Re: Solfege Resources -- 404 bach chorales in Lilypond format with Movable Do solfege.

[Graham Percival]

On Sun, Jan 02, 2011 at 12:59:39PM -0500, Michael Ellis wrote:
> We all seems to agree that:
>    1. The "music" of the chorales (the sequences of pitches and
> rhythms notated in the Breitkopf edition) is public domain.
>    2. The Breitkopf edition itself is also in the public domain.

I haven't checked it myself, but if this Breitkopf edition is on
IMSLP, then yes.

>    3. Margaret Greentree's XML files do not contain any copyright
> assertions other than for the PDF output.

"Assertion" is completely irrelevant to the status of being under
copyright or not.  If something would normally be under copyright,
then it is under copyright the instant that it is produced in
fixed form.  (i.e. as soon as I type each letter of this
paragraph, it is under copyright -- even though I am not going to
append "Copyright (c) 2011 Graham Percival" to this email)

> Given the above, it seems that an important question is whether her
> reservation of rights applies to distributing material created by
> applying LilyPond to the notation sequences embodied in her XML.

No.  The question is whether her particular rendition of the Bach
chorales in XML can be under copyright.  If it is -- and I believe
it can be, especially since somebody noted that her rendition was
not completely accurate -- then all the XML files are under
copyright, and you cannot do (legally) anything with them without
her express permission (with certain exeptions that vary from
country to country).

> On the other hand, I'm not sure that failing to declare a copyright to

"Failing to declare a copyright" has no meaning since 1970 or so.
In the first half of the 20th century, that had a legal meaning,
but after one particular major rewrite of copyright law, any "idea
in fixed form" (paraphrased) was under copyright.

Cheers,
- Graham