Pirated music: good thing, bad thing or nothing?

[71 dB]

For example, do you agree with the existence of public libraries? Public libraries purchase one or more copies of a certain book, but it can potentially be read by thousands of people, so it could be argued that there is a theft of the intellectual activity of the author.

My sister is paid a small fee everytime someone borrows her books from a library in Finland. Not much, but something anyway. 

[San Antone]

It's curious: I tried to offer some (objective) description about differences between objects protected by the traditional concept of property and the object of copyrights. But you took it as a plain defense of illegal downloads.

Any rationalization of illegal downloading is a kind of defense of the practice.

Property, as we know it, is a notion developed from the Roman Law onwards, and referred to material things. On the contrary, copyright protection is a very recent notion, with no more than two hundred years of changing regulations and now faced with the problems of digital technologies.

Irrelevant.

Problems related to copyright are never simple. For example, do you agree with the existence of public libraries? Public libraries purchase one or more copies of a certain book, but it can potentially be read by thousands of people, so it could be argued that there is a theft of the intellectual activity of the author. Then if a student can read a book in the public library, but he can also download it illegally to do a homework (and then destroy it), the differences begin to be difficult to establish.

Libraries are covered in the copyright laws as a legal use.

Personally, I am the owner of several thousands of books, disks and movies, and I have paid several thousands of dollars to purchase them. Currently, I have, in addition, three subscriptions to streaming services of music (ClassicsOnLine HD, Spotify and, since yesterday, Apple Music), so I'm not a guy personally interested in illegal downloads; but I'm sure that new technologies claim for a rebuilding of the architecture of the current notion of copyright, even if "the industry" is against it. To deny it is to want to hide the sun with a finger.

Obviously, consumers view the issue differently than do creators.  And Creative Commons serves a useful purpose, but in those cases, the copyright owners agree to license their work for free.  This is their decision; not so with illegal file sharing where the decision to steal the music was made against the wishes of the creators. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Libraries are covered in the copyright laws as a legal use.

And what if I take a book or magazine to the Xerox machine provided by the library and photocopy a few pages? Legal or not? Everybody does it, and no library I know calls attention to the practice as a possibly copyright infringement.

What if I'm thumbing through cookbooks at my Barnes and Noble and find exactly one recipe of interest in a book costing $37.95. I snap a picture of the page on my cell phone. Should I be turned in for a copyright violation?

[Karl Henning]

And what if I take a book or magazine to the Xerox machine provided by the library and photocopy a few pages? Legal or not? Everybody does it, and no library I know calls attention to the practice as a possibly copyright infringement.

There's a (clear) sign above the photocopier in the Spaulding Library of NEC that says Copying Printed Music Is Illegal;  Buy Your Own Copy.

[Florestan]

There's a (clear) sign above the photocopier in the Spaulding Library of NEC that says Copying Printed Music Is Illegal;  Buy Your Own Copy.

Even if it's music by Gesualdo or Palestrina?

[Karl Henning]

Well, I may misremember the phrasing of the sign, which may possibly allow for such an instance.

There is the chance that a given edition of Gesualdo or Palestrina is under copyright;  the composers themselves were apt to produce part-books, and not necessarily scores as we understand them.  (Yes, that is part of the marvel of their talent/technique.)

[San Antone]

And what if I take a book or magazine to the Xerox machine provided by the library and photocopy a few pages? Legal or not? Everybody does it, and no library I know calls attention to the practice as a possibly copyright infringement.

What if I'm thumbing through cookbooks at my Barnes and Noble and find exactly one recipe of interest in a book costing $37.95. I snap a picture of the page on my cell phone. Should I be turned in for a copyright violation?

Copyright laws were never designed to be a blanket prohibition of access to protected work - intellectual property rights protection through copyright is meant to balance the rights of the creators against the need for access.  Innovation is promoted through rational and well-enforced copyright laws, not by overly restricted or too little protection.

[Florestan]

Well, I may misremember the phrasing of the sign, which may possibly allow for such an instance.

There is the chance that a given edition of Gesualdo or Palestrina is under copyright;  the composers themselves were apt to produce part-books, and not necessarily scores as we understand them.  (Yes, that is part of the marvel of their talent/technique.)

Is this site legal?

http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

Their Gesualdo page features 34 compositions. http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Gesualdo,_Carlo

[Karl Henning]

I'll let a librarian answer 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Well, I may misremember the phrasing of the sign, which may possibly allow for such an instance.

There is the chance that a given edition of Gesualdo or Palestrina is under copyright;  the composers themselves were apt to produce part-books, and not necessarily scores as we understand them.  (Yes, that is part of the marvel of their talent/technique.)

Right. And what if I pull a volume of the old Bach-Gesellschaft from the library shelves and copy a Brandenburg Concerto?

[Florestan]

Right. And what if I pull a volume of the old Bach-Gesellschaft from the library shelves and copy a Brandenburg Concerto?

Frankly, I don't understand what's the difference between music and literature in this respect. Copying Hamlet is ok, but copying Dowland's pavanes is (possibly) not. Why?

[North Star]

Frankly, I don't understand what's the difference between music and literature in this respect. Copying Hamlet is ok, but copying Dowland's pavanes is (possibly) not. Why?

I assume it would only be the case with an edition of the music that is edited by contemporary musicologists. I doubt that copying a new annotated Hamlet is OK, either.

[Florestan]

I assume it would only be the case with an edition of the music that is edited by contemporary musicologists. I doubt that copying a new annotated Hamlet is OK, either.

When I was in Grenoble, France, I copied at the photocopier of the Polytechnic Institute's public library whole chapters of scientific and engineering books published only several years earlier  --- and so did scores of other people, without a single look of disapproval, let alone an admonition, from the librarians. 

Is science and engineering less protected, I wonder.

[San Antone]

Is this site legal?

http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

Their Gesualdo page features 34 compositions. http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Gesualdo,_Carlo

It depends.  If you click through to download a score the first screen you see is a disclaimer about the legality of downloading a score.  As the end user you are assuming all liability.  If a score is currently under copyright then it would be a violation, if not, then it is in the public domain.  You would need to research the status of each work before legally downloading the scores.

[North Star]

When I was in Grenoble, France, I copied at the photocopier of the Polytechnic Institute's public library whole chapters of scientific and engineering books published only several years earlier  --- and so did scores of other people, without a single look of disapproval, let alone an admonition, from the librarians. 

Is science and engineering less protected, I wonder.

Well, legislation and law enforcements are two very different things.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I assume it would only be the case with an edition of the music that is edited by contemporary musicologists. I doubt that copying a new annotated Hamlet is OK, either.

And what about performing Hamlet? Do I have to pay a royalty to the publisher of the edition I'm using? Am I allowed to make my own cuts? If putting on a Shakespearean play violates copyright, then probably every theater in the country is guilty.

[DaveF]

Is this site legal?

http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

That's a very big question.  The people that run imslp do their best to keep it "legal", but of course "legal" means different things in different jurisdictions.  Imslp is hosted in Canada, where copyright is life+50 - i.e. a work enters the public domain 50 years after the death of its creator (strictly speaking, at the start of the 51st year thereafter, so Sibelius became public-domain in Canada at the start of 2008).  In the EU it works much the same, except that it's life+70, so Sibelius won't be out of copyright here until 1st Jan 2028.

In the US however,  , it's completely different - as I understand it, any work published before 1923 is in the public domain, but it's also possible to renew any about-to-expire copyright, more or less (as I understand it) by simply filling in a form and paying a fee.  These renewal lists are published annually, and the folks at imslp spend a lot of their time checking these lists to see whether renewals have been granted for submitted works - not that US law directly affects them, but because they always try to make a note of different copyright regulations that may apply to any particular work.

All of this explains (I hope) why it's possible to find on imslp the works of Sibelius and Vaughan Williams (which are in the public domain in Canada), as well as early Stravinsky (public domain in the US).  The site will always give you plentiful warnings if you are about to download something that isn't legal for you - or so I'm told.

Then there's the question of editions.  It's legal to copy any amount of the old Bach-Gesellschaft edition because all the editors died over 70 years ago (EU) or because it was published before 1923 (US).  Copyright of modern editions is more problematic.  It has been argued that the mere transcription of old MSS or printed partbooks to produce a modern score does not give any copyright to the transcriber/editor; however, in the UK, publishers also claim something called "presentational copyright" which lasts for 25 years from the publication of the edition, and applies purely to the photocopying of that particular edition.

But then, as any editor of early music knows, producing modern editions is almost never as simple as just copying old parts; you're always correcting, interpreting, expanding, emending, combing best readings from different sources, even recomposing lost parts.  I think the legality of copying such an edition would have to be decided on an individual basis - certainly, I would say, an edition in which a lost part has been recomposed should be considered the work of its editor for life+70.  Hamlet is a good example here: there are of course 3 primary sources (1st "bad" Quarto, 2nd Quarto, 1st Folio), and every editor's opinions are different, so any edition by an editor who has been dead for less than 70 years, or any new edition published in the US after 1923, cannot be legally copied.

[San Antone]

And what about performing Hamlet? Do I have to pay a royalty to the publisher of the edition I'm using? Am I allowed to make my own cuts? If putting on a Shakespearean play violates copyright, then probably every theater in the country is guilty.

There are performing editions of most plays and musicals that are not in the public domain - I doubt you would need to pay anyone anything to do Shakespeare, unless you ripped off a specific production's staging.  But for all current plays and musicals, you need to rent the edition which includes a licensing fee.  I am most familiar with the Music Theater International, which licenses musicals for regional and commercial theater productions.  There are other similar companies for plays.

[Jo498]

When I was in Grenoble, France, I copied at the photocopier of the Polytechnic Institute's public library whole chapters of scientific and engineering books published only several years earlier  --- and so did scores of other people, without a single look of disapproval, let alone an admonition, from the librarians. 

Is science and engineering less protected, I wonder.

You can make photocopies of such books for your own use in most countries. You probably cannot make two dozen and sell them to your fellow students.
And I think in Germany musical scores and parts are (or were) protected more strongly than scientific or scholarly books. Don't ask me why. It could be because in former times typesetting scores was particularly demanding and expensive (but so was probably setting lots of formulae and tables). Or because people often/sometimes make money by performing from scores.

[(poco) Sforzando]

There are performing editions of most plays and musicals that are not in the public domain - I doubt you would need to pay anyone anything to do Shakespeare, unless you ripped off a specific production's staging.  But for all current plays and musicals, you need to rent the edition which includes a licensing fee.  I am most familiar with the Music Theater International, which licenses musicals for regional and commercial theater productions.  There are other similar companies for plays.

I was not talking about current, copyrighted works, for which a royalty is obviously required. I was asking about performing Shakespeare using a copyrighted text. And to the best of my knowledge there is no copyright attached to a staging of any dramatic work.