copyright music
How do I give all the right credit to the Harry Potter company and John Williams if I create a variation on the theme song?
<p>I want to know how do I give all the right credit to the Harry Potter company and John Williams if I create a variation on the theme song for it and if I plan to sell it. I don't want to be sued by them but I want to sell them for 69c. Should I get rid of them from my rework album, because the rest of the variations are of classics in the public domain such as Für Elise.</p>

<p>The Harry Potter company and John Williams may or may not want credit, but they almost certainly want money. You have to get their permission, at least for <em>their</em> creations. In the case of  Für Elise, you can freely use the original score to &quot;rework&quot; that piece, but you can't &quot;rework&quot; a version that is itself a recent &quot;reworking&quot; (known as a derivative work). Anything that Jon Williams created is protected by copyright, so you need to negotiate a license to create a derivative work, and he/they get to dictate the terms (like, half of the 69 cents per copy). That might include some attribution statement such as &quot;with permission, copyright Warner Brothers&quot;, or whatever is stipulated in the license agreement.</p>
