On Aug 22, 2007, at 11:58 AM, John Howell wrote:
Anything published after[1923] is probably still under copyright, meaning that it belongs to the copyright owner, and you must ask permission to use it, and pay whatever fee or royalty the copyright owner asks or not use it. You need a contract spelling that out in writing before any publisher will even consider what you have written.
Note, too, that two separate permissions are required: one for your use of the copyrighted material in your new work, and a separate permission to publish the result. Of course both these issues can be addressed in a single contract, but you have to be aware that if you ask, "can I quote this piece of yours in a piece of mine?" and the answer comes back, "Yes, and this is the fee," and you pay the fee, you have still not gotten permission to actually publish the copyrighted material.
One of the composers I publish naively assumed that the copyright office would keep abreast of such things, so that if he was able to copyright an arrangement, that would prove he had the right to do so. I disabused him of this, but he had already gone ahead and made violin+orch. arrangements of tunes from King Crimson and another from _Jesus Christ Superstar_. At my advice he wrote to the King Crimson copyrights holder, Hal Leonard, asking permission both to compose what he had already done, and to publish it. H.L. said yes, but then asked a fee equivalent to the entire expected earnings of the proposed publication. So all his work is down the drain--at least for another 100 years or so.
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://www.kallistimusic.com/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
