My advice usually is to be very careful about thinking that someone has copied your music. It's quite a heavy serious accusation. Conversely, if someone is to accuse you of it, it's serious. It's something you have to pay attention to. It's federal law. There are three levels of court, all federal. First is what was called district court. There 94 districts in the United States. I'm sitting in Nashville right now. In Tennessee there are three districts, this is the middle district of Tennessee, obviously, a lot of copyright issues come here. The three places where you see most copyright issues are New York, Los Angeles and Nashville. But, so you can have a lawsuit here in district court. The person who loses the case, can then appeal it to what's called the circuit court. There 11 circuits. Nashville is in the sixth circuit, Boston is the first, New York is in the second circuit, California is the ninth circuit. So you would appeal to the circuit court and then the next step after that is really the Supreme Court. So, when you're in a copyright case, you're only two steps away from the Supreme Court. It begins at that fairly high level. Also it's very expensive. Lawyers get paid anywhere from $200 an hour on the low end, 300 or 400 an hour might be more common. I'm dealing with lawyers now who are getting paid over $800 an hour, they usually hire expert witnesses someone like me who is a musicologist, who can give the lawyer the advice to learn needs about the originality of the musical expression, because that's what this comes down to if you copy original expression. You can copy small phrases and things that aren't original. But if you copy original expression becomes more serious. It's a sliding scale, what does it mean to be original, you can't look it up in a book and say, these seven words this is, and these four words are not. It's a case-by-case basis. But so, the person in my role gets paid a lot of money as well. These cases can go for a long time. A short case might be two years. I've been in some that went for ten years. In fact, I worked this way. It was a Friday, I was in Nashville about to fly to New York, the trial began Monday in New York, I was getting on the plane and I get a call, get off the plane. We settled. So, things can work that way. But if you have ten years to devote to this in their emotions back and forth, it's something you want to avoid. There's always ways to work things out. You don't want to go to a trial.
