Re: Absolute premiere of a LilyPond typesetted work

[Anthony W. Youngman]

In message 
<address@hidden>, Valentin 
Villenave <address@hidden> writes
> 2009/5/9 Francisco Vila <address@hidden>:
> > It was typeset by the pianist and composer Pascual Marchante. As for
> > the license of the score: well thougth, if it is not published at all,
> > how can it be licensed anyway? It is a copyrighted work, period. IIRC
> > it was commissioned by the Madrid autonomous community and maybe it
> > holds the whole rights.
>
> As you may remember, free-licensed works are copyrighted (since free
> licenses precisely rely on copyright, for example to guarantee the
> author's paternity right).

Actually, I understand that isn't true ... What you say sounds American 
- under European law I understand that that isn't a right, but a 
requirement (reasonably enough). Under European law, an author may not 
sign away the right to be identified as the author.
> If it is not published, that is a very good reason to release it under
> an alternate license, since the author is not bound to a publisher
> (and the commissionner, AFAIK, should not hold any copyright on the
> work).

Did the commissioner ask for it as "a work for hire"? Certainly an 
employee's work belongs to the employer. By default, I think you're 
right that copyright for a commissioned work remains with the author, 
but that is often altered by the commission contract.

Oh - and under English law, afaik, an unpublished work can only be 
published by the owner. There are a lot of cases of old diaries, of 
immense historical interest, not being published because they never have 
been in the past and the current owner refuses to. Despite the author, 
in many cases, being dead for a century or two - not just 50 or 70 or 
however many years copyright lasts nowadays ...

Cheers,
Wol
--
Anthony W. Youngman - address@hidden