On Jul 20, 2006, at 10:18 AM, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
Saur Verlag photographs large music manuscript collections in Europe; and then sell these collections to libraries or whoever wants a copy. I wonder if *technically* I am violating Saur's copyright with print outs?..
I don't know about European copyright law, nor about what legal arrangements exist betw. the US and Europe RE each others' copyright differences, but I do know this:
Under US copyright law, the only thing Saur can copyright about such a collection of PD material is the collection itself--that is, the selection and ordering of the contents. If you don't copy that (that is to say, the whole damn collection, or a *really* substantial portion of it) you are totally in the clear--and in the right too.
Librarians have a long history of being overpossessive of their charges, and the kind of diplomacy you exercised is too often necessary.
I work with the music of A.P. Heinrich, most of which is in one big clump in LOC. LOC used to make all this stuff available on microfilm, but when the Supremes ruled that MSS were indefinitely copyrightable, LOC immediately stopped sending microfilms of anything to anybody, arguing that they couldn't know what which MSS were PD and which were still intellectual property.
The first few times I went down to DC to copy Heinrich scores, I had to deal with staffers who refused to let me copy more than a few pages, no matter how clearly I demonstrated that their Heinrich collection was as PD as it is possible to be. I had to go over people's heads to more knowledgeable and sensible superiors, but eventually I figured out that there was a "don't ask, don't tell" system in operation: you call up a microfilm from the stacks, don't tell anybody you're going to copy it, then waltz openly into a microfilm viewing room and print out as much as you like: no one will question you or try to stop you. Works like a charm.
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
