The ROH's Create contract tells the truth about the rights grab

The ROH's Create contract tells the truth about the rights grab | reviews, news & interviews

The ROH's Create contract tells the truth about the rights grab

by TheartsdeskWednesday, 22 September 2010

After Monday's report on the Royal Opera House’s new contract demands, a young composer alerted theartsdesk to an intriguing offer on the Covent Garden website - to "Create" a soundtrack for dance. This is a competition for new talent which will be judged by a team led by Deborah Bull, the ROH’s Creative Director: the winning entries to be shown at the ROH in November as part of the FIRSTS 2010 festival.

The accompanying terms and conditions for Create have set alarm bells ringing

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Permalink Submitted by AF (not verified) on Wed, 22/09/2010 - 23:10

Pretty shocking, considering how young, inexperienced and naive most of the people entering that competition would be!

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Permalink Submitted by Chris Curtis (not verified) on Thu, 23/09/2010 - 05:42

I emailed them to say that I could not agree to these terms and so would not enter. No reply.

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Permalink Submitted by AZ (not verified) on Sat, 25/09/2010 - 17:37

Surely it's also time a proper explanation of copyright became part of the school curriculum? Because of this kind of thing and also because anyone can become his or her own publisher now on the internet.

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Permalink Submitted by jason (not verified) on Fri, 01/10/2010 - 23:23

That new contract is way way too harsh. Basically, the contract says that because someone enters the competetion - then they own the rights to their songs...that is really theft at broad daylight. Surely, if the right to use their song - without any adaptions - was limited to promoting the ROH for that event and any subsequent - but this goes way braoder by ROH can make all the royalties from the song. Thing if I go to http://www.lookrichforless.com or some socail media website like facebook or a video website - then these sites suddenly owned MY copyright to MY song?? ....and what if I uploaded my song to 20 different sites that each "owned" the copyright to my song - who owns my song then? not cool.

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