On 16 Nov 2006 at 21:16, John Howell wrote: > At 7:26 PM -0500 11/16/06, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > >It's not as simple as you make it out to be, seems to me. > > That's entirely possible! I can make one definite statement: in the > case of an arrangement of a copyrighted musical work, unless a written > agreement to the contrary exists, that arrangement is assumed BY > DEFAULT to be a derivative work and therefore to be the property, with > a new copyright, of the copyright owner of the original work.
I never disagreed with that. But it still doesn't follow that the *Finale* file becomes property of the copyright owner. That's the key point here, that different representations of the music can be the copyrighted property of different individuals. > As I write that and look at it carefully, I guess it doesn't matter > whether it is an arrangement "for hire" or an arrangement made without > the permission of the copyright owner, or for that matter WITH the > permission of the copyright owner. The arranger does not own > copyright in the arrangement unless it is specified in writing. I never claimed that they did, and don't think it has any relevance to the question of who has the right to control the Finale file. > You say that in other situations the opposite applies. You may very > well be right. That's the problem with arguing from analogy. The other situations are the same in some ways and different in others. It's not quite the same since there is no content conveyed by most of the other examples in the same way that a score can be but one representation of a musical work that exists with its own rights independent of the particular instance of it in a printed score. I think the photography example is pretty similar, in that a photographer owns the copyright on the negative, but still can't sell the photo to anyone he or she wants to without a release from the people depicted in the photos. That's a case of divided rights that's pretty close to the one with a Finale file and the work of music represented by the Finale file. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
