[Droid803]

The likelihood of you getting in any trouble is very small, and on a personal level, I'd really have no problem playing a campaign that had copyrighted music.

ditto.

[S-99]

My youtube video got in trouble. But, nothing much happened to it. I think copyrighted music would be fine too.

[WMCoolmon]

This does raise another question I've been thinking about along the lines of the same subject.  If you use public domain music performed by someone other than the original artist do you need to get the permission of the performer? 

I'm pretty sure you do. I remember hearing that performances of Beethoven were owned in some fashion by the orchestra which performed them. The CD itself that you got the music from is digital media, and you'd be making a copy just the same.

For anything other than some form of classical music (ie the copyright has expired due to choice rather than time-after-death), you probably might as well ask the original artist. If they put it in public domain they're pretty likely to favor people using it, and might be willing to drop a word in for you to the performer (If you ask nicely, of course ).

[S-99]

Wow, beehtoven being copyrighted. That's a really wierd concept to think about. In 100 years will being curious if elvis is still copyrighted exact a same odd response, or will it necromance copyrighting for his music? Rob zombie could write a song about this, it'd be called living dead attorney.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I thought most pieces of music become public domain seventy years after the author's death.

[WMCoolmon]

It's important to remember that the musical score is different from the musical performance. What you're talking is a performance by a bunch of professional musicians who get paid, put together by a team of audio engineers who also get paid, who were using equipment costing thousands of dollars, while the musicians were playing using instruments costing hundreds or thousands of dollars apiece as well.

Even though Beethoven died more than seventy years ago, it's not like he burned a bunch of CDs of the performances of his music back then. All of the copies of his music you're going to find have been done by musicians in the last seventy years. And I'd love to see you try and explain to all of the musicians in the orchestra that their performance was completely devoid of any creativity so they don't deserve any kind of copyright protection whatsoever.

Beethoven is remember for his composition, not for his performances. Elvis is remembered for his performances, not for his composition.