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Re: OT: How to become a mutopia-writer


From: Erik Sandberg
Subject: Re: OT: How to become a mutopia-writer
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:29:45 +0100
User-agent: KMail/1.5.4

> There are two main concepts - 'copyright' and 'public domain'.  The
> copyright (das Recht Kopien, Aenderungen und Ausgaben herzustellen) belongs
> to a person or to an organization unless that person has assigned it, for
> example to a publishing copmpany.  OR it is passed into the Public Domain
> and then it belongs to everyone.
>
> All published work, including music, has several 'copyrights' that need to
> be respected.  Some of the copyrights belong to:
>
> - the music composer;
> - the poet or libretist;
> - the typeset 'editor';

I'm quite interested in this: Exactly what does the editor own? If it is an 
Urtext edition, then basically the editor has done 3 things: He has done 
research to examine which notes the work contains. This work should really be 
more scientific than artistical. Then he may have added fairly ad-hoc 
modernisations such as dynamics (usually written within brackets). This is, 
at least partially, artistical work. Then, finally, he has typeset the music. 
This is also artistical (as opposed to scientific) work, unless a completely 
automated engraver such as Lilypond has been used.

Now, unless the laws are very strange (which they well might be), scientific 
research is not copyrightable. E.g., if you do some research and find out 
that Bach was born in 1685 (btw yesterday was his 319th birthday!), then you 
can, AFAIK, not copyright this fact. Strange things would happen if you 
could. E.g., someone else might, without knowing about your work, do the same 
research and find out about Bach's birth year. Doing research is legal, but 
without being able to know, this person would now violate your copyright.

Now, the question is whether anyone else than Bach himself can have a 
copyright on the fact that the first note of Bach's 1st cello suite (1CS) is 
g,16.

Suppose that an editor A finds the manuscript of Bach's 1st cello suite and 
determines that the first note is a g,16, the second a d16, etc. Suppose he 
publishes this information in a pure form, adding no extra information (say 
he writes it as a lilypond \notes block). Now suppose that he copyrights this 
\notes block in a very restrictive way. And suppose that some other editor B 
independently finds the same manuscript and does the very same transcription 
to a \notes block, and releases his work to Public Domain. The file is 
identical to the copyrighted one. If now somebody would have a copy of 
A:s .ly file, this would be illegal, while if he would have a copy of B:s 
identical .ly file, this would be perfectly legal. To me this really feels 
weird; that the same piece of information can belong to different persons 
depending on who gave it to you.

So my question now is: was it be possible for A to take this copyright?
Which really boils down to: Is it the information itself that is copyrighted, 
or is it a particular instance of the information?

> Each country has their own copyright laws.   You must become familiar with
> the copyright law in your country before you start publishing using
> Lilypond. (Copyright lawyers have a nasty habit of sneaking up behind a
> person.)

Suppose that you have an Urtext edition X, which is copyrighted in one country 
A, and has expired to PD in another country B, and that you live in country 
A. Will it be possible for you to bring a copy of X to your friend in country 
B, and let him transcribe it to Lilypond, and upload to, say, Mutopia, as PD? 
What will happen legally when you go home to country A and download it?

Erik





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