We Let In.)

The publisher of this forthcoming book, Krieger Publishing, does not want to risk any litigation that might occur were this use to be contested and so wants to make sure we "tie up" the permissions clearly in advance. I am fairly sure that this use would be considered fair use and is an appropriate citation in the context of the chapter I've written, but I am not a lawyer -- and I learned the last time something like this happened, that even having a lawyer is not enough to convince a publisher. So I've been patiently pursuing the permission -- not an easy task, since it's often hard to figure out who actually owns the rights to a lyric in print form.

In this case it's clear that the Indigo Girls do NOT own the rights, even though they wrote the song. It's taken me a while, but eventually I went through EMIPublishing and got to Hal Leonard Corp. They, in turn, have informed me that IF they decide to allow us to use this miniscule excerpt, it will cost -- at a minimum -- $100. There is no way that I can afford to pay that fee. Frankly, there's no way the publisher can afford that fee.

So, ONCE AGAIN, I will be excising from a piece of academic text, the lines of a popular song lest the publisher of said academic text be sued.

If you can sense my anger and frustration, you're right. This is yet another example of the ways in which the out-of-control copyright regimes in this country have a "chilling effect" on various forms of critical engagement.