| John Chambers wrote: | > | > (Does this qualify as sufficiently funny to be a musical joke? ;-) | | It may be funny, but I don't think it's a joke. I think it falls into | the "ha ha only serious" category. There is, unfortunately, a lot of | truth in it. (I myself am a computer programmer, but I barely play any | instruments, mostly a (very) small amount of tin-whistle and recorder. | I do, however, folk dance. | | Can I repost those comments elsewhere off-list, with proper attribution | (of course)?
Sure; I always assume when I send something out to a list like this that it is effectively public domain, and people will do with it what they like. Attribution is always nice, though in cases like this, there's also the paranoid thought that "they" will read it and decide to go after you. But one of the lessons from several decades of Internet development is that the best things always seem to be those that are done out in the open. Then people can criticise, edit, and rewrite. And if I get any flak from the Big Guys from reprints of my comments, I'll be sure to let y'all know. Maybe what we really need is for others to respond with their own takes on the issue. See if we can keep it on the topic of music. Pick from them and put together your own summary of the history. This could be significant for abc users. We've recently seen a growing misuse of the concept of "copyright" to block things that used to be considered "fair use" and "free speech". Here in the US, under the DMCA, copyright can now be used to fine and jail people who report shoddy products. Eventually the oligopoly will notice abc and will try to shut it down. Most of the people who do this will be acting under the impression that abc is a new format for sound formats; i.e.; they'll be clueless. But I can predict this fairly easily, since I've gotten a fair amount of email about my tune finder from people who can't use it to find the recordings they're looking for. A couple of these have been from recording/broadcast types who were obviouly looking for pirate recordings and puzzled that they couldn't find them. The boxed notice in the tune finder page stopped most of these, but it should give you an idea of the level of understanding that we're up against. We've recently seen things like the attempt to prosecute the Girl Scouts for singing copyrighted songs around the campfire. They did back off on that one, but only after a lot of publicity and outrage. There are all the attempts to stop things like pub sessions, or make participants pay for they right to "perform" their own compositions and/or very old tunes. The goal overall is a world in which you and I have to pay the oligopoly for the right to play any music, even our own, in private settings. It should be interesting to watch the battle ... To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
