Re: Towards a better license for Mutopia

[David J. Roundy]

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 10:45:15AM +0100, Bernd Warken wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 10:05:41PM +0000, Chris Sawer wrote:
> > Bernd Warken wrote:
> > > Then, why should I contribute to Mutopia?
> > 
> > Nobody's saying you have to. I'd be sad if you felt unable to 
> > contribute to Mutopia just because of licensing problems, but I hope 
> > these can eventually be resolved.
> 
> Licensing is crucial.  I think that Mutopia's main aim is to create
> free music.  But free music must be protected to stay free.  If some
> free music is robbed due to a bad license then you cannot access your
> score files any longer, so the situation is worse than before editing.
> Some days ago, John Sankey reported such a case to this list.  Isn't
> that enough to be warned?

I'm still not entirely clear as to how someone can steal your music, or how
a license could protect it.  The case reported by John Sankey (if I
understood it properly) was a case of someone claiming to have recorded his
music theirselves.  This is illegal regardless of license.  A good license
will only be able to protect you from 'legal' stealing of your music, and

I'm not clear as to how one could 'legally' steal your music, since
regardless of what license you use, you hold the copyright to any music you
record, and to the typesetting of any music you typeset, and you hold the
copyright to any editorial changes you make to your scores.  As I
understand it (IANAL), copyright law is biased towards protecting the
copyright holder, so the real reason we need special licenses is not to
keep people from stealing your music, but to allow other people to use your
music.
-- 
David Roundy
http://civet.berkeley.edu/droundy/