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[BD]

At EF 20 I was involved in a couple of the impromptu music jams which took place on the little stage outside the main stage area. I always tried to guide it towards being strictly improvised or to play only our own songs, because I thought it wasn't allowed to do covers at the con, even in an impromptu jam like that. A few people who joined in wanted to try some but I thought we shouldn't, so my question is - at a con is it allowable to do covers in an impromptu jam?
 
Bob

[Cheetah]

All public performances require permission by the copyright holders. Intellectual property laws have no exceptions for public jam sessions. If nobody complained, consider yourself lucky. Normally, if you sit in a corner and play your favourite johnny cash ballad on the guitar, it's unlikely a representative of sony music will be around to notice and sue you. However, it is not entirely impossible, and it would be totally be their right to do so. Which is why you'll never see an event like that on our timetable. And which is also why we don't really like to see this discussed in public, because, you know, these guys use google to find possible cases of infringement.