Recently two Netizens created a song adaptation of Kay Tse's old song Touched By Big Love (大愛感動) to mourn the victims from the Lamma Island ferry accident. The song adaptation entitled "Big Love Hong Kong (大愛香港)" is performed by "Major G" (G大調) and the new lyrics is by "San Ka La" (山卡啦). The song was also performed live by Major G on DBC Wave in HK. The song was uploaded on Youtube, however, it was only up for less than a day before Youtube removed it due to copyright infringement claims from Universal (UMG) and HKRIA. This led to a large group of displeased Netizens. Some denounced Universal, and some even wanted to boycott their products.
Kay and the original composer (Adrian Chow) had always supported second creations, and her manager (Ha Sam Mei) felt it was such a pity after he learned of the incident. He expressed the song's sound recording copyright belongs to Universal, but the music and lyrics copyright belongs to Ban Ban Music. If Netizens directly made an adaptation of the song's original music, technically that violates the sound recording copyright. He believed Netizens were just trying to make a song adaptation to voice the feelings of Hong Kongers and there was no intention of commercial activity. He hopes the copyright owner will take the circumstances into account and not handle the situation too firmly, otherwise should just sweep through all of the infringement on the internet all at once.
Adrian Chow later clarified online that the decision to delete Big Love Hong Kong was not his decision. He believes it is the sound recording copyright agent HKRIA's usual practice. UMG spokesperson expressed Youtube automatically detects it. If the system detects copyright infringement in the audio or video, it automatically deletes the video or mutes the audio. The spokesperson urges Netizens to be careful, second creation of original music can constitute to copyright infringement.
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** If anyone is interested in listening to 'Big Love Hong Kong', a member from HKGolden forum uploaded a backup here (sendspace link) and the the lyrics can be viewed here.
** Kay Tse's original "Touched By Big Love": here.
Source: Mingpao
Translated by: aZnangel @ AsianEU Forum
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