At 8:56 AM -0500 1/11/09, Christopher Smith wrote:
On Jan 11, 2009, at 5:51 AM, dc wrote:
All of Minkoff's facsimiles have a very restrictive copyright
notice. Not only do they state the facsimile can't be copied, but
also that it can't be transcribed, even partially. I'd be curious
to know how much of this is bluff...
So would I. I have seen many times companies putting out reprints of
century or centuries-old manuscripts with no changes except for the
strongly-worded copyright notice threatening to torture your
first-born if you so much as think about making a copy. There has to
be a law against fraudulent copyright notices, isn't there?
Not that I know of. And really, who would sue? Unless, perhaps,
someone who wanted to publish their own version. (I know,
fundamental difference between civil and criminal law, but if no one
actually owns the copyright, nobody can sue!)
One famous example (if your mom happened to be a piano teacher as
mine was) is the Schirmer piano editions of 19th century works (the
yellow-cover ones). All were demonstrably public domain, but all
carried a copyright notice, and while I didn't realize it at the time
I think they were printed from the original plates and were not new
editions.
And when one of our local composers wrote a musical version of "The
Prisoner of Zenda" (and it was very good, as a matter of fact), I
went to the library to look for a copy of the original, and found
it--complete with a totally spurious copyright notice since it, too,
was clearly public domain. (I also found it in the Juvenile section
of the library, which may tell us something about musical theater and
swashbuckling movie stories!)
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
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
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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