Re: Excellent paper on 'Copyfraud'

[Hilary Snaden]

On 2013-03-09 13:56, Urs Liska wrote:
> Am 09.03.2013 12:50, schrieb David Kastrup:
> > james <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> > > On Mar 8, 2013, at 6:33 PM, Tim Slattery wrote:
> > >
> > > > Mike Blackstock <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > This paper might be of interest to anyone typesetting public domain
> > > > > music from so-called copyrighted scores:
> > > > > http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=787244
> > > > Excellent article, even if it is 7 years old.
> > > >
> > > > I'm in a singing group. We sing madrigals and some baroque pieces, all
> > > > several hundred years old. I see books all the time with copyright
> > > > notices all over the place on songs that were written 300 to 500 years
> > > > ago. I wonder just what is under copyright? Words and music certainly
> > > > are not. Any foreword, biographical material, commentary certainly is.
> > > >
> > > > If the editor went to an old source, transcribed the piece into more
> > > > modern notation, added measures, key signature, time signature, does
> > > > that make the product copyrightable? If I make a copy with Lilypond,
> > > > is that infringement? Since I've produced sheet music for a public
> > > > domain work, I don't think so.
> > > It's exactly these things: articulations, editorial annotations,
> > > expressive marks, that are under frequently copyright.
> > Also the actual image.  It's probably safest to start from an "Urtext".
> > Now those go to a lot of pain to create a canonical version from
> > possibly conflicting manuscripts, and that is a lot of work, too.  But
> > it's not creative expression and thus should not be copyrightable
> > content.
> I think such editorial work _is_ as much scholarly work as one that is
> expressed in words and sentences.
> It is _not_ creative in the sense of artistic creation and as the
> original musical work that is edited. But scientific intellectual
> achievement is as much copyrightable as artistic achievements.

It's not quite the same thing, but there's a move in a number of 
countries towards incorporating open-access publishing in all 
publicly-funded research. This prevents the absurd but longstanding 
situation where taxpayers who have paid for research (with very little 
influence over it) have to pay again (and often a lot) to learn the 
findings of the research.

> Therefore in Germany (I don't know where else this applies) you can
> 'register' a scholarly edition of a work otherwise out of copyright. If
> this claim gets approved (it will be checked whether the edition adheres
> to scholarly standards and is substantially different from existing
> editions) you will hold the performing rights and copyright for this
> edition for 25 years.
> Of course this doesn't give you any copyright on the original composition.

I think that's very reasonable, so long as the original source material 
remains accessible. People can then make their own editions of music 
(and publish them free of charge) if they object to the fees charged by 
musicologists.

--
Hilary