On 24.10.2007 Mark D Lew wrote:
If some editor digs up some old score rotting in a library and creates a practical and usable score of it, that's a valuable service and it deserves the encouragement that copyright protection provides. The key is that this editor has done absolutely nothing to make the piece *less* available to others. If you don't want to pay for his edition, fine. Just go to the same library he did and look at the original. Use it to make your own edition if you like.
This is a very good point. As a matter of fact, has anyone noticed that most complete editions, even most critical editions, are based in Europe, mostly in Germany, Austria, France and Great Britain (to a lesser extend I believe). This is not only because most classical composers came from these places (although that certainly plays a role, too), but also because there are national (and now European) laws to do with copyright, "Urheberrecht" and other legislation (not all of this is strictly copyright) which protect critical editions. It goes so far as to protect any first publication especially, where a previously unpublished work can only be published or performed by the entity who originally secured the rights and published or performed the work, or else permission must be acquired. This obviously does limit the performance and publication of such a work, on the other hand the reason for these rights is that otherwise a previously unpublished work would never have been published at all, or the critical edition would never have been created in the first place.
Now, you might not like this idea, but it is a simple fact that a lot of this music is being published, by large and by small publishers. In fact it makes it possible for a nobody to found a publishing house and actually earn some money with it, because new discoveries are actually protected from being taken over by the big companies.
Music publishing, especially of smaller publishers, actually blossoms in Europe right now, I don't think there have ever been so many small publishers actually making money.
Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
