Re: nice stockhausen excerpt

[Hans Aberg]

On 22 Feb 2010, at 11:50, Graham Percival wrote:

> > > That said, I can't see how using that exerpt could possibly
> > > qualify under Canada's "fair dealing" provisions in the copyright
> > > act.  Distributing that de.wikipedia.org page in Canada would thus
> > > constitute an infringement of copyright.
> >
> > Since it is a small snippet, not affecting the commercial value of  
> > the
> > original work, it should be acceptable also under Canada's "fair  
> > dealing"
> > interpretation by its Suporeme Court:
> >  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#Canada
>
> Please read that webpage.
>
> "The fair dealing clauses[1] of the Canadian Copyright Act allow users
> to engage in certain activities relating to research, private study,
> criticism, review, or news reporting."
>
> We are not doing research, private study, criticism, review, or news
> reporting about Stockhausen.  The context is advertising or
> documentation for an open-source project.  There is **no** provision
> for Canadian fair dealing for such usage.
>
> Even if our use somehow qualified as "research" -- which it
> emphatically does *not* -- then we'd fail on the "alternatives to the
> dealing".  Was there "a non-copyrighted equivalent of the work"
> available?  Certainly.  It would take me 15 minutes to write some
> music which showed the same typographical features of the
> Stockenhausen, without infringing on that copyright.

Read it yourself. Does the use affect the market of the original work?  
That would suffice, as copyright law is essentially a business law.  
But it is also a small snippet. And possibly: purpose is private study.

You do not have to qualify for all conditions, in my reading.

> I repeat: there is no way that our use of Stockhausen would qualify as
> "fair dealing" under Canadian copyright law.  I cannot speak to
> copyright law in Germany, Sweden, or other jurisdictions.

So what makes you so sure. Is that what a copyright lawyer has told you?

> > > The official LilyPond documentation
> > > should not include any material which infringes on copyright in
> > > any country.
> >
> > Formally, you only have to comply with the local copyright law.
>
> What is the "local copyright law"?  Is it Canada, where I wrote most
> of the docs?  Is it the UK, where I currently reside?  Is it the
> Netherlands, which is where Han-Wen and Jan are from?  Is it from
> America, where the webserver might reside?  (I don't know where it is)

The country from which it is distributed.

> If that country in the trade war against the US declares that it will
> no longer acknowledge US copyright (I forget the country, but they're
> talking about this), then can I (legally) download any Hollywood
> movies I want from servers in that country?  I don't think so.

It is up to you to decide, but they cannot go after those that  
distribute it.

There was a case where material distributed from Russia was taken up  
in New York, but it would mean that US law would be applicable for  
activities done in Russia - and the vice versa, which is why no  
country would admit it.

> > > In addition to distributing the webpages ourselves,
> > > a number of people redistribute the lilypond docs; I don't think
> > > we should try getting Debian in trouble by including any
> > > copyright-infringing material.
> >
> > It is really up to them to learn about their local copyright law  
> > and make
> > sure they comply.
>
> We're not in the business of making it hard for linux distributions to
> supply lilypond to their users.  That's precisely why we're keeping
> legally questionable material out of our documentation.

They only need to know what is valid in their country. In worst case,  
they could put a link for the docs.

It is quite impossible for anyhow to know and follow the copyright  
laws in all the about 200 countries in the world.

  Hans