Is John Ashcrofts singing of this song copyrighted?
Unless your proposed use actually involves burning CDs and selling them, I have to say that John Ashcroft is one of the least likely people in the world to sue. The potential bad publicity he’d get so much outweighs the value to him of suppressing the use that he’s pretty likely to underenforce his copyright. The tactical key is to make a use that you could claim to be a fair use in good faith–something with obvious elements of parody or a strong political point. Fair use means the right to hire a lawyer, but two can play at that game–if you defend on a plausible fair use claim, he can’t win easily. You might at least be able to force discovery. Of course, this would be a ruinous strategy for most people, and were I a lawyer for anyone considering it, I’d probably have to warn against it as being very risky and possibly extremely expensive, but as long as “Let the Eagle Soar” stays fairly samizdat, the fair use grey area is, oddly, probably safer than it would be for most other songs
Anathema: yes, good point — the name of the game becomes signalling to W-C that they should sink their resources into suing filesharers and stealing little old ladies’ purses instead. This isn’t legal advice, either, but were I to make widespread public use of “Let the Eagle Soar,” I might let it be known in advance that if I got hit with a C&D or any legal action, I’d do everything I could to tie up Ashcroft, including filing any counterclaims I could plausibly make against him and deposing the hell out of him (about the occasions on which he’d performed the song, about its political message, etc. etc.) on the reasoning that he might lean a bit on W-C not to be so slap-happy with the lawsuits. Yes, it would be a very expensive rack; this strikes me as one of those cases in which it’s better to signal up front that you’re not economically rational and would fight the lawsuit ridiculously. You want them to think that you’re a JibJab rather than a DJ Danger Mouse. But if you were going
