At 8:15 AM +0100 2/15/06, Johannes Gebauer wrote:
The point is that a critical edition can receive royalties.
Actually that isn't quite true under U.S. law, and I suspect (but certainly do not know) that the same might hold true for EU law.
A *copyrighted* edition can receive royalties. It does not have to be critical (i.e. a complete scholarly study). It can simply be a performing edition. (That is happening yearly in the U.S. as the marches and other works by John Phillip Sousa come into the public domain, and some idiot obtained a new copyright on Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" simply by putting back in the measures that Gershwin himself had cut out! I can't wait for the fights to break out over the "new edition" of "Porgy & Bess" that incorporates the changes Gershwin made AFTER the score had been published.)
The point is that in order to earn a new copyright, the editorial work must be sufficient in and of itself to be considered copyrightable intellectual property, since once in the public domain the original music may never be recopyrighted (at least under U.S. law). In the Sawkins case, that seems to be the point of contention: what did he do that constitutes copyrightable new intellectual property.
John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
