> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Jeff Kaufman <[email protected]> > wrote: > > One source that gives a sense of what's out there is Michael Dyck's > > Contradance Index. [1] It has publication info, dance title, > > authorship, and formation for every dance I've ever tried to look up. > > [1] http://www.ibiblio.org/contradance/index/
> This raises a question about the contents of an on-line database of > contra dance sequences: should it contain sequences AS PUBLISHED, or > also include variations of those dances? Who would own the copyright > of a derived dance, and be in a position to authorize viewing of the > sequence, if the original author does not allow it? > Of course, the other interesting aspect of copyright is simultaneous > invention of a sequence by different people. Copyright hardly enters into it. (I do think that _courtesy_ does, and you shouldn't publish other people's dances without their permissions - but it appears to be the case that you can't actually copyright choreography. You may have copyright in the precise text of a dance description as you write it down (eg, the moment the creative work becomes fixed in tangible form), but the mere fact that you put known sequences into a particular order doesn't legally grant you the right to prevent somebody else from describing those sequences in that order.) > Besides the technical matter of writing the software, policy and > social issues seem pretty significant. Yes. -- Alan -- =============================================================================== Alan Winston --- [email protected] Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056 Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025 ===============================================================================
