As music students are required to do a Public Performance for their Graduate Thesis, they need to understand an additional Intellectual Property issue: Performance Rights. In particular, a performance needs to consist of clearance for the original music score, adaptations and the performance itself.
Adaptations and Copyright
Scores that are adapted by someone who has not been dead for 50 years, have their adaptations protected by copyright - even if the original composer has been dead over 50 years. If you use an adaptation for your performance, you must also respect its copyright.
Fair Dealing and Public Performances
Unlike a quote or paragraph taken from a copyrighted publication, the public performance of an entire piece of copyrighted music does not allow for Fair Dealing under the law unless it is for Educational Purposes (see 29.5 Copyright Act). This means that any copyright protected performance done for educational reasons is deemed Fair PROVIDED that "they are done on the premises of an educational institution for educational or training purposes and not for profit, before an audience consisting primarily of students of the educational institution, instructors acting under the authority of the educational institution or any person who is directly responsible for setting a curriculum for the educational institution" As such you are allowed to perform your copyrighted works as part of your education BUT the university is not allowed to broadcast any copyrighted works via the Internet for the purposes of Open Access, unless licensed to do so by a copyright collective such as SOCAN.
As it now stands the university does not make student performances available via Open Access. Instead, the university will retain a copy of the performance in its Music Library; as well as catalog the performance so as to enable others to learn about it via Google Scholar and Worldcat.
